One Of The World’s Most Prolific Pedophile Priests Currently Jailed for Abusing 71 Victims Pleads Guilty To Another Historical Sex Crime

A former Australian priest convicted of sexually abusing more than 70 children plans to plead guilty to a new similar charge, officials said.

The Courier reported Thursday that Gerald Ridsdale, 89, will admit to indecently touching a child at a college in Victoria state between July 1987 and May 1988.

Ridsdale's attorney explained the plan in court, while Ridsdale appeared by video conference from prison.

Ridsdale has been behind bars for 30 years. The Herald-Sun noted he pleaded guilty then to sexual abuse of 71 children in the Ballarat Diocese near the Victoria-South Australia state line.

More confessions have come since then. Australia's ABC Network noted he pleaded guilty last July to 13 counts stemming from the abuse of two teenage boys in the early 1980s.

Ridsdale is scheduled for a plea hearing in the latest case, his eighth in all, on June 22. He is not scheduled for possible parole until 2027.

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The Australian child sex scandal brought down Cardinal George Pell. A Royal Commission concluded he knew about abuse by priests during the 1970s, including Ridsdale taking boys on camping trips, but did nothing about it.

Pell went to jail on his own child sex abuse charge, but was freed on appeal, officials said. Pell died in January.