Paedophile Vincent Gerard Ryan
Title: Paedophile priest Vincent Gerard Ryan dead at 84
Author: Giselle Wakatama
Publisher: ABC News Newcastle
Notorious paedophile priest Vincent Gerard Ryan has died at the age of 84.
Key points:
- Vincent Gerard Ryan had 37 known victims
- Ryan has died at the age of 84
- Catholic Church officials will not comment on his death
Ryan, known as Vince Ryan, was jailed for more than two decades for abusing 37 known victims, dating back to the 1970s.
He completed his studies in Rome a decade earlier, before becoming a parish priest in the beachside Newcastle suburb of Merewether.
He went on to work as a parish priest across the New South Wales’ Hunter Valley until he was first jailed in 1996.
His abuse survivors are angry he has died without being stripped of holy orders, or defrocked.
The Maitland-Newcastle Catholic Diocese will not comment on his death.
It was July 1995 when two men, Gerard McDonald and Scott Hallett, raised the alarm on Ryan’s abuse.
Ryan preyed on both of them back in 1975 when they were primary school students at Catholic school in Merewether.
Ryan had his priestly faculties removed in the years before his death but was not laicised, meaning he retained the title of Father.
That has angered survivors.
“It is bulls**t. I am angry how he died a priest and it has got me thinking that they still support him even in death,” Gerard McDonald said.
Mr Hallett agreed.
“They never address really punishing these guys and it’s without question nobody deserves to be punished a lot more than he did,” he said.