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Royal Commission : Victim Protest outside Bishop Mulkearns" Ballarat Nursing Home

By Amber Wilson
The Age
February 24, 2016

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/royal-commission-victim-protest-outside-bishop-mulkearns-ballarat-nursing-home-20160224-gn2d26.html

Gabby Short and Wendy Eldridge with a photo of the orphanage girls with paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale. Photo: Luka Kauzlaric

A GROUP of women claiming to have been abused by the Ballarat clergy in the 1950s and 1960s have started a protest outside Nazareth House, the Ballarat nursing home where Bishop Ronald Mulkearns now lives.

Bishop Mulkearns, now retired, is due to give evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse on Thursday via video link from the Mill Street nursing home.

Gabby Short and Wendy Eldridge were among the group of women who demanded answers from the staff at the site, which was formerly also a girls' orphanage. They are demanding to know why the home is now "giving sanctuary" to the priest, whose testimony has regularly been delayed by Bishop Mulkearns' ill health.

At one point the women tried to enter the building but were asked to leave by staff.

Police said they were happy for the women to protest from the street, but asked them not to enter the premises.

Ms Short, who now lives in Ipswich, has flown back to Victoria for the Royal Commission and said she couldn't leave the state without asking the Sisters of Nazareth why they were harbouring Bishop Mulkearns.

Bishop Mulkearns is claimed to have protected paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, who was a chaplain at Nazareth House at the time the women were wards there.

Ms Short and Ms Eldridge held a historical photo of the orphanage girls with Ridsdale. They said the girls had been traumatised by their time under the Ridsdale's chaplaincy after being sexually, physically and emotionally abused by him.

Ms Short said some of the girls in the photo were now dead or homeless.

Ms Eldridge said the women were not violent, aggressive or intending to harass "a sick man" such as Bishop Mulkearns, but were angry.

"Why is the Catholic Church protecting this man who moved this paedophile on and around when the victims aren't getting any support, any assistance from the Nazareth nuns?" she said.

"He's getting first-class care and we're out in Ministry of Housing, homelessness, and we're still victims."

The women intend to return on Thursday to sit outside the building while Bishop Mulkearns gives evidence.

 

 

 

 

 




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