Sex Abuse Victim Wants Inquiry
Originally published by AAP, June 1, 2002
The man at the centre of allegations linking Sydney Catholic Archbishop George Pell to a child abuse cover-up has called for a Royal Commission into child sex abuse in the church.
David Ridsdale, whose uncle and former priest Gerald Ridsdale is serving an 18-year sentence for abusing 21 children including himself, said the catholic church has for many years put its head in the sand.
"It needs to be taken off the church. It's proved itself incapable of running an internal investigation and if that requires a Royal Commission, then so be it," Ridsdale said in London where he now lives.
Ridsdale disputed Pell's assertion that he did not know the extent of his uncle's activities.
Pell has emphatically denied he tried to silence victims of abuse, including Ridsdale.
"I have heard enough anecdotal evidence to know that George Pell knows a hell of a lot more than he is letting on," Ridsdale said.
"He has been linked to knowledge of 47 cases of abuse," he said, referring to research by victims support group Broken Rites.
"Pell is more interested in power, nice pretty clothes and having smelly things around him. He's not the sort of person I'd like to give me spiritual guidance.
"I don't believe he's a trustworthy person. He's not a priest, he's a politician.
"He's a very imposing man, he's extremely arrogant and a typical bully, and I have first hand experience."
Ridsdale said catholics in Australia deserved a leader they could trust and called for Pell to stand down.
Gerald Ridsdale was the priest at St Alipius' Boys School in Ballarat and shared a presbytery with Pell who was also head of catholic education in the region in the 1970s.
After suffering abuse at the hands of his uncle, Ridsdale went to Pell for counselling but was ignored.
"Pell treated me like a piece of s***. My uncle treated me a lot worse than a piece of s***," Ridsdale said.
Ridsdale claimed Pell tried to hush him up and asked him "what would it take to keep you quiet?".
At a press conference earlier this week, Pell said "the allegations that I attempted to silence anyone are totally unfounded and untrue".
Ridsdale, however, claimed that silence and the practice of transferring suspect priests and Christian brothers to other parishes and schools exacerbated the problem.
"This sort of abuse occurs because the people in charge, and so the rest of society, put their heads in the sand," he said.
"They didn't want it to come out because it could harm the church. They put the institution before the people.
"Bishop Connors recommended a psychological report on my uncle in 1966, the year I was born.
"If they acted on it, I wouldn't have been abused. He just got moved to another parish."
Ridsdale also criticised Prime Minister John Howard's support for Pell.
"The fact the prime minister has come out to verbally agree with the man without finding out the facts proves it's a political process," he said.
