Unholy Trinity

by Denis Ryan

  Father Day could pull off this gross feat of hypocrisy with ease, in such a way that the congregation, including myself, would remain blissfully ignorant for many years. He’d been doing it since he’d arrived in Mildura in 1956. He’d been doing it all over western Victoria under the nose of the Ballarat diocese for decades longer.

  Children were bowed into silence and dread; parents were rendered servile by the power that Day, and his henchmen, Barritt and Kearney, wielded in their community.

  I knew Day was a dedicated pervert. The vision of him in St Kilda stayed with me, returning every time he harangued the congregation from the pulpit, either demanding money or wagging a cautionary finger about the decline of morality. I’d switch off during his sermonic rants, turning my mind to the preceding day’s cricket and the runs I did or didn’t make. I couldn’t be bothered listening to him.

  4

  CONFESSIONS

  See everything, overlook a great deal, correct a little.

  POPE JOHN XXIII, 1881–1963

  Often three or four priests lived at the presbytery at Mildura under Day. They would come and go, filling in at parishes within the district when called upon. There was Father Laurie Halloran, Father Leslie Sheahan, Father Daniel Arundell. And there was a tall, solidly built, gregarious priest by the name of Father Gerald Ridsdale. He was based at Mildura from June 1964 to October 1966.

  I don’t remember much about him. He was known to turn up at parishioners’ homes with a chop in a plastic bag around meal times. He’d be welcomed into their homes and his chop cooked up with all the trimmings.

  Ridsdale is regarded as one of the most prolific paedophiles the world has ever seen. He has admitted to raping children on ‘hundreds’ of occasions. He has been convicted of seventy-five separate counts of indecent assault, nine counts of buggery and numerous counts of gross indecency.

  He is in the eighteenth year of a prison sentence and is due for parole in 2013, when he will be 79 years of age.

  During his first court appearance in 1993, Ridsdale entered court with Cardinal—then Bishop—George Pell at his side. Ridsdale and Pell had known each other when they were priests in the Ballarat diocese. Ridsdale’s victims in court were left to wonder why Pell was there to offer his old priestly mate some moral support but had nothing to say to them.

  There is no doubt in my mind that Day, like Ridsdale, subjected hundreds of children to rape and sexual assaults. But, unlike Ridsdale, Day would never have his moment of reckoning. Not on this earth at any rate. Both were protected by the bishops of Ballarat—first James O’Collins, then Ronald Mulkearns. When the stories of Day’s and Ridsdale’s crimes against children grew too loud to ignore, these bishops transferred the priests to other parishes and other communities.

  These two predatory priests left thousands of shattered lives across western Victoria. Yet Day progressed through the Church because he was seen as one of its builders. Ridsdale was an embarrassment, a nobody. Day, however, was valued.

  Unlike Ridsdale, who never rose higher than a simple priest in the Catholic Church, Day was feted by the Roman Catholic Church and promoted through the ranks—a priest, then a parish priest in Ararat, Horsham, Beech Forest and Apollo Bay. Each time, when the whispers grew too loud for Bishop O’Collins’s liking, Ridsdale had been sent packing. But Day was not exiled. Instead he was promoted first to dean and then, in 1967, to monsignor, essentially second in charge to the bishop himself. The next step for Day was a bishop’s mitre.

  I’d been taking the sacrament of penance or confession since I was 10 years old. It is part of the ritual of being a Roman Catholic. Once a month I would sit in the darkened confessional and wait for the priest to pull the shutter and hear me give an account of my mortal sins over the previous month.

  ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned . . .’

  Mortal sins are shaped by the Ten Commandments—a breach of any of the ten would see a Roman Catholic peering through a screen, seeking absolution from a more or less anonymous priest. The serious crimes of murder and theft are included in the Ten Commandments. I had nothing to confess in that respect. There were other sins of no great moment. I might have played cricket instead of going to mass or used the odd profanity in the course of my work, and these would find me genuflecting, requesting forgiveness every month or so.

  Confession was a pain for me. It was something I had to do. It was just another one of the man-made laws associated with my religion, part of the habit of Catholicism.

  While I was a detective in Melbourne, I spent a whole day trying to make a confession and still came up short. I was due to give evidence at the County Court in the morning and made my way to St Francis Church in Lonsdale Street on the way to court from Russell Street. The queue of sinners was a mile long. I couldn’t hang around so I headed off to court.

  During the lunch recess I walked back to St Francis, and again there was a long wait for confession. There must have been a profusion of sin in Melbourne at the time. I headed back to court.

  It was after four o’clock when the court went into recess for the day. Again I made my way to St Francis. I expected to find another long line of sinners seeking penance but this time I was in luck. I walked in just as a redeemed sinner was making his way out of the confessional.

  I quickly took his place and got down on my knees.

  ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’

  There was silence.

  ‘Forgive me Father, for I have sinned,’ I repeated.

  This time there was a response, but not one I expected. I heard a yawn from the other side of the screen and then the tell-tale whistle of an elderly man in deep slumber. The priest had fallen asleep. After that, I decided I wasn’t going to catalogue my sins during confession. If I had sins, why should I seek absolution from another human being, albeit a priest? If I wanted forgiveness I could shout it out to the heavens. God was always listening, or so we were told.

