A survivor of the child sex abuse scandal attended disgraced Bishop’s estate auction

By Navarone Farrell
Geelong Advertiser
October 29, 2016

https://goo.gl/k4DpQI

56 Banool Rd, Fairhaven, former Bishop Ronald Mulkearns deceased estate.

Trial of Robert Claffey at Geelong. Retired Bishop Ronald Mulkearns leaving Geelong Court in July last year. Photo by Mike Dugdale

Former Bishop Ronald Mulkearns in his Fairhaven home in 2015. Photo by Ian Currie

Abuse survivor Stephen Woods was on hand to see disgraced Bishop Mulkearns' Fairhaven house go to auctioned. Photo by Alison Wynd

Stephen Woods, now 55-years-old, attended the auction of Mulkearns’ multi-million dollar Fairhaven home and called for the funds to be easily accessible to survivors.

“I was molested between the ages of 11 and 14. I was molested and raped by three clergymen, Brother [Robert] Best, Brother [Edward] Dowlin, and Father [Gerald] Ridsdale,” he said.

The three clergymen were among many the offenders that were touted as the worse among the scandal that spanned from 1971 to 1997.

“I’m a retired secondary school teacher. I had to stop after my body physically, emotionally and mentally just couldn’t handle it. I was studying my masters at a university in Melbourne and I collapsed and couldn’t keep going.

“That was in 2011. I’m on a disability pension, I’m just surviving. I’m always just trying to survive.”

Mr Woods’ brother was also a victim of similar abuse at hands of paedophile priests at St Alipius Primary School.

Mulkearns’ property sold after auction and the the church will benefit from approximately $2.1 million, which current Ballarat diocese Bishop Paul Bird has promised will go to survivors.

“When you deal with so many survivors in the Ballarat diocese alone, this will only go so far, but the church must make it easily available to survivors because most of us are dead — we need it now,” Mr Woods said.

Several former Catholic Brothers were in attendance, whom Mr Woods recognised.

“It’s cathartic in a way because every time I’ve gone to either churches or funerals or weddings, I see how far I’ve come from Catholic heritage and healing things in the past,” he said.

Mr Woods’ brother, like many other survivors of child sexual abuse, has had a checkered past. Anthony Woods spiralled out of control with drug abuse and died of AIDS in 1990.with his eldest brother Anthony having died from AIDS in 1990.

“Every where I go, I meet people and hear stories like that.

“In my class there were approximately 36 kids in my class, of which five or six we know of have had premature deaths.

“Some obvious suicides, some, they’re typical country boys, they will drive their car off the road into a tree.”

The “nest” that was established in Ballarat was established through word of mouth according to Mr Woods.

“They used to speak to each other and tell each other — thew knew, and they were protected.”

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse heard hundreds of local children were molested by a nest of paedophile clerics while Mulkearns was bishop of Ballarat from 1971 to 1997.

In February, Mulkearns admitted to the inquiry that he had failed as a bishop.

“I’m terribly sorry that I didn’t do things differently,” he said. “I didn’t really know what to do or how to do it.”