AUSTRALIA
The Courier
By ALEX HAMER May 18, 2015
AS A former haven for paedophile priests, St Alipius Parish School will be under the spotlight in the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Abuse, which starts in Ballarat on Tuesday.
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The actions of four men who either taught at the school or held positions of responsibility in the school, such as priest Gerald Ridsdale as chaplain, under the Christian Brothers, will again be detailed and survivors will tell their horrific stories from the 1960s and ’70s.
School principal Eileen Rice said they had been open with pupils about the school’s history to make clear no such abuse would ever happen again.
“We will be making sure that our community knows this school is very different from the one that these children went to, and that they know and feel that the children are safe here,” she said. “We know that when children are abused, that stays with them into adulthood. It’s the past for us; it’s very much the presence of victims and survivors.”
The abuse committed by Ridsdale and Christian Brothers Robert Best, Edward Dowlan and Stephen Farrell have been linked to dozens of suicides by victims and has seen all found guilty of child sex crimes.
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