Gerald Ridsdale jailed for another year for abusing 13-year-old boy as paedophile priest is told he will likely die in jail
A paedophile priest will ‘probably die’ behind bars after his prison sentence was extended for abusing another teenage boy.
Gerald Ridsdale, 89, earlier this year admitted abusing his 72nd victim and another year was added to his 39-year jail sentence at Ballarat Magistrates Court in Victoria on Tuesday.
Ridsdale, who has been in prison since 1994, abused children between 1961 and 1988 while he worked as a Roman Catholic priest in churches and schools across the state.
Gerald Ridsdale, 89, earlier this year admitted abusing his 72nd victim and another year was added to his 39-year jail sentence at Ballarat Magistrates Court in Victoria on Tuesday
He admitted indecently assaulting his latest victim, a 13-year-old boy, at a Catholic school in Horsham in 1987.
Ridsdale grabbed the boy’s arm and called him a ‘big strong lad’ before touching him inappropriately in the school’s counsellor’s office.
The victim, who is now in his 40s, ran out of the room after the assault took place, 9 News reported.
‘It was like I was a passenger and had no control,’ he said in a statement read to the court.
‘This led me down a path of destruction.’
Magistrate Hugh Radford said Ridsdale should have been looking out for the boy’s welfare and that he was supposed to be ‘a man of God’.
He handed Ridsdale a 12-month prison sentence, taking his maximum term to 40 years. He will be eligible for parole after a minimum of 33-and-a-half years, meaning he could be freed in April 2028, when he is in his late 90s.
‘You will probably die in custody,’ Mr Radford said.
During his 29 years as a priest, Ridsdale was shuffled between 16 church posts. In 2017, a government inquiry into child sex abuse found his frequent relocations were evidence of the church covering up his crimes.
The inquiry found that the late Australian Cardinal George Pell, who became the third-highest ranking cleric in the Vatican in 2014, knew Ridsdale had been sexually abusing children years before his arrest. Pell denied any previous knowledge of criminal allegations against Ridsdale.
The Pell and Ridsdale families had long been close in Victoria. Pell spent 13 months in prison before his own child abuse convictions were overturned on appeal in 2020. Pell died in January.