THE country’s most notorious paedophile priest has spoken out for the first time about his time in Swan Hill during the 1960s, revealing he had a mental breakdown and wanted to be relocated.
Gerald Ridsdale gave evidence to the Royal Commission into Institutionalised Responses to Child Sexual Abuse this week, via video-link from jail, regarding how much the Catholic Church knew about his child sex offences.
The now defrocked priest — convicted for sexual offences against 54 victims between the 1960s and 1980s — spent three years as an assistant priest in Swan Hill between 1966 and 1969, where he abused a number of children.
The counsel assisting the inquiry, Gail Furness SC, asked Ridsdale about an interview he gave in 1994 in which he said he had suffered a “breakdown” while serving in Swan Hill, complaining to the local parish priest of being overworked and telling him, “I just have to get out of here.”
Ms Furness enquired whether his continued offending in Swan Hill contributed to the breakdown, after he admitted to being worried he would lose his priesthood if the offences came to the light.
“No, the breakdown, as far as I remember now, was doing the normal parish work and there was, I think, some special project, like a parish mission or something that was going on, and I was given the responsibility for that as well,” Ridsdale responded.
“I can’t remember what that was now, but I know that I had too much on my plate.”
For more on this story, pick up a copy of Friday’s Guardian (May 29).
