Paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale to face court again

By Tom Cowie, Melissa Cunningham
Age
January 9, 2017

http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/paedophile-priest-gerald-ridsdale-to-face-court-again-20170109-gtodq5.html

Gerald Ridsdale outside court with George Pell in 1993. Photo by Geoff Ampt

Ridsdale, 82, will appear in the Melbourne Magistrates Court next Friday for a mention hearing as part of an investigation by Victoria Police's Sano Taskforce.

The disgraced Catholic priest has been charged with multiple offences against a number of alleged victims from across Victoria.

Charges include rape, buggery and unlawful and indecent assault of children between the 1960s and 1980s, when he was a priest in the Ballarat diocese.

A number of Ridsdale's alleged victims are understood to have come forward to Victoria Police in the wake of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

The taskforce was set up to probe allegations arising from the royal commission.

Ridsdale was ordained as a priest at St Patrick's Cathedral in Ballarat in 1961.

He went on to work as a priest at parishes in communities including Ballarat, Horsham, Edenhope, Mortlake, Inglewood and Warrnambool until the late 1980s.