PERTH, Australia — An Australian jury on Thursday convicted a former Catholic bishop famend for internet hosting alcohol-fueled home events of sexually abusing two younger Indigenous males.
The District Court docket of Western Australia jury convicted Christopher Saunders, 76, of 13 out of 19 prices of sexual abuse that allegedly occurred between 2008 and 2019 in his sprawling diocese on the nation’s tropical northwest coast.
Prosecutors alleged he lured younger Indigenous males to his church-owned home within the vacationer city of Broome with free alcohol and cigarettes paid for with church funds. Home guidelines included that the male-only friends needed to take away their shirts.
“The accused had a sexual curiosity in younger Aboriginal males and an inclination to behave on that curiosity when the chance introduced itself,” Prosecutor Adam Ebell had instructed the court docket.
The convictions included one depend of sexual penetration with out consent and a dozen indecent assaults.
He was acquitted of six prices that included a 3rd alleged sufferer and indecent coping with a baby over the age of 16. Whereas the age of consent within the state is 16, the legislation raises the efficient age of consent to 18 if an older individual is able of belief, energy or duty.
4 prices of sexual penetration of a kid youthful than 13 years have been dropped on the primary day of Saunders’ three-week trial.
Saunders is without doubt one of the most senior Australian Catholics to be convicted in a world clergy abuse scandal that has besieged the Vatican for years.
Cardinal George Pell was convicted of abusing choirboys, and Archbishop Philip Wilson was convicted of masking up baby intercourse abuse. However each Australian clerics efficiently appealed their convictions.
Saunders confirmed no response because the verdicts have been introduced. He had been free on bail since he was charged two years in the past. He didn’t apply to stay on bail after his convictions and shall be sentenced on Sept. 21.
Protection lawyer Tony Hager had instructed the jurors in his closing tackle that Saunders didn’t deny holding “boozy events” the place younger males typically stripped off their shirts and shorts.
Saunders’ conduct had been at instances uncommon, boozy and “may even be sleazy,” however it was by no means sexual, Hager argued.
Saunders led the distant Broome Diocese from 1996 till he resigned in 2021. The Outback diocese covers an space bigger than France with a inhabitants of solely 50,000 folks. Many of the area’s Catholics are Indigenous.
His resignation adopted a police announcement that they’d dropped a felony investigation into sexual allegations towards him.
He had stood down from the church governance function a 12 months earlier after information media reported the allegations.
The Vatican started its personal investigation into Saunders in 2022, then handed the Western Australia Police Drive a 200-page report on its findings the next 12 months. Police reopened the felony investigation and charged Saunders in 2024.
Whereas the report’s contents have been by no means formally made public, they have been leaked to Australia’s Seven Community tv information, which reported Saunders doubtless sexually assaulted 4 Indigenous youths and doubtlessly groomed one other 67 Indigenous youths and males.
The present Bishop of Broome, Tim Norton, issued an apology to Saunders’ victims and the diocese after the verdicts.
“We’re acutely conscious that the victims of this betrayal are usually not simply those that have instructed their tales to police and earlier than the court docket,” Norton mentioned in a press release.
“The damage extends to those that have positioned their belief in our management and our church,” Norton added.
A nationwide inquiry into the Catholic Church and different establishments’ responses to baby abuse discovered that 7% of Australian Catholic clergymen have been accused of sexually abusing youngsters between 1950 and 2010.
