St Alipius Ballarat a holy house of horrors where boys treated like God’s garbage
This Ballarat boys’ school was supposed to be a house of God. But at one stage in 1971, the entire male staff abused children. One student described the horror: “We had a paedophile priest, we had a paedophile grade three teacher, a paedophile grade five teacher and a paedophile grade six teacher.”
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Inside this house of God, where young boys were schooled, lies a horrid maths equation that one should never have to add up.
At one stage in 1971, the entire male staff at Ballarat’s St Alipius boys school abused children aged between eight and 11.
The brothers, priest, headmaster and chaplain lurked the playground like spiders, creeping on young boys, weaving a paedophile web of evil. Only a lone female teacher can be subtracted from this sum.
PELL JAILED BUT ‘NO REST’ FOR VICTIMS
At the Royal Commission, two thirds of sexual abuse complaints related to St Alipius.
The latest strand to the notorious paedophile ring is Cardinal George Pell.
He up until recently was just part of the housemates of hell, living with one of Australia’s worst sex offenders Father Gerald Ridsdale.
But now he too is a convicted sex clergyman.
Ballarat was once the centre of Australia’s gold rush, but St Alipius was the church’s epicentre of child abuse — and also the place where Pell gave some of his first sermons.
Adopting his new moniker of Cardinal Sin, Pell saw, heard and spoke no evil to the activities of what the residents in the presbytery were doing.
No boys were abused at the hands of the Pell inside St Alipius, which closed in 1976, but much blame has been on him, prompting fierce denials over the years. Pell even described the knowledge of Ridsdale’s wicked ways as “a sad story” which “wasn’t of much interest to me”.
“I lived with him (Ridsdale) and there was not even a whisper,” he said in 1996.
And last year addressing his knowledge about the abuse of children Pell said:
“I can’t remember any such examples but my memory might be playing me false. I don’t have perfect recall.”
The roll call of abusers at St Alipius in 1971 reads like a melting pot of sin: Gerald Ridsdale, Brother Leo Fitzgerald, Brother Stephen Farrell, Brother Robert Best and Cardinal Pell. All of them now in jail except Brother Fitzgerald who died before any charges were laid.
The boys at the Ballarat school were treated like God’s garbage, with the brothers recycling the vulnerable kids among each other for their own disturbed sexual gratification.
Cries to parents and other Brothers about being mistreated were often dismissed. It was just hard to fathom that these horrors coming out a child’s mouth could be true.
“Are you sure you’re not making this up?”, one of the victims was told after revealing the story of his crotch being touched.
“Are you sure that’s where he touched you?”
The Christian Brothers took part in music and sporting events, took the children on camps, and showered them with TV and video games. There were swimming sports, where the boys would swim naked. This was deemed common knowledge and accepted as a “tradition”.
Some brothers would ask the boys to sit on their knees, where they were touched and fondled. Others lined up after class and were kissed goodbye.
“The general conviction was it was harmless enough,” Pell said of Br Fitzgerald kissing primary school boys.
Not doing your homework, saw thighs and private parts stroked, and pushed up against a wall where sex acts were simulated.
Some boys cried, others vomited later in the school toilet.
But rather than address the scandalous allegations and stop any more offending, the brothers were just moved from school to school broadening their landscape of heartache, or shifted into early retirement.
Protecting the church’s reputation was always priority one.
Private investigators and hush money was used as a veil of secrecy giving more power to the predators.
Ridsdale’s nephew, David, himself a victim, claimed he told Pell of being abused in 1993, only to be offered a bribe for his silence.
David Ridsdale said Pell told him: “I want to know what it will take to keep you quiet.” It was a conversation Pell would later deny occurred, describing it as “implausible”.
The same year, in his clerical garb, Pell walked with Ridsdale as the priest fronted court on child sex offences.
“He was a brother priest who made terrible mistakes and it was simply a gesture on my part,” Pell would explain.
Pell was hounded by the images and his lack of understanding as to why people were outraged with this public show of support.
