AUSTRALIA
Latin American Herald Tribune
BANGKOK – Former Catholic bishop Ronald Mulkearns said Thursday when he had to tackle child abuse cases involving priests in his diocese in Australia, he knew it was wrong but was not sure if it was a crime, local press reported.
Mulkearns, 85, made an appearance through video-conference at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, which is investigating responses from religious, public and educative institutions to pederasty in recent decades in Australia.
The former bishop of Ballarat diocese (1971-1996), in the southeastern state of Victoria, said he never directly asked priests if they had abused minors, but knew about it through reports from psychologists, according to ABC news.
At least 14 priests were denounced in 130 cases of child abuse from the 1960s to the 1980s, and many of the victims committed suicide due to the trauma.
Gerald Francis Ridsdale, one of the abusers, was sentenced to eight years in 2014 for several cases of pedophilia, including one involving his own nephew, between 1961 and 1981.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.