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Unholy Trinity

Page 13

by Denis Ryan


  I saw Jimmy in Deakin Avenue, walking along the street on his way to the Wintersun Hotel. He walked with the swagger of a man who’d won his fair share of fist fights. We’d always got on all right. He saw me coming and grinned. He knew we were going to have one of our little chats.

  ‘G’day, Mr Ryan. Beautiful day for it,’ he said, his swagger becoming more exaggerated as he came nearer.

  ‘G’day, Jimmy. Yeah. On your way to the Wintersun?’

  ‘Nothin’ wrong with that, Mr Ryan. A man’s got to have a little fun.’

  ‘Jimmy, I’ve got an inquiry going on. It’s into your old mate, Monsignor Day.’

  ‘About time you pulled up that dirty old bastard.’

  ‘I need to tell you that anything you say to me is in the strictest confidence,’ I said, looking him square in the eye. ‘If this gets out, Day will find out about it and knock this over.’

  Jimmy was silent for a while, his bravado slipping for just a moment.

  ‘If I give you a name, would he get into any strife?’

  ‘No. I would make sure he was looked after. Why, what do you know?’

  ‘Well, the dirty bastard made him play with his old fella.’

  ‘Who?’

  He gave me the name of a bloke, a plumber called Kym Burford. I’d never heard of him but he’d been at Sacred Heart before going on to St Joseph’s.

  ‘Is he the only one you know of?’ I asked.

  ‘Yep. That’s it.’ Jimmy was pretty keen to get on his way.

  ‘All right. Good on you, Jimmy. You have a good day.’

  I rang Kym at his home. His wife answered and told me he was at the Working Man’s Club. I rang him there and told him I needed him to come in to see me.

  ‘I haven’t done anything wrong,’ he told me.

  ‘No, you’re not in any trouble, mate. I just need your help.’

  I had to make a time that would suit Kym but also a time when I knew Barritt was unlikely to be in the office. That wasn’t easy, as Barritt came and went as he chose. Evenings were best. Kym agreed to see me almost straight away. It had just gone six o’clock.

  Just in case, I kept my office door closed in an effort to stop the stupid big bastard from sticking his head in.

  At the time, Kym Burford was 26 years of age, married, with a couple of young children. He was doing pretty well for himself. He was rough around the edges, but as I got to know him better, he came across as a very decent fellow.

  He was still toey, worried I might have him in the frame over some business or other. I tried to put him at ease as quickly as I could.

  ‘I’m conducting an inquiry into the behaviour of Monsignor Day, but it is a very discrete investigation because of the close relationship between Day and Detective Sergeant Barritt, which you probably know well.’

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Kym said.

  ‘I’ve been told that Day indecently dealt with you when you were an altar boy. You must realise that this must stop. It’s ruining the lives of people left, right and centre. With your co-operation, we can prevent Day from continuing to abuse young children in the future.’

  He nodded. ‘Yeah, all right. I hate that bastard Day. I gave the Catholic Church away completely after that. Never set foot in a bloody church since.’

  ‘What did Day do to you?’

  ‘He tried to root me.’

  ‘How old were you when this happened?’

  ‘I was at Sacred Heart in grade six. I would have been 11.’

  Kym provided a statement detailing one episode in 1957, when he had travelled with Day and his housekeeper, Sarah Lane, in Day’s car, then a Ford Fairlane, to Melbourne via Ararat. The housekeeper got out at Ararat to visit relatives.

  For the remainder of the trip to Melbourne, Day sat with his penis exposed, periodically grabbing the boy’s hand and demanding that he play with it. Kym tried to resist but the small, thin 11-year-old boy was overpowered by Day.

  That evening Day and Kym went to Day’s sister’s house in Williamstown. There was only one bed for them to sleep in and, in the course of the night, Kym had woken to Day attempting to force his erect penis into his anus. Kym resisted, and Day stopped. The following day, after a trip to a cinema in Melbourne and during the return journey to Mildura, Day committed several more sexual assaults on the young boy.