  At my next confession, I walked into the confessional at St Francis’s. The screen opened.

  ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,’ I said.

  The priest leaned forward.

  ‘Go on, my son.’

  ‘That’s it. I’ve sinned,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh. All right,’ the priest stammered. ‘Say three Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys. Off you go. Next.’

  And that was it. Done and dusted. Sins purged. Off I went.

  When I did go to confession at the Mildura church, I would scan the board inside to determine which priest was hearing confessions. I may well have offered my confession to Gerard Ridsdale at some point. I don’t remember it, but it’s possible. The idea of it appals me. At the time I wouldn’t have been worried about Ridsdale. My main purpose was to dodge Day. So I’d look at the list and if Day was on it, I’d be straight out the door.

  But one day, I didn’t check and marched straight into the confessional.

  ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,’ I said to the amorphous image beyond the screen.

  ‘Yes, my son,’ came the response in Day’s unmistakable voice, replete with just a hint of his characteristic affected English accent.

  ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,’ I repeated, kicking myself that I was stuck there in front of Day.

  ‘Is that all?’ he enquired.

  ‘Yes. I have sinned.’

  ‘Do you want to give me some details?’ Day asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Say three Our Fathers and ten Hail Marys.’

  And that was the last time I ever went to confession. I knew I was a better man than Day. Why should I be seeking forgiveness from him? Why should I have to endure penance dispensed by this man?

  Confession had become a production line of moral ablution. It was a means of subjugating Catholics—an intimate invasion of their privacy—and it gave priests knowledge and thus power over their parishioners. A priest taking confession is obliged to regard the admissions of those who offer them in th
e strictest confidence. This creates one of the numerous clashes between the law of the land and Church law, and poses a veritable mountain of moral quandaries.

  If a priest hears a confession from a person who plans to commit a murder in the future, is the priest bound by the law to notify the police? If a priest takes confession from a man who has committed a serious crime and the priest declines to notify the authorities, is that priest guilty of conspiracy or being an accessory after the fact?

  The answer, in short, is grey and uncertain, and depends on the degree of desire of secular law in a particular jurisdiction to override canon law. That most jurisdictions show little or no desire to challenge canon law reveals the distinct power of the Catholic Church in the Christian world.

  To this day, in Victoria, a priest cannot be compelled to give evidence in a trial based on admissions made in the confessional.

  But the confessional door swings both ways. Those Catholics who meekly offer their sins in return for absolution leave their dark and sometimes dirty secrets in the bosom of the clergy. It is an intrinsic form of control, and in the hands of a priest like Father John Day, it becomes a tacit form of blackmail and extortion, and can lead to a punishment of a more earthly nature.

  Day would listen to the confessions of all parishioners at one time or another—men, women and children. He held their secrets close but not so close that he would not share them with his enforcer and right-hand man, Jim Barritt.

  The nuns who taught at Sacred Heart Primary School would take the children out of class and march them across the playground and into the church. Grade six one day, grade five another, all the way down to the 5-year-olds in prep class.

  The kids would sit outside the confessionals and walk up one by one with the woebegone air of condemned men. They had all been told that a life without confession and absolution would mean eternal damnation, fire, brimstone and an abominable hell in the afterlife. Many of the children would quiver in fear, eager to purge themselves of their guilt. Most had nothing to feel guilty about. There were some who had fallen off the path of righteousness in the way that children do from time to time. Some had stolen an orange from an orchard. Some had swiped lollies at the local milk bar. Some had broken into the pavilion at the local sports ground and helped themselves to the soft drinks.

  Day would listen to their trembling confessions and demand penance in a severe voice. These kids, minor offenders at worst, left the confessional thinking the slate had been wiped clean.

  But Day would breach their confidence and take their confessions directly to Detective Sergeant Jim Barritt. The next thing the kids knew, Barritt was around at their homes, banging on their doors and taking them back to the police station to interview them in the company of their parents.

  Any decent police officer would have had a stern word to the kids in their homes, in front of their parents. That would generally be enough to pull them back on the right track. Not Jim Barritt. He’d charge these kids—10, 12 years of age—and bring them before the Children’s Court. More often than not the court would issue the kids with a warning. Generally no convictions were recorded. Nevertheless, the grim process of being charged and appearing in court under summons were stains that lasted a lifetime.

  In this way, Barritt got his arrest rates up, despite the fact that these were pinches of a pathetically trivial nature. He also managed to impose himself on the community as a person to be feared, especially by young people.

  Barritt was in and out of the Mildura Catholic Church virtually every day. He had his moments in the confessional with Day, too. Barritt had plenty to confess. His lies, his corruption, his bullying and the contents of the top drawer of his office desk. In the confessional, Day would hang on every word.

  The bagman, Joe Kearney, had much to confess, too—his rape of women, his fraud—and Day would carefully note Kearney’s sins and consign them to his memory for possible future reference.

