AUSTRALIA
The Age
February 25, 2016
Chris Johnston
John Skewes was sitting at home in Ballarat on Thursday, reading about all the allegations against and proven crimes by Catholic clergy in the regional city he has lived in all his life.
As a victim of abuse himself – not once but twice, although not by Catholics or Christian Brothers – Mr Skewes, 66, decided to drive to the Nazareth House nursing home, a grand Victorian building beside Lake Wendouree. This is where former Ballarat bishop Ronald Mulkearns lies in palliative care, looked after by nuns. He is 85. Today he was giving evidence by video link to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.
There John met two women, Gabby Short and Wendy Dyckhoff, holding a quiet vigil outside the nursing home. Both spent time there as children when it was an orphanage and was ruled by notorious paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, the chaplain. The women say orphanage girls were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by him. Bishop Mulkearns shuffled priests, including Ridsdale, between parishes, where they continued to offend.
But it was too much for Mr Skewes, who says the “high level of anxiety” in Ballarat while the royal commission rolls through town triggers his own anxiety, and when he got to Nazareth House, he broke down and cried in the women’s arms. He had trouble speaking and forming words. His acute anxiety – caused by the abuse he suffered as a child – literally renders him speechless.
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