Justice demands truth

AUSTRALIA
Perth Now

Editorial
From: Herald Sun
November 29, 2013

FATHER Gerald Ridsdale will be remembered as Victoria’s worst sex abuser. His victims number hundreds when the families of those he molested are also counted.

Today, the Herald Sun reveals that his years of paederasty began long before he was ordained as a priest.

He slept with two boys aged 10 and 12 six years before he was ordained. The mother of the boys said Ridsdale was supposed to sleep on a mattress she had made up for him, but she found him in the boys’ bunk bed the following morning.

The Catholic Church knew that Ridsdale had started abusing young children and kept moving him from parish to parish to cover up his crimes. He was sent to New Mexico for counselling instead of being reported to police.

Ridsdale was defrocked in 1993 and jailed on dozens of charges. He has since pleaded guilty to further crimes of abuse and will appear in the County Court next year.

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