AUSTRALIA
The Tablet (UK)
10 August 2017 | by Mark Brolly
The Diocese is alleged to be denying the circumstances of the victim’s abuse, despite fact it was accepted by the Court three years ago
The Diocese of Ballarat, one of the Catholic bodies most scrutinised by Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, has been accused of breaking the Church’s guidelines in resisting a compensation claim by a victim of laicised priest Gerald Ridsdale.
The guidelines state a claimant cannot be required to prove the elements of an abuse case that the Church authority had already accepted to be true.
But lawyer Paula Shelton said the Diocese was challenging parts of her client’s claim that were accepted by a court when Ridsdale was convicted of the abuse. Her client was seven years old when sexually abused by Ridsdale, who is now in jail, in 1980.
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