AUSTRALIA
The Guardian
Melissa Davey
@MelissaLDavey
Thursday 10 December 2015
A Catholic priest escaped immediate censure for trying to take a bath with a young boy because church leaders in Victoria did not want to arouse suspicion about him, the child abuse inquiry has been told.
In 1991 the archdiocese of Ballarat heard from a mother who complained that Paul David Ryan tried to have a bath with her youngest son when he was 12 or 13.
Giving evidence to the royal commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse, an Australian army chaplain, Monsignor Glynn Murphy, who was the bishop’s secretary at Ballarat between 1990 and 1997, said the bishop, Ronald Mulkearns, subsequently told him that Ryan was to be sent to another parish, in Ararat.
However, he was not sent there until Easter, weeks after the complaint was made to Murphy, “so that his change would not have been seen as out of the ordinary”, Murphy said. After a few months at Ararat, Ryan was sent to the US for treatment.
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