Abuse Victims Seeking "Easy Cash': Bishop

The Australian
December 11, 2015

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/latest-news/abuse-victims-seeking-easy-cash-bishop/news-story/0afdcc911b6a4287ce9d8b440906b92e

A Catholic bishop now says he was rash when he told a pedophile priest some child sex abuse victims were trying to get "some easy cash".

The child abuse royal commission has heard Bishop Brian Finnigan, then Ballarat diocese vicar-general, told convicted pedophile Gerald Francis Ridsdale in 1994: "Some of these fellows now see the opportunity to obtain some easy cash."

Bishop Finningan, now a Brisbane auxiliary bishop, said it was a rash statement and not his view of child sex abuse victims who sought damages from the church.

"It's a rash statement not given much thought to at the time when it was written," Bishop Finnigan told the commission.

Bishop Finnigan said he could not remember details of a number of meetings where the movement of priests was discussed, from 1979 to 1998 when he was bishop's secretary, a member of the College of Consultors and then vicar-general.

Challenged about his lack of memory of important issues about priests offending against children by counsel assisting the commission Angus Stewart SC, Bishop Finnigan said he did not recall them.

"No, certainly I think it's a bit demanding to try and well go back to 25 years ago," Bishop Finnigan said.

"That's all I can say. They're not in my mind. I'd be telling lies if I said I can recall them clearly."

Bishop Finnigan admitted he was "quite stupid" not to realise the seriousness of a couple's concerns about their son's safety around Ridsdale in early 1981.

"I might have been just too blase about it and say, `well I knew nothing to be concerned about'," he said on Friday.

Asked by commission chair Justice Peter McClellan about why he wasn't worried about it, Bishop Finnigan said: "On reflection, it should have, but at the time I didn't twig to it or whatever."

The commission heard Bishop Finnigan said in 1993 three or four people complained to him, as bishop's secretary, about Ridsdale's behaviour while Mortlake parish priest in 1981 and 1982.

"He used to invite all these lads around to his place to play pool and those sort of things and they felt he was over friendly to them," he told a Catholic Church Insurances investigator in 1993.

Bishop Finnigan said Mortlake was a small town where some families would be disturbed about Ridsdale having young people over while others thought it was a good thing.

"So now with the benefit of hindsight I'd have to say I'd have to acknowledge I was quite stupid not to see that they were on about something more serious than I thought; almost just inter-family feuds and dislike of the parish priest," he said.

"Some didn't like him, of course, because of his what they considered arrogance and attitude to certain people."

Ridsdale has previously told the commission he had an established pattern of finding victims, befriending their families and setting up drop-in centres to trap vulnerable young boys.

One of 17 pedophile priests in the Ballarat diocese, Ridsdale is in jail for abusing 53 children but is the subject of 78 child abuse claims to the church covering 1961 to 1988.