Ballarat’s Children: Why were so many pedophile priests active in the Victorian diocese

Why Ballarat? Why were so many pedophile priests active in the Victorian diocese.

The first episode of Ballarat’s Children details a criminal conspiracy between Victoria Police and the Catholic Church in 1972. The prolific pedophile priest Monsignor Day avoided charges, victims were denied justice and the detective who sought to bring Day to account, Denis Ryan, had his career roughly terminated.

It is my strong view that this incident known now as the Mildura Conspiracy led to a proliferation of clerical abuse within the Ballarat diocese. Offending priests learned they could act with impunity and Bishop Ronald Mulkearns understood he was required to do no more than move offending priests from parish to parish when complaints grew too loud.

In some considerable way, this answers the question, why Ballarat?

Still, we are left to ponder why so many pedophile priests were active in that particular diocese and not in others like, for example, the adjoining Sandhurst diocese.

In a submission to the Victorian Parliamentary Inquiry into Child Abuse by Religious and Other Organisations, Professor of Intercultural Studies at RMIT, Des Cahill, reported a study he had conducted into the seminary. Cahill found that, of the 378 priests who graduated at Corpus Christi College between 1940 and 1966, 14 had gone on to be convicted of child sex offences while there was overwhelming evidence that four more offending priests who counted Corpus Christi as their alma mater who died before they could be charged.

That’s almost one in 20 or around 40 times the community average for this type of offending. Many of these priests ended up practising in the Ballarat Diocese where they set upon children without restraint in what amounted to a pedophile ring.

Yet in other seminaries around Australia there are few and often no recorded instances of child sex offending among their graduates.

There is a legitimate question that goes beyond the usual nature and nurture dilemma: “Did men with a predilection for child sex offending join the priesthood knowing they could pursue their obscene interests without fear of consequence or did men in training for the priesthood at Corpus Christi become pedophiles by the cultural influences at play within the seminary?

Corpus Christi was a Jesuit run seminary. It was built in 1923 in Werribee and John Day, the monster of Mildura, graduated from there in 1927. Other pedophile priests include the notorious Gerald Ridsdale and Bob Claffey who on October 4 was sentenced to 18 years in prison after pleading guilty to a string of child sexual assault charges.

In 1998 Claffey admitted indecently assaulting two boys when offering “spiritual comfort” after their sister died in a road accident. On that occasion he was placed on a good behaviour bond.

The stories of what took place in the early days are vague and generalised. Sport was a big part of a trainee priest’s life at Corpus Christi and there is talk of a sort of Sparta in Werribee where young trainee priests played on the fields and afterwards showered and wandered around naked together.

There is one story that helps us understand the forces at work within Corpus Christi and it is the dismal story of Paul David Ryan. References to him take the unusual step of providing his name in full so as to distinguish him from other clerics bearing the same first and surname.

Ryan offended against adolescent boys both here in and in the United States. In 2006, Ryan received an 18 month jail sentence after pleading guilty to three counts of indecent assault.

At the age of 19, Paul David Ryan attended St Francis Xavier’s Seminary in Adelaide but was asked to leave half way through his third year of study and training. In his evidence to the Royal Commission Ryan claimed he was given no reason for his expulsion but what is known is there were grave concerns within the seminary about his behaviour and the company he kept.

Ryan returned to Mildura and worked as a teaching assistant at St Joseph’s College in Mildura, the scene of many of the depravities perpetrated by John Day and Gerald Ridsdale.

Within a year he was invited to resume his studies and continue as a trainee priest at Corpus Christi, sponsored by the Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns.

It is accepted that Ryan was sexually active as a trainee priest and gave evidence he had sexual encounters with other trainees at Corpus Christi. How this became known to those in senior positions within the seminary is unclear but it would seem that Ryan’s sexuality became a concern to his sponsor, Bishop Mulkearns.

Nevertheless Ryan was allowed to graduate and left to work in Ballarat East as a deacon in the St Columba’s parish. Within weeks of his arrival a complaint was made of an inappropriate relationship with a young male parishioner. Ryan gave evidence indicating the believed the young male to be 18 years of age but this, too, is unclear.

Ryan returned to the seminary and was ordained at St Patrick’s Cathedral in 1976. He remained a priest until his laicisation some two decades later. His sexual predilection for adolescent males was known to Mulkearns.

Mulkearns regarded the young priest with embarrassment and sent him off to the US for counselling. The Bishop remained in close correspondence with Ryan as did other senior members of the diocese.

Despite grave fears of Ryan’s unsuitability as a priest, he was given parish appointments within the diocese on his return from the US at Terang, near Warrnambool and Penshurst 165 kilometres west of Ballarat where he was the parish priest without any supervision and where he offended against adolescent men.

After complaints were made to Mulkearns, he moved Ryan on to Ararat where he ran a youth group within the church and offended yet again.

Throughout this entire period, Ryan was routinely sent to the US for further counselling. He undertook study and performed parish duties in Ohio, Virginia and Maryland. There is a string of victims in Virginia he left behind.

Darker still was Ryan’s long association with his “mentor’’, Fr Ronald Pickering who he met at Corpus Christi when Pickering was the parish priest at Corpus Christi’s new location in Mount Waverley. Ryan often stayed with Pickering and later when Pickering was moved to Gardenvale, Ryan spent many months with the older priest where by Ryan’s admission, adolescent boys were regular visitors to the presbytery.

In the grim and often unfortunate vernacular of police, Pickering was known as a ‘two-a-day man’. When complaints of his abuse were first made to police in 1993, Pickering fled the country and went to England. Victoria Police has admitted Pickering was not pursued as detectives believed force command would not approve their travel to England. Having avoided justice for 16 years, Pickering died in England in 2009.

While the police may not have bothered to travel to see him, Ryan did. Ryan maintains he was unaware of Pickering’s prolific offending and merely visited him in England as old friends might.

I have no sympathy for Ryan but he maintains that he was a person who “had no insight” about his sexuality when he was at Corpus Christi and in hindsight believes had he not trained for the priesthood where he claims his psychosexual development froze, he would have entered into normal sexual relationships with consenting adults.

What we can say is the Adelaide seminary regarded Ryan as unsuitable for the priesthood but Corpus Christi in Melbourne did not despite real concerns about his behaviour.

Clearly he was an inappropriate person to minister to young people. He believes he should have been “kicked out’’ of the priesthood within a year of his ordination. Of course he could have chosen to resign at any time.

What is also clear is his bishop, Ronald Mulkearns covered for Ryan, knowing he was a profound risk to children and put Ryan in unsupervised positions of authority and access where Ryan went onto commit serious criminal offences.

His period at Corpus Christi should have been abruptly curtailed and Ryan sent packing. Many victims would have been spared.

Correction: In a piece entitled, “Cops shielded Catholic Monster” (17 October, 2016) former Chief Commissioner Mick Miller recalled a conversation with another senior police officer incorrectly named as Deputy Commissioner Bill Crowley. The policeman who spoke to Miller was Assistant Commissioner Jack Carmichael. Crowley was a participant in what is known as the Mildura Conspiracy but Carmichael was the man who issued the warning to Miller. Miller identifies Carmichael in his interview on the podcast. The error was made by the journalist, Peter Hoysted.