Louise Milligan on the monster priest no one will grieve
Louise Milligan is the author of Cardinal, which delved deeply into the issue of child abuse by priests of the Catholic Church, and the subsequent cover-ups. She has written a great deal on the Australia’s most notorious paedophile, Gerald Ridsdale, the former priest convicted of abusing 70 children, who died last week.
I don’t think that there should be a eulogy for Gerald Ridsdale. I think there should be a eulogy for the childhoods of so many little kids that were destroyed by him, the kids who deserved better. They were the ones who were let down so brutally, by “men of God”, who they looked up to and who they thought were people who would always do the right thing by them, and instead they did the worst thing by them. Worse than we can even imagine. The children are the ones we truly need to be thinking of right now.
Ridsdale was convicted in relation to abusing more than 70 kids, but it’s conservatively estimated that his victims run into the hundreds because he had 16 different priestly appointments at parishes over 29 years, and it was an average of 1.8 years in each parish. Obviously, they are just the ones that came to light. His abusing trajectory goes right back to when he was in the seminary in the 1950s, where he helps on camps for underprivileged children. When he was a trainee priest, he abused at least one boy and the chances are he abused more because wherever he went, he was just absolutely feral.
The principal at the local school, who was a nun, estimated he abused every single boy in a class. In that one diocese there were so many other abusive priests and brothers. I remember about the time of the royal commission, there was a class photo of boys at a school where Ridsdale was based for a time with a ring of paedophile Christian Brothers, and there were 13 kids from that class photo who were dead. So many kids who were victims of Ridsdale and those other men during those years went on to suicide, drank themselves to death, became drug addicts, died before their time.
Every time authorities were about to catch up with him, he was simply moved. I mean, in one parish he actually left in the middle of the night because the cops told him that they were investigating. The bishop again sent him for counselling, but then he was appointed to another parish. As the royal commission said, this showed “extraordinary disregard” for the children. The bishop had been approached by the police, Ridsdale has fled in the middle of the night, and the bishop just bunged him into another parish.
It was just swept under the carpet to protect the church.
Fathers and mothers and teachers warned the church hierarchy, but they were rebuffed, and they were sent away, and they were dismissed. People were writing to the bishop, but nothing was done to stop it.
I spoke to an official in the Catholic Church who said a bishop asked Pope John Paul what he should do about this Ridsdale situation, and that Pope John Paul turned his back on him and walked away.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/louise-m...5lfp4.html
Louise Milligan is the author of Cardinal, which delved deeply into the issue of child abuse by priests of the Catholic Church, and the subsequent cover-ups. She has written a great deal on the Australia’s most notorious paedophile, Gerald Ridsdale, the former priest convicted of abusing 70 children, who died last week.
I don’t think that there should be a eulogy for Gerald Ridsdale. I think there should be a eulogy for the childhoods of so many little kids that were destroyed by him, the kids who deserved better. They were the ones who were let down so brutally, by “men of God”, who they looked up to and who they thought were people who would always do the right thing by them, and instead they did the worst thing by them. Worse than we can even imagine. The children are the ones we truly need to be thinking of right now.
Ridsdale was convicted in relation to abusing more than 70 kids, but it’s conservatively estimated that his victims run into the hundreds because he had 16 different priestly appointments at parishes over 29 years, and it was an average of 1.8 years in each parish. Obviously, they are just the ones that came to light. His abusing trajectory goes right back to when he was in the seminary in the 1950s, where he helps on camps for underprivileged children. When he was a trainee priest, he abused at least one boy and the chances are he abused more because wherever he went, he was just absolutely feral.
The principal at the local school, who was a nun, estimated he abused every single boy in a class. In that one diocese there were so many other abusive priests and brothers. I remember about the time of the royal commission, there was a class photo of boys at a school where Ridsdale was based for a time with a ring of paedophile Christian Brothers, and there were 13 kids from that class photo who were dead. So many kids who were victims of Ridsdale and those other men during those years went on to suicide, drank themselves to death, became drug addicts, died before their time.
Every time authorities were about to catch up with him, he was simply moved. I mean, in one parish he actually left in the middle of the night because the cops told him that they were investigating. The bishop again sent him for counselling, but then he was appointed to another parish. As the royal commission said, this showed “extraordinary disregard” for the children. The bishop had been approached by the police, Ridsdale has fled in the middle of the night, and the bishop just bunged him into another parish.
It was just swept under the carpet to protect the church.
Fathers and mothers and teachers warned the church hierarchy, but they were rebuffed, and they were sent away, and they were dismissed. People were writing to the bishop, but nothing was done to stop it.
I spoke to an official in the Catholic Church who said a bishop asked Pope John Paul what he should do about this Ridsdale situation, and that Pope John Paul turned his back on him and walked away.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/louise-m...5lfp4.html
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
