Victoria Police to Apologise for Blocking Child Sex Abuse Investigation
By Megan Palin
VICTORIA Police will apologise and pay compensation to a former detective whose investigation into child abuse allegations against a Catholic priest was stymied by senior officers. The police and church protected paedophile Monsignor John Day, thwarting a 1971-1972 investigation by former Mildura policeman Denis Ryan, the child abuse royal commission has heard. Victoria chief commissioner from 1977 to 1987, Mick Miller, told the inquiry he did not know of the existence of a “Catholic mafia”, as described by Mr Ryan, comprising Catholic police officers who protected priests. But he blames his immediate predecessor Reg Jackson for police putting a stop to Mr Ryan’s investigation into Day. “It is my opinion that chief commissioner Reg Jackson was the architect of the Victoria Police’s response to Denis Ryan’s investigations into Monsignor Day,” Mr Miller told the commission on Tuesday. “It couldn’t have operated in the manner it did without his knowledge and consent. “Everybody down the chain of command ... appears to have fallen into line.” No one spoke to Mr Miller, then an assistant commissioner, about the Day investigation or supported Mr Ryan, the inquiry heard. “In my opinion this points to Reg Jackson as the only one who could have produced and achieved the final outcome,” Mr Miller said. He said Mr Ryan should be compensated for what he went through and his premature resignation in 1972. “The driving force behind his crusade was the desire to achieve justice for the victims of a hypocritical paedophile priest,” Mr Miller said. “This entire episode is a shameful event in the history of Victoria Police.” Current Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton said he will apologise to Mr Ryan and discuss compensation. “We say to the victims of Monsignor Day that Victoria Police made mistakes in the past. We acknowledge that,” he told reporters. Mr Ryan has told the royal commission and written a book about a conspiracy against him to conceal the crimes committed by Day, a priest he caught with his pants down in a car with two prostitutes in Melbourne in 1956. Mr Ryan told the child abuse royal commission it was the first, but not last, time he encountered Day. “He was pissed to the eyeballs with his strides around his ankles,” Mr Ryan recalled. Mr Ryan and two other officers had pulled over a car that kept bumping into the gutter in St Kilda in early 1956.
The driver was a well-known prostitute named Hazel, Mr Ryan told the commission. “There was another prostitute and laying across, with his head on the driver and his feet on the other prostitute, was a man with his pants down around his ankles, his genitals showing,” Mr Ryan said. “He was wearing a Catholic priest’s collar and on the floor was an empty sherry bottle. Hazel again said to us: ‘He allows us to drive the car. He’s a regular customer of ours.’” Once back at the station, Mr Ryan found out the man was Apollo Bay priest Fr John Day. Mr Ryan said the drunk priest had to be carried and dragged into the sergeant’s office and was later picked up by two priests. “The priest was completely inebriated to the extent that he had to be half-dragged out there,” Mr Ryan said. Mr Ryan later asked the sergeant why Day was not charged. “(He) explained that the Catholics looked after the Catholics and the Masons looked after the Masons, and short of murder you just didn’t charge a priest,” Mr Ryan said on Tuesday. As fate would have it, Mr Ryan ran into the drunk priest again, when stationed in Mildura in 1962. He recognised Day but the priest claimed the drunk was not him — it was another priest in Apollo Bay of the same name. “I said ‘no you’re a liar, it was you’,” Mr Ryan said. “He told me to get out of the presbytery.” Mr Ryan said he was told to drop his abuse investigation into Day and forced out of the police force. “In the early days I had nightmares of Monsignor Day raping kids and the way the police force had condoned these offences,” Mr Ryan said. “Those children were being mentally and physically destroyed by Day and the police protected him.” He said then Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns also protected Day. Fifteen people have made child sex abuse claims against Day to the church, all after his death in 1978. The inquiry also heard from a man who believed the Christian Brothers paid off his parents after his brother was abused by Brother Edward Dowlan at Ballarat’s St Patrick’s College in 1973. BWF, who was 14 at the time, said he told then Ballarat priest Cardinal George Pell that Dowlan had beaten and molested his brother and demanded to know what he would do about it. “Pell became angry and yelled at me: ‘Young man, how dare you knock on this door and make demands’,” BWF told the commission. Barrister Sam Duggan said Cardinal Pell was living at a different Ballarat presbytery at the time and suggested BWF made the story up, which he denied.
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