Abuse inquiry: Ex-Victorian cop Denis Ryan vindicated after pursuit of pedophile priest John Day

Former policeman Denis Ryan has finally been vindicated for his pursuit of pedophile priest, Monsignor John Day.

Forty-three years is a long time to wait for vindication. For former Victoria Police detective, Denis Ryan it came yesterday in Melbourne at the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

His evidence, that a group of senior Victorian police officers conspired to protect a paedophile priest, Monsignor John Day and stymied an investigation Ryan had commenced into Day’s outrageous behaviour, was finally accepted as fact.

Monsignor John Day.

Courtroom 3 in the Victorian County Court resounded with applause as Denis Ryan stepped down from the witness box. The 43-year wait was almost at an end. It would come an hour later when former Victoria Police Chief Commissioner, Sinclair “Mick’’ Miller took the stand and stated his belief that his predecessor, Reg Jackson, was the architect of a criminal conspiracy that cost Ryan his job and allowed Day to walk away from his crimes against children.

I’ve known Denis for just five of those 43 years. He and I wrote the book, Unholy Trinity, which told this unhappy story. The book was a modest seller but it was widely read in the upper echelons of current and former Victorian Police officers. It had also come to the attention of the Royal Commission who accepted the book as a submission in 2014.

Ryan had first come in contact with Day in Melbourne’s red light district in St Kilda when he discovered the priest drunk and semi-naked in the company of two prostitutes in 1956. Ryan, a devout Catholic, could not understand why Day was not charged on that occasion. Ryan’s senior Sergeant, a former Changi veteran, patiently explained to the uniformed rookie that a priest would not be charged with any offence, short of murder in Victoria.

A group of senior police existed who would thwart any attempts to charge a priest, Ryan was told.

Six years later, Ryan was asked to join this group’s ranks. Ryan was approached by a senior Detective, Fred Russell, who told Ryan the group took their orders “from the Cathedral” and it was their job to ensure priests did not come to grief in the courts. Russell would go on to become a Chief Superintendent and head of the CIB.

Ryan rejected the approach. He would only become aware of the nature and extent of its activities when he sought to prosecute Day in Mildura in 1971.

In the often dark vernacular of police, this group was known as “the Catholic Mafia”.

Ryan diligently and painstakingly interviewed Day’s victims one by one. He took statements that alleged Day had sexually assaulted boys and girls. Rape, buggery, acts of gross indecency. Ryan had lined up the evidence against Day. He had the vicious priest on toast.

Enter the Catholic Mafia. Chief Superintendents, Assistant Commissioners, special investigators, “Toe-cutters” and the Chief Commissioner, Reg Jackson, himself overseeing a criminal conspiracy that forced Ryan from his job and quietly shelved the evidence Ryan had gathered against Day.

Why does this matter now?

It matters because had Day been prosecuted in 1972 as he should have been, it would have brought forward the scandal of clerical paedophilia, not just in the Ballarat Diocese but across Australia by 20 years.

Instead it would take the first conviction of the notorious paedophile priest, Gerard Ridsdale, in 1993 before the flood gates opened and the litany of abuse emerged.

Twenty more years of offending, 20 more years of victims’ pain and despair.

Ryan’s frustration at being forced out of the job he loved was not his principal concern. He knew that the failure to prosecute Day necessarily led to a mounting toll of victims. These thoughts preoccupied him and gnawed at his soul for 43 years.

How does Denis Ryan feel now? “Relieved,” he told me an hour after leaving the Royal Commission. Later last night after we had a few cold ones, clinked glasses and reflected, Denis sat with a hard-earned and deep-seated sense of satisfaction.

In darker times when we were writing the book, I’d try and lighten up the mood by offering Denis the fantasy that one day we’d get down to Day’s grave in Warrnambool, get to work with picks and shovels and go to town. Cromwell the bastard.

None of that silliness is necessary anymore. For Denis, the demons of anxiety and panic have been sent packing.

Most importantly, the world now knows who Day was. It is a matter of record that Monsignor John Day was a child rapist, a fraud, a thief, a liar and an abject, wanton criminal.

The system works. It’s just that sometimes it takes 43 years to get it right.