AUSTRALIA
Newcastle Herald
By JOANNE McCARTHY Jan. 12, 2015
A NEWCASTLE woman learned her son was a victim of paedophile priest Vince Ryan when police spoke to her in 1996 only days after her son’s suicide.
‘‘Vince Ryan wrote in his diary the name of the children he abused and the dates he abused them,’’ said the woman this week.
‘‘My son’s name was there. He was 11 when it happened, and an altar boy. He never told us. I was so horrified. I was just beside myself. I didn’t even think anything like that would ever happen, but it did.’’
Her son was 30 when he died. His father called him ‘‘my golden boy’’, but by the time the teenager had left his Catholic school for university he had been smoking cannabis for an unknown period.
He dropped out of university after he started talking to himself. Within a short time he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and for 10 years he struggled to live with the condition. His family never knew about the sexual abuse, were disturbed by the cannabis use, and will never know if the early cannabis use precipitated the schizophrenia.
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