“I realise that was a mistake … I’ve always been on the side of victims,” he said in later years.
“Priests regularly visit people in jails. He was at the absolute bottom of the pile.”
The beautiful building of St Alipius is filled with secrets. Some have cracked through the red bricks over the years. But the chapel and school, which were built by voluntary labour and financed from plate collection cash, holds a dark past still haunting victims, many who have taken their life.
“We had a paedophile priest, we had a paedophile grade three teacher, a paedophile grade five teacher and a paedophile grade six teacher. I was thrown into a ring of paedophiles at the age of 10,” said a former student.
When Ridsdale was charged in 1993 the unholy paedophile web was uncovered.
All the brothers were later charged. Bishop Ronald Mulkearns was removed from his post and constant rumours about Pell circled.
Father Adrian McInerney has been St Alipius parish priest since 2001 and says the church’s handling of sexual abuse has seen mass numbers decline over the last two decades.
“I am confident that some people in St Alipius parish in particular have walked away from the church because of the scourge of child sexual abuse in Ballarat,” he said.
The messy web at St Alipius will be tangled for many years to come as it remains ground zero for much despair.
Some numbers will just never add up.
THE HOUSE OF HORRORS
GERALD FRANCIS RIDSDALE
■ St Alipius chaplain and assistant priest
■ Based at the school from 1971-74
■ Taught grade 6
■ Has pleaded guilty to 161 charges relating to 65 victims
■ Admits he abused hundreds of children
■ Lived with George Pell at St Alipius in 1973
■ Was first charged in 1993 and has been in prison since 1994
■ Will spend a total of 33 years in jail for offending over 30 years
■ Likely to die behind bars
BROTHER GERALD FITZGERALD
■ St Alipius grade 3 teacher from 1962-75
■ Died in 1987 before any charges were laid
■ Was facing several allegations of misconduct including kissing boys and swimming naked with them
■ Cardinal Pell said of the kissing allegations: “The general conviction was it was harmless enough”
■ Royal commission said Fitzgerald’s appointment at the school “should not have occurred”, adding the system was “completely inadequate and unsatisfactory”
BROTHER ROBERT BEST
■ Taught at St Alipius from 1968-73
■ Retired from teaching in 1994
■ Jailed in 2011 for 14 years for sex assaults against 11 boys at St Alipius and other schools
■ Sentenced to a further 10 years and five months’ jail for indecent assault charges against 20 boys in 2017
BROTHER EDWARD DOWLAN
■ Taught grade 5 in 1971
■ Christian Brothers paid private investigator to track down his victims
■ Jailed in 1996 for six years for abusing 11 boys
■ Changed name to Ted Bales in 2011
■ Sentenced to a minimum of three years’ jail in 2015 after pleading guilty to abusing 20 boys between 1971 and 1986
■ Victims’ average age was 11
BROTHER STEPHEN FARRELL
■ Taught at St Alipius in 1973 and 1974
■ Convicted of nine counts of indecent assault in 1997 against two St Alipius boys and in 2013 for an attack on a student at another school, escaping with suspended sentences both times
■ Imprisoned for the first time last year after being sentenced to 18 months’ jail for sexually abusing two more St Alipius students
BISHOP RONALD MULKEARNS
■ Ballarat bishop who resigned in 1997 over St Alipius scandal
■ Accused of covering up sexual assaults and moving paedophiles to different schools to protect the Church
■ “To say I took no action is wrong. I sent them for counselling. I can’t help if they blame me for what happened,” he told the Herald Sun in 2013
■ Died in 2016
CARDINAL GEORGE PELL
■ Lived in St Alipius parish for several years from 1973
■ Was a roommate with Ridsdale in his first year
■ Supported Ridsdale at court when he was charged over abuse in 1993
■ Became Vatican treasurer, the third most powerful Catholic in the world, in 2014
■ Sentenced to jail in 2019 for sexually abusing two choirboys at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1996 and 1997, when he was Archbishop of Melbourne
■ Facing civil claims on other sexual abuse allegations involving further victims