AUSTRALIA
The Courier
Melissa Cunningham
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse will hold a directions hearing next week to make further orders regarding the response of Catholic Church clergy to complaints of child sexual abuse in Ballarat.
The hearing to be held in Sydney on Wednesday and comes after former Ballarat Bishop Ronald Mulkearns died at the age of 85 earlier this month following a long battle with colon cancer.
Bishop Mulkearns headed the Ballarat diocese between 1971 and 1997, when Catholic clergy, including teachers, abused hundreds of children.
Many clergy sex abuse survivors believe he could have stopped much of the horrific abuse that occurred in the region. He was bishop of the Ballarat diocese for almost 30 years.
The inquiry has previously heard the bishop moved priests, including notorious paedophile Gerald Ridsdale around the diocese despite being told they had abused children, and also destroyed documents in Ridsdale’s file.
The inquiry announced on Friday no participants of the commission raised any submissions in relation to his part-heard evidence which will now be taken into account by the commission as it stands.
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