Church elders front abuse inquiry


Australian Broadcasting Corporation

Broadcast: 29/04/2013

Reporter: Heather Ewart

The Victorian Parliamentary inquiry in to abuse today heard from church elders about their handling of the issue.


LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: Relatives and victims of countless cases of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church have waited years to hear the Church's leaders explain their handling of the scandal.

Today, Church elders finally stepped up to faced questions at a parliamentary inquiry in Victoria.

Among them were the leaders of the Ballarat Diocese, where there've been 116 substantiated cases of abuse, 67 of them committed by a single priest. There've also been up to 50 suicides as a result.

This afternoon, the Ballarat Diocese revealed that not one of these cases was reported to police and victims groups remain outraged as they await the Federal Government's Royal Commission.

National affairs correspondent Heather Ewart reports.

HEATHER EWART, REPORTER: The Catholic diocese of Ballarat is where some of the worst sexual abuse exposed within the Catholic Church took place. From at least the 1970s onwards, we now know more than 100 children were abused there by Catholic clergy. Up to 50 of those victims have since committed suicide.

STEPHEN WOODS (2011): The sheer number of victims and the sheer amount of assaults and rapes that went on is just hideous.

HEATHER EWART: After a litany of stories from victims and the Church's controversial complaint process, Towards Healing, today the Diocese of Ballarat was finally called to public account.

PAUL BIRD, BISHOP, BALLARAT DIOCESE: On behalf of the diocese of Ballarat, I offer my apologies to those who've been abused, their families and their local communities. I offer my apologies through this parliament to the people of this state for the distress that these crimes have brought about - brought upon our whole community.

HEATHER EWART: The most prolific of its perpetrators were Brother Robert Best and Father Gerald Ridsdale. Best was principal of a local Catholic primary school. He sexually abused at least 11 boys here and elsewhere. Police believe he may have assaulted as many as 10 more. Ridsdale was chaplain at the same school. He sexually abused as many as 67 boys in Ballarat and elsewhere after the Church moved him on.

STEPHEN WOODS (2011): I wanted to speak to somebody who could help me, who could support me through issues I was having and, low and behold, Father Ridsdale was there. And within half an hour of going there, he had me up at the lake and he was raping me.

HEATHER EWART: Today the Ballarat Diocese admitted the scale of the problem.

PAUL BIRD: I have 116 claims. Substantiated: 107. ... Of those, 67 were by Ridsdale.

HEATHER EWART: The victims of Ridsdale and Best don't just blame their abusers, they blame the Church as well.

JUDY COURTIN, VICTIMS ADVOCATE: There are lies, misleading statements, a whole lot has been avoided. We've gotta remember that since 1996 - at least since 1996, when over 600 survivors have gone through these Church processes, the Church hasn't referred one of these at all to the police.

HEATHER EWART: Like other Catholic organisations that have fronted this inquiry, Ballarat says it followed Church protocol with tragic consequences.

PAUL BIRD: It was, he believed, the accepted opinion at the time that dismissal was not the first option, but that a person might be referred for treatment in the hope that they would correct their behaviour. It proved to be a terrible mistake and I accept that fully.

COMMITTEE MEMBER: With tragic consequences too.

PAUL BIRD: Tragic consequences. So a terrible mistake on behalf of the Bishop Mulkearns.

HEATHER EWART: The hearing was told the former bishop of Ballarat had had a stroke and his memory wasn't good enough to appear, but the committee didn't accept this as any sort of defence.

COMMITTEE MEMBER II: Was this wilful blindness, was it ignorance, was it naivety? He did he keep becoming moved on to innocent perishes where he continued to offend in the most heinous crimes?

PETER CONNORS, BISHOP, BALLARAT DIOCESE: Well, that's - that's what did happen. I think he got bad advice and he very naively accepted that advice.

HEATHER EWART: Neither the Ballarat Diocese nor the Salesians and the St. John of God order, who also fronted the inquiry today, conducted their own separate investigations.

FRANK MCGUIRE, VICTORIAN LABOR MP: Why didn't that happen, and why didn't you, as soon as the alarm bells were ringing, the complaints were made, why didn't you actually do something at that level because it does seem that it was endemic, if not systemic in your organisation?

GREG CHAMBERS, SALESIANS: Yes. I guess we relied upon a systemic approach ourselves. We relied upon the Catholic Church's Towards Healing processes. We relied upon the Catholic Church's rulings and deliberations. We relied upon the practices and protocols of the Archdiocese of Melbourne.

FRANK MCGUIRE: Given the results, did that system fail?

GREG CHAMBERS: I think our system of monitoring and supervision and bringing people to justice was very slow in taking effect and could be conceived as failing to some extent, yes.

FRANK MCGUIRE: What scrutiny and accountability mechanism did you have?

???: Well, you'd have to say, given the outcomes, that there weren't any.

HEATHER EWART: The scale of the offending behaviour that the order of St. John of God failed to detect beggars belief.

FRANK MCGUIRE: There were no more than 60 brothers in Victoria, but at that time there were complaints raised against 15 brothers. That's an incredibly high number: 15 out of no more than 60. Do you agree?



FRANK MCGUIRE: That's an extraordinarily high number.


FRANK MCGUIRE: So this goes to the critical point that people are concerned: was your order targeted by paedophiles?

ROSANNA HARRIS: There was no suggestion that there were rings of paedophiles or that there was collusion between brothers.

HEATHER EWART: There are only four St. John of God priests left in Victoria and two of these are Vietnamese. The order today admitted it hadn't done psychological profiling on them.

FRANK MCGUIRE: So you're now telling us that after all of this, you've still done nothing to stop this happening again?

UNKNOWN: There is a greater awareness.

FRANK MCGUIRE: Well what does that say to the community? Seriously.

HEATHER EWART: Today's responses by the Church at the Victorian inquiry are viewed as a precursor to the Federal Government's Royal Commission and victims' groups are far from happy with what they're hearing so far.

LEIGH SALES: Heather Ewart reporting. The lead to that story said there were 116 substantiated cases of abuse. As Bishop Bird made clear in the story, that number is correctly 107.