Loading Church leaders including former bishop of Ballarat Ronald Mulkearns moved Ridsdale on from a number of south-west Victorian parishes in a bid to protect the church’s reputation. In a searing pre-trial judgment, Supreme Court judge Michael McDonald last week ruled that the victim could sue the institution itself rather than individual clergy. The judgment exposed the church's hardline legal tactics, including a refusal to acknowledge Bishop Mulkearns knew Ridsdale was a repeat offender. Justice McDonald said it could be argued that the church's relationship with Ridsdale was like that of a dangerous dog and its owner.

“The presence of Ridsdale is analogous to the presence of a dangerous guard dog left on premises by an occupier,” the judge said. Outspoken priest and victims' advocate Father Kevin Dillon, who was ordained by Bishop Mulkearns 50 years ago on Saturday, said the tactics were “gobsmacking” given the widespread criticism of the Catholic Church during the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse over its use of such strategies. “Why in the world are people still being put through this sort of legal wringer?" Father Dillon asked. "These appallingly wounded people belong to us. There is every evidence that people who should have known better let it continue, there is no way in which you can deny that." Though the case is still to go to a trial expected to start in August, lawyers say the judgment is significant. It is believed to be the first decision in Victoria to solidify the 2018 legislation that revoked the Ellis defence, which once prevented victims from suing the church. Father Gerald Ridsdale outside of court. Credit:Geoff Ampt

Plaintiff lawyer Grace Wilson, of Rightside Legal, described the difference between the church's public rhetoric and the way it actually treats abuse survivors in litigation as "staggering”. Loading In the Ridsdale case, the church’s QC, Dr Ian Freckelton, and its solicitors from the firm Colin Biggers & Paisley, denied church knowledge of Ridsdale’s repeat offending before he went to Mortlake in the early 1980s, save for a “one-off” incident at Inglewood in 1975. The church’s representatives from its Truth, Justice and Healing Committee acknowledged during the royal commission that Bishop Mulkearns was “inexcusably wrong” in appointing Ridsdale to other parishes after Inglewood. Former Ballarat bishop James O’Collins was also warned about Ridsdale's offending in 1963 after Ridsdale admitted to molesting a boy in North Ballarat, information the church admitted in the royal commission.

In the current case, Justice McDonald questioned the inconsistencies and invited the victim and the church to file submissions on whether legal obligations had been breached. Another of Ridsdale's victims said the church had learnt nothing from the royal commission. “This is proof,” he said. "People have been saying for years they are adversarial. They have not changed." The Diocese of Ballarat has been contacted for comment. Money paid out by institutions in civil suits since the royal commission has reached into the millions.