Ballarat’s Children: ‘superiors ignored my urgings to set up child-abuse inquiry’, by Pia Akerman, Peter Hoysted, Australian (October 24, 2016)

Ballarat’s Children: ‘superiors ignored my urgings to set up child-abuse inquiry’

A detective who helped build the case against one of the country’s most notorious pedophiles has revealed he urged his superiors to establish a taskforce to properly investigate the scourge of clerical sexual abuse and how he lamented the general lack of resourcing by the force.

Former detective sergeant Blair Smith said he was shocked to learn the extent of pedophilia within Catholic institutions when it first came across his desk in 1993, sparking years of “a total fight” with the church.

Mr Smith, who was part of a small Victoria Police unit investigating domestic violence and sexual assaults, has spoken publicly for the first time in The Australian’s podcast Ballarat’s Children.

He said he had received minimal support from his commanding officers as he pursued allegations of child sexual abuse against former Christian Brother Edward (Ted) Dowlan.

“I recall saying to someone — and it probably would have been the chief inspector — ‘these files and all these clerical complaints should have been handled by a taskforce’,” Mr Smith said.

“You’re like a one-man band …. as it goes up the ladder, it’s just another file.”

Victoria Police did not establish a taskforce specifically dealing with child sexual abuse until 2012, when the Sano taskforce was formed to investigate allegations aired at a parliamentary inquiry into abuse involving religious and non-government organisations, as well as at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

Mr Smith’s work helped convict Dowlan and saw the former teacher sentenced in 1996 to 6½ years in jail for abusing 11 victims.

Last year Dowlan pleaded guilty to a further 24 charges involving 20 victims and was sentenced to a further six years.

His convictions relate to students at six schools: St Alipius and St Patrick’s College in Ballarat, St Thomas More College in Forest Hill, Warrnambool Christian Brothers College, Chanel College in Geelong and Cathedral College in East Melbourne.

The diocese of Ballarat, covering one-third of Victoria, is Australia’s most scandal-plagued Catholic diocese, with thousands of sex-abuse victims, mainly from the 1960s, 70s and 80s.

The podcast reveals direct accounts of how allegations against pedophile clergy were dismissed or actively suppressed.

In the latest episode, Without let or restraint, available today, former Victoria Police chief commissioner Mick Miller speaks further of the force’s efforts to bury allegations against monsignor John Day, as well as of the investigation run by Mildura detective Denis Ryan.

Mr Miller, 90, has told The Australian there was a conspiracy, involving officers from the then chief commissioner Reg Jackson down, to interfere in Ryan’s investigation against Day, who died in 1978 having abused as many as 500 children in the Mildura area.

“I can’t say if this was a one-off,” Mr Miller said. “I scarcely think it would have been.”

Mr Smith was thrown into the murky world of clerical pedophilia when a victim came to his station in Blackburn in Melbourne’s east in 1993, asking to speak to a female officer.

The man eventually broke down and revealed he had been sexually assaulted by Dowlan at Cathedral College.

“I just couldn’t believe how bad it was, and how extensive it was, and how blatant it was,” Mr Smith said.

Mr Smith said he had received no co-operation from the church or the Christian Brothers specifically during his investigation.