AUSTRALIA
The Guardian

Megan Neil
Sunday 24 May 2015

Catholic church leaders buried their heads about clergy abusing children in Ballarat and should have made victims a priority, a priest convicted of indecent assault has told the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse.

Paul David Ryan, 66, told the commission he could not explain how so many notorious pedophiles came to operate in Ballarat diocese at the same time. But he agreed the culture of the diocese allowed it.

“And that allowed me to happen too, even though I was independent of them,” Ryan told the commission during a private hearing, according to a tendered transcript.

“Probably a gross misdirection of who should be supported, for a start: in other words, victims weren’t made a priority.

“Certainly burying their head about their responsibilities and seeing if, ‘OK, let’s try and avoid making this a scandal’,…