  It transpired that Kym had been on at least five trips to Melbourne with Day in his car, and on these occasions the priest committed numerous sexual assaults and acts of gross indecency on the 11-year-old. Kym said he hated these trips, and whenever Day invited him he always declined. However, as he was in the care of two aunts—both Catholic zealots who worshipped Day—the priest would invariably approach the two women, who gave their consent.

  Day had carefully selected his young victim. The boy was unable to resist physically and his aunts’ devotion to the Church ensured he was unable to avoid Day’s perverted acts.

  Kym Burford then signed his statement.

  Had I been naive? Had my own faith blinded me to the obvious? Could I have pulled Day up earlier and protected at least some of his victims from harm? These thoughts weigh heavily on me to this day.

  The notion of paedophile priests in the Catholic Church is now deeply embedded in the public’s consciousness, but in 1971 the thought of such a thing was anathema. No priests had been brought before the courts. Entrenched paedophilia in the Church was a dirty secret, kept by the perpetrators and their victims, then covered up by the Church and a handful of police who actively thwarted any serious investigation on the rare occasions that complaints were made.

  Over the next couple of weeks I took statements from more of Day’s victims. There was a certain ease to the investigation. Each victim gave me another name, and that person would give me another. Kym had been assaulted and raped in 1957. Another victim, a boy of 15, had been sexually assaulted by Day in 1970.

  Thirteen years. Five confirmed victims. Numerous counts of indecent assault, gross indecency and buggery.

  The information flowed from the victims in their statements and records of interview. Other victims, other leads for me to pursue, were mentioned. This told me that Day had many more victims. Perhaps hundreds.

  I had great difficulty comprehending it. Priests, even a brothel-creeper like Day, were held in high regard. They held positions of trust in the community. They were the spiritual guardians of their parishioners—men, women and children.

  Despite the encounter in St Kilda years before, it was beyond my understanding that Day would force himself on children as young as 8 years of age. It was the last thing I would ever have expected, and I was a seasoned detective who’d seen his fair share of the dark side of the human spirit. It was a jolt to my system. I felt disgusted, sickened to the core. I really wanted to punch the living shit out of Day and give him a stomping for good measure. It might have felt good for a moment but it would have been the end for me had I fronted him with fists and feet. It would have been the end of the investigation, too.

  I kept dwelling on what John Howden had told me: ‘Avoid Barritt at all costs.’

  My senior officer. My boss. I always thought he was as useless as pockets on a singlet but keeping him out of the picture—due to his friendship with Day—had a darker subtext. It was a rolled gold certainty that Barritt would have stymied my investigation. Howden understood it. I knew it, too. The question was, why would he?

  It’s not unheard of for a copper to go into bat for a mate—pull a few strings, make a blue disappear. But there was more to this than mateship, and Day’s crimes were far from trivial. Worse than murder in my view. Young lives viciously assaulted. Trust destroyed. Futures stolen.

  My boss was Day’s protector. What did Barritt know of Day’s perversions? What did Joe Kearney know? They’d have to have been a couple of blind Freddies, and deaf and dumb as well, not to know.

  The senior uniform officer at Mildura was Inspector Alby Irwin. When he first came to Mildura we got on well. I’d had him ov
er to my place for barbecues on a few occasions. We got drunk and sang songs. Both he and his wife could drink for Australia. He had been a pretty good bloke and a supporter of mine.

  Irwin was a thickset fellow with an enormous stomach that hung over the belt of his strides. Most of us put his oversize belly down to his love of the drink. It turned out that his gargantuan gut was the result of an enormous but benign tumour, which was surgically removed in the winter of 1971.

  Something strange must have happened to Alby when he was under anaesthesia. After his recovery, his waistband went down eight sizes but his capacity for religious fervour increased exponentially. He started to see God in the trees. He was the first person at mass on Sundays and even swore off the grog. More troubling was the fact that he had become very close to Barritt and, through him, was drawn into the orbit of Day.

