Senior Vatican official offered bribe to child sex abuse victim, inquiry hears
David Ridsdale tells Australian inquiry that in 1993 he informed
Cardinal George Pell about being abused and was offered money to buy his
silence. A senior Vatican
official, who is also Australia’s highest ranking cleric, has been
accused of attempting to bribe a victim of child sex abuse to keep quiet
about the molestation he suffered from a paedophile Catholic priest. The victim, David Ridsdale, told an Australian royal commission into
child sexual abuse that he called Cardinal George Pell in 1993 to report
being abused by his uncle Gerald Ridsdale, a former priest who is in
prison after committing more than 130 offences against children as young
as four between the 1960s and 1980s.
