George Pell controversy: pursuit of Cardinal hindering royal commission

This week, Andrew Bolt wrote a column describing Cardinal George Pell as the victim of a witch hunt. Andrew would know he and I rarely agree but in this case, we are of like mind.

I must say there is one point of disagreement. In his article, he wrote: “It has also asked Pell to give evidence three times — more than any other witness — in what is now becoming a punishment by process.”

This is not right. The Anglican Archbishop of Brisbane, Phillip Aspinall has given evidence to the Royal Commission on four occasions, his most recent stint in the witness box concluding less than a fortnight ago. The Royal Commission is simply doing what it is charged to do.

It is outside the Commission’s jurisdiction where there are grave concerns.

I would argue that it is more of a lynch mob than a witch hunt but ultimately it doesn’t matter what opinions Bolt, myself or anyone else hold for that matter. Tim Minchin wrote and performed a song urging Pell in rather spectacularly obnoxious fashion to return to Australia and give evidence. I understand the anger of victims but I am struggling to see how casual observers like Minchin are contributing anything positive to the issue. Opinion has no place. Establishing facts and building evidence are all that count.

Pell’s evidence by video link from Rome will cover two separate case studies established by the Royal Commission. Case study 35 is dealing with “the response from the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne to allegations of child sex abuse” while Case Study 28 has been examining “the response of the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat and of other Catholic Church authorities in Ballarat to allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy or religious, and the response of Victoria Police to allegations of child sexual abuse against clergy or religious which took place within the Catholic Diocese of Ballarat.”

Why did the Ballarat Diocese become a haven for paedophile priests? What we have learned from the Royal Commission’s three years of public hearings is when a pedophile’s activities became known, the first response from senior figures within an institution, religious or otherwise, was to protect the institution’s reputation and the rights of the victim fell a long way back second, if they were acknowledged at all.

The Catholic Church was no exception and indeed it could be argued it led the field in this regard. The response was to move a paedophile on to new territory and on to a new group of unsuspecting children. The net effect was that one victim became two, became five, became ten and so on.

But in the Ballarat Diocese, there was another force at play, specifically, the Victoria Police Force.

The Royal Commission’s inquiries are focusing on the responses of the Ballarat Diocese in relation to four priests -- Monsignor John Day, Gerald Ridsdale, Paul David Ryan and another priest identified by the pseudonym BPB as he is subject to an ongoing police investigation.

Day was a monster, an active paedophile for 50 years, a fraud, a thief and a sociopath. His resumè shows appointments in Horsham, Apollo Bay, Ballarat East, Beech Forest and Ararat. He was the parish priest at Mildura for 14 years.

I’ve studied Day and his crimes at length, as co-author of Unholy Trinity, a book detailing Day’s paedophilia and the disgraceful business of police collusion with the Church that would see Day walk away and leave my co-author, Victoria Police detective Denis Ryan, distraught and out of a job for pursuing him.

The Victoria Police Force has formally acknowledged its failures in that instance and according to evidence given to the Commission by former VicPol Chief Commissioner, Mick Miller, the corruption went all the way to his predecessor, Reg Jackson’s office. Indeed Miller described former Chief Commissioner Jackson as the architect of the conspiracy. Denis Ryan will receive a formal apology from VicPol in the coming months.

As a police officer, Denis Ryan was told by his superiors that, short of murder, no Catholic cleric would be charged with any offence in Victoria and that remained the rule from at least the 1950s through to at least the 1970s.

When Day’s case blew up in 1972 and Ryan was forced out of the job he loved, the then Bishop of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns was visited by two senior police officers who informed him of advice from the Victorian Solicitor-General that no action would be taken in relation to Day despite the fact he had “misconducted himself” -- an appalling euphemism if ever there was one -- but that Day should be removed from Mildura and placed in a small parish as far away from Mildura as possible.

That is precisely what happened. Day was sent overseas until the storm blew over and in 1973 Mulkearns appointed Day the parish priest in Timboon, a tiny parish east of Warrnambool in Victoria’s south west and where the old bastard, then in his seventies, offended again. Day died unpunished and unrepentant in 1978.

I ask people to reflect on that. The example of Day empowered paedophile priests in Ballarat and elsewhere in Victoria in the belief there would be no legal consequences for their crimes and those responsible for shuffling them from parish to parish understood they could do so with impunity as well.

Cardinal Pell had absolutely nothing to do with Day or had any say in Day’s parish appointments. That’s not an opinion. That’s a fact.

Eight members of the clergy from the Ballarat Diocese have given evidence to the Commission to this point. Most were, at one time or another, members of the Diocesan Committee of Consultors, a group that would assemble in Ballarat with Bishop Mulkearns and discuss matters relating to church property and the appointment of priests to parishes or other clerical work.

Pell could be of assistance to the Royal Commission in relation to Ridsdale. Pell was a consultor in Ballarat in the late 1970s to the early 1980s.

What did the Consultors know of the offending? What had Mulkearns told them? What was discussed at these meetings and what steps, if any, were taken to protect children?

Having said that, evidence provided to the Commission reveals Mulkearns and a number of senior priests knew of Ridsdale’s offending well before Pell became a consultor. In fact, Ridsdale was pulled up in the 1960s by Mulkearns’ predecessor, Bishop James O’Collins after receiving a complaint of Ridsdale sexually assaulting a child.

One must also understand the arcane nature of the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy. A diocese is a geographical area under a bishop’s control. The diocesan bishop holds almost absolute administrative power. For example, the Bishop of Ballarat does not answer to the Archbishop in Melbourne or in Sydney. Each diocese is a distinct entity answerable only to Rome but in reality, a bishop’s authority goes virtually unchallenged.

Obviously, decisions on parish appointments and the movement of priests within the diocese was the responsibility of the bishop. The buck, in this case, stopped with Bishop Mulkearns.

Ridsdale was always being moved on. He did the circuit of the Diocese -- Mildura, Ballarat, Warrnambool, Horsham, Edenhope, Mortlake, Swan Hill, Inglewood and Apollo Bay. He was sent to Sydney and then to the US. He raped kids wherever he went. When asked about the level of his offending by his sister, Ridsdale openly acknowledged his victims numbered in the “hundreds.”

These are serious matters and they must be examined in an environment where the mob is not clamouring at the door. The community at large has a responsibility to prevent the Royal Commission appearing like a circus.

With the greatest respect to survivors of clerical child sex abuse, their best hope of finding the truth lies in allowing the Royal Commission to get on with its work and let the chips fall where they may.