AUSTRALIA
ABC News
By David Marchese
A child sexual abuse survivor has broken down while recounting to a royal commission how he was repeatedly molested by a New South Wales priest who “was like Jekyll and Hyde” and warned him “nobody will believe you because I am a priest”.
The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse this morning shifted its focus to the Hunter region’s Catholic church, after spending weeks probing Newcastle’s Anglican diocese.
The first witness to give evidence at the hearing was child abuse survivor Gerard McDonald, who detailed his abuse at the hands of convicted paedophile priest Vincent Ryan.
Ryan was released from jail in 2010 after serving a 14-year prison sentence for a string of sexual assaults on dozens of boys between 1972 and 1991 and is currently awaiting sentencing on separate offences.
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