  I had one mate I could rely on and trust—Harry Herbert, a fellow detective in the CIB. I could share my thoughts with him over a few beers. He was a strange fish in the force, neither a Catholic nor a Freemason. Harry was great company, a bit of a knockabout like me. He’d played football for Geelong and was a hell of a cricketer, a fast bowler who once ripped through the English in a tour match. England captain Sir Leonard Hutton described Harry as the fastest bowler he’d ever faced.

  I’d told Harry about the statements I had from the two girls. I reckoned it was the tip of a much bigger and uglier iceberg. Harry agreed.

  But Harry pulled out. He sought a transfer back to Melbourne, and he got it.

  ‘I’m leaving you, Din,’ Harry said. Just like that. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Harry babbled something about how he and his wife had to get back to Melbourne. The tenants in his house in Melbourne had smashed the place up.

  Years later, after Harry’s death, his wife Lynette told me she had wanted him out of Mildura. She knew about Day; Harry had told her. She knew the shit was going to hit the fan and she didn’t want her husband around when it happened.

  As a detective, I was on my own. How the hell was I going to handle this without any support?

  I was a month into the investigation when I made up my mind to approach the most senior officer in the district— Superintendent Jack McPartland, who was based at Swan Hill.

  Jack was a devout Catholic, but he was 222 kilometres and a virtual world away from the cloying atmosphere in Mildura driven by Barritt, Day and Kearney. I expected Jack to offer his support and guide me through the investigation.

  I rang him up and told him where my inquiry into Day had taken me.

  ‘I’ve got five statements from victims alleging that Monsignor Day has committed numerous acts of sexual assault, gross indecency and attempted buggery,’ I said.

  I expected a pause, a moment of silence while Jack reflected on the best way to proceed, but he fired back without hesitation.

  ‘I want you to give these statements to Inspector Irwin straight away and to cease any further inquiries,’ he said. ‘You are no longer involved in this investigation.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Jack wanted me to deliver the evidence I had obtained against Day directly into the belly of the beast.

  McPartland was my senior officer but I felt I had to challenge him.

  ‘One moment, sir,’ I said in my most polite voice. ‘You’re asking me to deliver these statements to Inspector Irwin, a man who is a bosom friend of Jim Barritt. And Barritt is in turn the best friend of Monsignor Day. That will be the end of this inquiry.’

  ‘I have given you an instruction,’ he replied. ‘I expect you to obey it.’

  ‘But . . . but . . . What you’re asking me to do will effectively destroy this investigation,’ I blurted out.

  ‘I’m going to tell you something now, Detective Ryan, and you’re not going to like it. I’m a Superintendent and you’re a nobody. Do as you’re fucking told.’

  McPartland slammed the phone down in my ear.

  I sat at my desk, bewildered. I was so angry I could barely think. I took some deep breaths and let my fury subside.

  I remembered the voice of Fred Russell, the detective sergeant who had fronted me at O’Connor’s in Spencer Street over a decade before, asking me if I wanted to join an exclusive group of Catholic detectives who took their orders directly from the Cathedral. I thought it was traffic offences. The odd drink-drive. A drunken priest picking up prostitutes. Surely this group would not sink so low as to pull up an investigation into a priest raping kids?

  The Catholic Mafia, active and influential in Melbourne, had spread its tentacles into Mildura, where it was protecting this paedophile priest.

  I did as I was told—well, overtly at least. I handed over the five statements I had obtained to Alby Irwin. I could tell Irwin had been given a heads-up. He took the statements without a word, then he just looked up at me for a moment before returning to his paperwork.

  It was obvious that this inquiry was headed for the dust bin. How can human beings—let alone policemen—fail the people, the children, they had sworn to protect so utterly?

  I had followed orders, but by the time I left Irwin’s office I’d made another decision. I wasn’t going to drop this, no matter who gave the order. They could all go and get fucked.

  Father John Michael Joseph Day as a young priest in Horsham, circa 1945.

  COURTESY BALLARAT DIOCESE

  Denis Ryan as a police constable, fresh out of the academy. It would be four more years before he came across John Day in St Kilda.

  Detective Denis Ryan not long after his arrival in Mildura.

