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Police to apologise to detective over cover-up of child abuse investigation

By Jane Lee
Age
December 8, 2015

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/police-to-apologise-to-detective-over-coverup-of-child-abuse-investigation-20151208-glidw9.html

Former detective Denis Ryan doggedly pursued child abuse allegations.
Photo by Stacey Solomon

Victoria Police will apologise and pay compensation to a former detective more than 30 years after senior officers covered up his investigation into child abuse allegations against a Catholic priest.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Tuesday heard from Denis Ryan, who had doggedly investigated allegations of child sexual abuse against Monsignor John Day in Mildura under intense pressure to stop. His superiors later took over the investigation and cleared Day of any wrongdoing.

Police tried to force Mr Ryan to transfer to another station in 1972, and he ultimately resigned from the force.

Mr Ryan broke down as he told the commission he had had nightmares of children being abused by Day: "Those children were being mentally and physically destroyed by Day and the police protected him. Ballarat Bishop [Ronald] Mulkearns also protected him. I wonder how many kids would have been saved if Victoria Police had gone on with the inquiry into Day."

Outside the commission, Victorian Police Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said that Victoria Police would apologise to Mr Ryan, and accepted both his and former commissioner Mick Miller's evidence. 

"I'll be meeting with Mr Ryan soon to discuss all the aspects of [the apology] including compensation, assistance ... in the days ahead," Mr Ashton said.

Mick Miller, 89, who served as Victoria's chief police commissioner between 1977 and 1987, told the commission: "This entire episode was a shameful event in the history of Victoria Police."

Mr Miller said Mr Ryan should be compensated for his treatment and "premature resignation".

Before reading Mr Ryan's book about the scandal The Unholy Trinity last year, Mr Miller said he had no personal knowledge of police letting clergy off for abuse allegations and did not know a "Catholic mafia" had existed in the police force.

He knew most of the police members mentioned in the book, and now believed his predecessor, the late chief commissioner Reg Jackson, was the "architect" of Victoria Police's response to Mr Ryan's investigation into Monsignor Day.

With a royal commission into the police force occurring every nine years on average, he said, Mr Jackson may have worked to cover Mr Ryan's investigation up "to avoid another royal commission into Victoria Police that investigated his administration".

"It couldn't have [happened] in the manner it did without his knowledge and consent," Mr Miller said. "Everybody down the chain of command ... appears to have fallen into line. They must have because none of these people told me about it."

While it was the duty of a number of superintendents to help Mr Ryan in his duties, "not one of them did this. In my opinion this points to Reg Jackson who could have produced and achieved that particular outcome."

Mr Ashton said that Mr Ryan's evidence and efforts to publicise the scandal over the years had helped police better understand its past failings. Much had changed since then, he said, including the establishment of police Taskforce SANO to investigate child abuse complaints, following the Victorian parliamentary inquiry into child abuse.

"We've got to make sure that from today onwards we do the right thing," he said.

Mr Ryan, 84, told the hearing he had first encountered Day years earlier in 1956, when he learned of the "common law of the police force not to charge priests for anything short of murder".

He said he had discovered the then Apollo Bay priest, drunk in a car with two prostitutes with his pants down to his ankles, when on night divisional duty with other officers. They had taken Day and his car back to the police station, where he was later picked up by two priests.

When Mr Ryan asked the responsible sergeant why Day had not been charged, he responded: "You don't charge a priest or you'd be like a bastard on Father's Day, or words to that effect."

Mr Ryan said he had years later refused a request from another sergeant to join a group of police members, most of whom were Catholic, "to look after the interests of the cathedral in relation to priests getting into some form of trouble".

Outside the hearing Mr Ryan said he would be delighted if there was compensation but said "it certainly wasn't done for compensation".

He said it felt "most satisfying" that senior police finally believed his story: "It took a bloody long time."

He said Jackson and many others were responsible: "So many of them were architects ... it's corruption at its highest. A conspiracy unequalled in the criminal activities in Victoria. When you look at it with the abuse of justice, the aiding and abetting, conspiring ... for a religious belief that's got nothing to do with the teaching of Christ, it's only the teaching of the priests."

 
Contact: jane.lee@fairfaxmedia.com.au




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