  In this way, Day was able to control and wield power over Barritt and Kearney.

  But who took Monsignor John Day’s confession?

  Barritt’s office took up the largest room in the CIB. Trippy’s desk and mine were in another room, separated by the fingerprint room. Barritt’s office was unspectacular. He had his desk, a bookcase behind his chair and a couple of filing cabinets in the corner near the door. In the opposite corner, next to his desk, sat the CIB safe under lock and key.

  Safes are common in police stations, especially out in the country. Firearms—usually three pistols and a box of bullets— were stored there. Occasionally very valuable evidentiary items—large sums of cash or expensive jewellery—would also be stored there, but for the most part evidence would be deposited in the property room.

  Barritt’s safe was always locked tight. He had the only key and kept it in his kick at all times. If we ever needed to get our firearms, we had to find him in one of his haunts and then get the third degree on whether we needed them or not. The top right-hand drawer of Barritt’s desk also remained locked, but all CIB detectives needed to have access to the safe.

  Trippy and I developed a fascination about the contents of the safe and the top drawer. We speculated that Barritt kept his ASIO files in the safe, but what else? If we could just take a look, we figured we’d find an Aladdin’s Cave of clandestine treasures, an insight into his secrets and perhaps a mirror on his dark soul.

  We never got into the safe. I still wonder about what might have been in there. But the top drawer would prove easier to open.

  ‘We have to get into that top drawer,’ I told Trippy in the office one day.

  ‘I’d love to know,’ he replied. Then a gleam came into his eye.

  ‘You know I’m going to Melbourne next week? All I need is the code and I can get a key cut at the government supply.’

  ‘I think that’s a very good idea, Trippy,’ I said.

  Barritt was out of the office so we had our chance. We both crept into Barritt’s office, mindful that he could return at any time. Trippy pulled on the drawer but it remained locked, as we expected. He crouched down and got a look at the number of the lock, then jotted it down on a notepad.

  When he got back from his trip to the big smoke, Trippy fronted me in the office. He pulled a key out of his pocket and dangled it in front of my face, grinning like a madman.

  We waited for Barritt to leave the office, then checked that the coast was clear. I closed the door to the CIB. Trippy and I were a bit toey. You never knew when Barritt would be in and out of the office. He never let anyone know where he was going or when he’d be back.

  Trippy put the key in the lock of the drawer and turned it. We were in.

  Inside the top drawer were a few loose papers. I glanced at them quickly and realised they were of no great significance. But underneath the papers were five black and white photographs of prepubescent girls between 8 and 10 years old. They were all completely naked and standing front to the camera, with glum, expressionless faces and their genitals showing.

  If these had been evidence, they would have been entered in the property book and stored in the property office.

  ‘These are perv’s photos,’ Trippy said, casting his eyes over them.

  It was true. They had not been professionally taken. Amateur stuff, but it was still child pornography.

  We quickly put the photos back, then closed and locked the drawer.

  Why Barritt kept child pornography under lock and key was a mystery, and would remain so. We knew Barritt was an unusual man, but now we knew he was also a pervert. The evidence was building.

  Joe Hayes, the circuit magistrate, had been calling in to Mildura to hear cases. The life of a circuit magistrate could be lonely—sitting in hotel rooms, eating alone. If he went for a beer, he’d he looking over his shoulder for blokes he might have had before him.

  I’d gotten to know Joe pretty well through matters I prosecuted in court. We at least had one thing in common. He did not like Kearney. I can’t recall him sa
ying anything positive about Barritt.

  Joe was a very proper magistrate. I never heard him swear. He was a short, serious little man suffering from the early onset of male pattern baldness. He spoke slowly and softly, as if weighing the import of every word before he uttered it. He may well have been prone to shyness as a young man but his role as magistrate did not allow him to shrink from view. In his slightly awkward, detached manner, he carried an air of authority.

  I felt a bit sorry for Joe, tucked away in his room on his own, so I’d invite him over to our place. Jean would cook a roast and we’d all tuck in over a bottle of red. After the kids had gone to bed, Jean would sit in the lounge room and watch TV, and Joe and I would chat about this and that— football, politics and, sometimes, Jim Barritt.

  On one occasion, Joe gave a hint of another form of Barritt’s perversity.

  ‘I’m rather concerned about Jim and the way he takes statements from young girls on carnal knowledge and other sex offence matters,’ he told me, his brow furrowing. ‘The statements are unnecessarily explicit. It makes me wonder what his reasoning is because I haven’t struck this before.’

  ‘Anyone he interviews, he takes them into his office and closes the door. Men, women, children,’ I said. ‘He’s so bloody secretive.’

  It was a foolish practice for any copper to interview women and girls without another police officer being present, especially while investigating matters of a sexual nature. It left the interviewing officer open to all manner of claims and, of course, there remained the suggestion that he might be compromising the investigation. But Barritt did it all the time.

  I never attended an interview with him—not with girls, women or men. On a number of occasions, I saw him escort a young girl into his office and close the door behind her. It had always troubled me. The girls would always leave his office distraught. That was understandable. These matters were very often traumatic for them.