  Jim Barritt (left) with his brothers, Barney (middle) and Denis (right).

  NEWS LTD/NEWSPIX

  Detective Denis Ryan (left) in Mildura in 1968 with police reservist Bill Brodie (right) and an unnamed colleague.

  Denis Ryan in Mildura in 2012.

  SHARON LAPKIN

  Gerald Ridsdale enters court in May 1993.

  NEWS LTD/NEWSPIX/PETER WARD

  Ridsdale, accompanied by George Pell, back at court later that same year.

  GEOFF AMPT/THE AGE

  Denis Ryan at the grave of the paedophile priest, John Day. SHARON LAPKIN

  Day’s tombstone. ‘Rest in Peace’. SHARON LAPKIN

  The Presbytery at Mildura where the Unholy Trinity planned their evil.

  The church that Day built—the renovated Sacred Heart Peace Memorial Church, Mildura.

  Inside the vast church. The confession boxes are on the right.

  Sacred Heart Primary School, Mildura.

  John Howden at his home in 2012.

  Religious warrior and made man in the Catholic Mafia, John ‘Baton Jack’ O’Connor guides author Frank Hardy into court in 1951. Hardy was facing charges of criminal defamation for his book, Power Without Glory. STAFF/THE AGE

  Independent Victorian MLA Russell Savage outside the Mildura Police Station. VINCE CALIGIURI/THE AGE

  Life goes on for John Fitzgibbon at his home in Mildura in 2012.

  Standing tall. Kym Burford at Red Cliffs in 2012.

  7

  THE SMOTHER

  The truth is incontrovertible, malice may attack it,

  ignorance may deride it, but in the end; there it is.

  WINSTON CHURCHILL, 1874–1965

  By the end of January 1972, I had interviewed twelve of Monsignor Day’s victims. They all provided statements, alleging the priest had raped and indecently assaulted them. The Mildura allegations ran across thirteen years. I hadn’t touched on Day’s time at Colac, Apollo Bay, Beech Forest, Horsham or Ararat. The twelve victims I’d found—altar boys, gymnasts and boys and girls at Sacred Heart Primary School and St Joseph’s College—had all been children in Mildura.

  I could have found a hundred victims in Mildura, maybe more. Day had been at Colac for three years, Apollo Bay for three, Beech Forest for two, Horsham for two, Ararat for nine. He was a younger man then. God only knows what carnage he had perpetrated in these places.

  How many victims were t
here? How many policemen had been directed not to continue an investigation into Day over that time? How many had had their concerns assuaged by Day’s facilitator, Bishop O’Collins?

  Officially, I was off the case. Barritt had ordered me onto divisional duties with the uniform boys—the police equivalent of being sent to Coventry. I came into the office one day and found a report from Barritt on my desk. I was going to be working 3 pm to 11 pm. It was just Barritt trying to get me out of the way, keeping me busy on the sort of work I’d done after I’d left the academy. That was that. I was out on the road each day. He didn’t say a word. We were no longer on speaking terms.

  Irwin had interviewed Day back on 10 November 1971. He took Barritt with him, just to make sure it was a complete balls up. I suppose Irwin thought he was doing me a courtesy when he told me he and Barritt were on their way to interview Day at the presbytery. Irwin handed me a blank record of interview with the questions he was going to ask Day already typed in. I exploded.

  ‘You’re taking Barritt with you? He’s Day’s best friend! This is contrary to everything you were taught as a detective. You are totally and completely compromising the investigation. Your record of interview is a disgrace. I’d expect better from a first year constable fresh out of the academy.’

  Irwin leapt about a metre into the air.

  ‘What are you talking about? How dare you say that to me?’

  His voice was shaking with anger and he got into a fighting stance.

  I did the same and waited for him to throw the first punch. He looked at me, then thought better of engaging in a stoush. He turned his back on me and walked away.

  Barritt had a copy of the record of interview and that meant Day had a copy, too. He would not only know the questions he was going to be asked but also who had made the allegations against him. It was a farce, a perversion. Gross negligence explained it to a point. But this was worse. This was wilful.

 

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