BishopAccountability.org
 
 

Prayers Don't Help Abuser Priests: Inquiry

By Megan Neil
news.com.au
February 25, 2016

http://www.news.com.au/national/breaking-news/prayers-dont-help-abuser-priests-inquiry/news-story/fd9853413e2414520470a9de94cafe51

Prayers couldn't help Gerald Ridsdale, he needed jail or castration, a psychiatrist says.

Hard-core sexual deviants like pedophile priest Ridsdale had significant personality disorders, had no concept of empathy and were masters of deception, former Franciscan priest and psychiatrist Dr Peter Evans said.

"They are far more difficult to treat. They need to be in jail," Dr Evans told the child abuse royal commission.

If the hard-core deviants were not in jail they would need medical castration, the use of medication to suppress their sexual drive for as long as it took for them to learn to control their behaviour, he said.

"It's very difficult to treat them out of jail. It's almost impossible to stop them acting out."

Ridsdale has been in jail since 1994, convicted of abusing 53 children.

Dr Evans did not think much of the way pedophile priests were moved between parishes.

"I think that is related to a very misguided idea in the Catholic Church that somehow or other these problems are spiritual in nature and that, if they said their prayers ... and did all the other things that priests are supposed to do, it would all go away.

"It doesn't."

Dr Evans treated Ridsdale for three or four sessions in 1975 for anxiety caused by a police investigation into a child sex abuse complaint.

He said Ridsdale, who denied the allegation, was passive aggressive and totally unmotivated in therapy.

His anxiety was relieved when police did not press charges, despite the officer believing he was guilty, the commission heard.

Ridsdale was sent to Dr Evans by Ronald Mulkearns, the Ballarat bishop from 1971 to 1997.

Bishop Mulkearns said he told the policeman father of Ridsdale's victim "he's out of there immediately" and had been referred to a psychologist.

The father agreed that was sufficient, Bishop Mulkearns said.

Dr Evans said had he known about a series of complaints, he would have regarded Ridsdale as a danger to children and an established pedophile.

Originally published as Prayers don't help abuser priests: inquiry

 

 

 

 

 




.

 
 

Any original material on these pages is copyright © BishopAccountability.org 2004. Reproduce freely with attribution.