Gerald Ridsdale

Gerald Francis Ridsdale (born 20 May 1934) is an Australian laicised Catholic priest and sex offender.

The offences occurred from the 1960s to the 1980s while Ridsdale worked as a school chaplain at St Alipius Primary School, a boys' boarding school in the Victorian regional city of Ballarat.

The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse found that senior figures in the church, including Cardinal George Pell, knew about Ridsdale's prolific sexual abuse of children but protected him.

He pleaded guilty to 29 counts (27 of indecent assault, one count of buggery and one count of carnal knowledge of a girl under the age of 16) committed between 1960 and 1980 and asked for a further 27 counts to be taken into consideration at sentencing.

Ridsdale was ordained at St Patrick's Cathedral, Ballarat, in 1961.

The first complaint about his behaviour towards children was received by the church that same year.

Ridsdale held 16 different appointments over a period of 29 years as a priest, with an average of 1.8 years per appointment.

Ridsdale was born at St Arnaud in central Victoria and grew up in Ballarat.

He pleaded guilty to 46 charges of abusing 20 boys and one girl between 1961 and 1982.

He was sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment with a minimum of 15 years, to be served cumulatively with the previous sentence.

These offences were committed between 1961 and 1988 in western Victoria and were also expected to extend his release date further into the future.

Ridsdale worked at St Alipius Primary School, Ballarat, a boys' boarding school, from 1971, where he was a chaplain.

He also worked in Apollo Bay in 1972–73.

In 1976 he was moved to Edenhope.

In 1980 he was moved to the National Pastoral Institute in Elsternwick in Melbourne.

In 1981 he was moved to Mortlake and at the end of 1982 he was transferred to Sydney.

In 1986 he was moved to Horsham, where two people made complaints about him in 1988.

In 1990 he was sent to New Mexico "for treatment".

He returned to Australia after nine months and was appointed chaplain at St John of God Hospital in Richmond, New South Wales, on the northwestern outskirts of Sydney.

While he was working at the hospital, a victim phoned Victoria Police in November 1992, leading to Ridsdale's arrest in February 1993.

He was convicted between 1993 and 2017 of a large number of child sexual abuse and indecent assault charges against 65 children aged as young as four years.

In May 1993, Ridsdale was charged on summons in the Melbourne Magistrates Court with 30 counts of indecent assault against 9 boys aged between 12 and 16 between 1974 and 1980.

George Pell, then an auxilary bishop of Melbourne, testified before the 1993 hearing that he and Ridsdale had shared a clergy house together while Pell was an assistant priest at St Alipius' Church with Ridsdale in the 1970s.

Pell denied knowing about any of Ridsdale's abuse.

Ridsdale pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months' jail with a non-parole period of three months.

At his 1994 trial it was said that he had been sent to a psychologist as early as 1971, though the bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Ballarat, Ronald Mulkearns, said he had no idea of Ridsdale's actions until 1975, when the priest was in Inglewood.

One parent said Ridsdale had molested their son, but they were reluctant to let the boy be questioned by police, and the priest had moved.

When a police officer involved with the case spoke to Mulkearns, the latter promised to handle Ridsdale but moved him on instead.

Operation Arcadia, a three-month police investigation into what Mulkearns knew about Ridsdale, concluded that he knew about Ridsdale's crimes earlier than he admitted.

Ridsdale was moved repeatedly.

A few weeks later, in 1994, Ridsdale was again put on trial.

In 2006, he pleaded guilty to 35 charges relating to indecent assault against 10 boys between 1970 and 1987 in Bacchus Marsh, Ballarat, Warrnambool, Edenhope, Horsham and Mortlake.

He was sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment with a minimum of seven years, three years of which was ordered to be served concurrently (the remainder of the previous sentence).

A few of his victims criticised the leniency of the sentence.

It was alleged in 2013 that Ridsdale sexually abused boys as early as 1955, when he was aged 21.

In 2013, weeks before Ridsdale was eligible for parole, Ridsdale was charged with an additional 84 offences against 14 victims committed between 1961 and 1981.

After pleading guilty to the above charges, including raping and abusing children as young as four, Ridsdale was sentenced to eight years in prison in April 2014, with the judge ordering he be eligible for parole in April 2019.

These charges brought the number of Ridsdale's confirmed victims to 54.

On 13 April 2017, Ridsdale pleaded guilty to a further 20 offences against 10 boys and a girl.

On 15 August 2017, Ridsdale pleaded guilty to 23 charges, including two counts of rape and one of buggery, for abusing 12 children, 11 boys and 1 girl aged 6 to 13, between 1962 and 1988 in Ballarat and the surrounding area.