AUSTRALIA
Nine News
August 31, 2017
Australia’s worst pedophile priest Gerald Francis Ridsdale will spend almost 33 years in jail in total for his unprecedented offending spanning three decades.
The former Catholic priest was sentenced today after pleading guilty to abusing a further 12 children during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, including sexually assaulting a 10-year-old girl on a church altar in Ballarat.
Judge Irene Lawson sentenced Ridsdale to 11 years with a non-parole period of eight years.
Ridsdale is already serving a 28-year sentence with a 25-year non-parole period.
Ridsdale told one ten-year-old victim she’d be a “good girl” if she did not tell anyone, and said “we could be forgiven”.
She was taken to him several times by her father between 1962 and 1988.
The 83-year-old’s earliest possible parole is 2022.
** [Article includes timeline of Ridsdale’s life]
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