AUSTRALIA
The Examiner (Tasmania)

September 2, 2019

By Joanne McCarthy

THREE priests dominated the last years of Dorothy Ralph’s life after she moved to a unit across the road from St Joseph’s Church at Cessnock in 1991 and became a Catholic at 70.

Convicted child sex offender Vince Ryan converted her, convicted child sex offender David O’Hearn charmed and flattered her and Tom Brennan employed her as his housekeeper for eight years, until the day Mrs Ralph was sent to a nursing home for “respite” in 2012, only hours before Brennan was charged with child sex offences.

Mrs Ralph’s daughter, Trudy Rogers, finds it hard to read letters her mother received from Ryan and O’Hearn in November, 2012 after she turned to them in her grief following Brennan’s death, of cancer, a few weeks after he was charged.