AUSTRALIA
Bendigo Advertiser
JOANNE MCCARTHY
16 Aug 2016
NOTORIOUS Hunter Catholic priest Vince Ryan took to the witness box in Sydney on Monday with a plan to break the silence of decades and apologise to more than 30 victims he sexually abused from the age of five.
Instead he spoke about himself and his fearful life.
“I’ve always been afraid of everything,” said Ryan, 78, during a sentencing hearing at Darlinghurst court after entering guilty pleas to three charges of sexually abusing a boy aged between 13 and 15 at East Gresford in the mid 1980s.
Ryan’s victim was described to the court as the boy Ryan had “forgotten”, after the priest volunteered the names of victims to police following his arrest in the 1990s.
Ryan told the court: “I couldn’t walk down the street. I’ve been terrified of my own shadow my whole life.”
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.