AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
March 10, 2020
By Barney Zwartz
Father Vincent Ryan was a vile and depraved man, a sex abuser with no compunction, who was guilty of sexual assault of altar boys and even trying to make prepubescent boys have sex with each other. So it is difficult to make sense of the slight, elderly, occasionally bewildered and apparently remorseful priest – yes, despite everything he is still a priest – in Sarah Ferguson’s new ABC documentary Revelation.
In the first of a three-part series, Ferguson tries to get into the mind of a paedophile who abused 33 boys aged six to 17 – with the connivance, one could almost say, of the leadership of the Catholic Newcastle-Maitland diocese, who knew what was going on and simply moved him from parish to parish.
In 1997, Ryan was jailed for 14 years for his crimes, which he committed over 20 years from 1975. Last year, he was tried on two new charges and, according to the documentary, for the first time in an Australian court ABC cameras were allowed to film the trial. Although the first episode does not contain the verdict, Ryan was sentenced to another three years’ jail.
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