AUSTRALIA
The Australian
DECEMBER 21, 2015
John Ferguson
Victorian Political Editor
Melbourne
Cardinal George Pell’s chief critic and accuser has failed to declare in his public statement to the child sex abuse royal commission that he indecently assaulted a 12-year-old boy he groomed while performing youth work.
David Ridsdale has emerged as a de facto spokesman for Ballarat victims of Catholic abuse and has accused Cardinal Pell of impropriety during a 1993 telephone conversation discussing Mr Ridsdale’s abuse at the hands of his uncle Gerald.
David Ridsdale, now 49, is the most well-known victim of Gerald Ridsdale, who as a priest in the Ballarat diocese abused hundreds of children, including relentlessly attacking his nephew.
However, David Ridsdale failed to detail in his statement to the commission, the centrepiece of his evidence, how he had groomed the 12-year-old boy in 1984 while working for the YMCA. The Australian has established he used his position as a YMCA activities leader to indecently assault the child on two occasions in bushland outside Ballarat, about 100km west of Melbourne.
The evidence against David Ridsdale, then 18, was that he tricked the boy into joining him on a visit to a local video store but drove him to bushland and then exposed himself. David Ridsdale refused to comment to The Australian, which offered through his lawyers to articulate his full story on the assaults.
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