Former altar boy sexually abused by NSW Catholic priest said he ‘feels guilty he didn’t kill him’

AUSTRALIA
The Daily Telegraph

AAP, The Daily Telegraph
August 31, 2016

A FORMER altar boy who was sexually abused by a NSW Catholic priest after every practice session says he feels guilty that he didn’t kill the paedophile as a child, an inquiry has heard.

Gerard McDonald was in Year 5 in 1975 when he suffered sickening abuse at the hands of Newcastle’s Father Vincent Ryan.

In a statement today to the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Mr McDonald said Ryan, who would drop altar boys home from St Joseph’s at Merewether, abused him in his car in front of his house.

Mr McDonald said he couldn’t believe it when Ryan, who also performed oral sex on him and a group of boys in the church vestry, conducted a service at his high school two years after the abuse started.

“All I could think about was running to my mate’s parents’ place and grabbing the two biggest knives he had and killing Father Ryan,” he told the royal commission.

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