AUSTRALIA
The Courier
By Tom McIlroy
Nov. 8, 2012
BALLARAT’S former Catholic Bishop Ronald Mulkearns withheld knowledge of child sexual abuse offences committed by paedophile priest Gerald Ridsdale, a damning Victoria Police report found.
The September 1995 report, released as part of a Freedom of Information request and provided to The Courier last month by the Broken Rites organisation, was prepared by the Victoria Police Child Exploitation Unit after Ridsdale was convicted in October 1994 of abusing 21 children.
Details of the month-long investigation codenamed Operation Arcadia are expected to be included in evidence heard today by the state inquiry into the handling of child sexual abuse by religious and other organisations, including the revelation that Bishop Mulkearns had knowledge of the offences “much earlier than he suggests”.
It said the now-retired Bishop Mulkearns displayed a “reluctance/inability to properly handle the matter” dating back to the 1970s.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.