This is a horrific story out of Victoria, where a church school had two rather nasty pedophiles tag-teaming the student body, Gerald Ridsdale who was the school chaplain, and Robert Best was the principal. They were raping pre-teen boys in their offices; over the years, many victimized kids committed suicide. This sounds like a real horror story.
But here's the kicker: the Catholic church, as always, doesn't see the problem. The two bad guys are gone now, but the government wants to dig deeper — I think 26 dead children is adequate cause — but the church says no further inquiries are necessary.
But Bishop Connors on Tuesday said not even revelations from Detective Sergeant Kevin Carson that 26 young men had killed themselves after being abused by priests and brothers in Ballarat convinced him that more would be learnt from an inquiry.
"I think we've learnt a lot of things about what is appropriate behaviour and what's not appropriate behaviour," Bishop Connors said.
That's become typical Catholic behavior. A priest brings a young boy into his office, and rapes him repeatedly until he loses consciousness, and later the traumatized child kills himself. When confronted by the police, he says, 'Oh, officer, I didn't know that was wrong! I'll be much nicer in the future. Thank you and goodbye!'
There's not much hope for Catholicism if learning that tyrannizing and raping and driving kids to their death is new knowledge for them.
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