AUSTRALIA
The Australian
Emily Portelli
From: Herald Sun
November 18, 2013
A NOTORIOUS paedophile priest plied an altar boy with wine and made a 10-year-old girl perform sexual acts in a confession box at a church where he was the parish priest, court documents reveal.
Gerald Francis Ridsdale, 79, this morning admitted to sexually abusing 14 children, including three siblings, bringing the total number of his victims to 45.
Court orders have been lifted to reveal publicly that the former Victorian Catholic priest pleaded guilty to 29 charges of sex offences against boys and girls at Melbourne Magistrates’ Court via videolink from prison, where he is serving a sentence.
The most recent charges of child sex abuse, committed between 1961 and 1980 at various regional Victorian towns where Ridsdale then resided, were laid in June this year, weeks before he would have been eligible for parole.
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