Christopher Saunders, the former Bishop of Broome in Western Australia, has been arrested on charges including rape, based in part on the findings of a Vatican investigation into allegations that he abused vulnerable young men.
Authorities announced on Thursday that they were charging the 74-year-old with two counts of rape, 14 counts of unlawful and indecent assault, and three counts of indecently dealing with a child as a person in authority.
These reportedly occurred in the towns of Broome and Kununurra and the Aboriginal community of Kalumburu, between 2008 and 2014.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported that Saunders will plead not guilty to the charges. He was released on bail on a AU$10,000 (£5,200) bond on Thursday and has been ordered by the Broome Magistrates Court to reside at this home until the initial hearing in June.
In a statement published on Thursday, Archbishop Timothy Costelloe of Perth, the president of the Australian Catholic Bishops’ Conference, said the allegations made against Saunders “are very serious and deeply distressing, especially for those making those allegations”.
Adding that it is “right and proper, and indeed necessary, that all such allegations be thoroughly investigated”, Costelloe said that the Church “will continue to cooperate fully with the police and take every necessary step to avoid any actions which may compromise the integrity and autonomy of the police investigation”.
Saunders was ordained to the priesthood in 1976. Before he was appointed the Bishop of Broome in 1996, he had worked with aboriginal parishes on several occasions.
The Diocese of Broome, a suffragan diocese of the Archdiocese of Perth, is located in the remote northwestern region of Kimberley in Western Australia and covers an area of roughly 297,000 square miles.
Allegations were first made in 2020 against Saunders, who stepped back from the active governance of the diocese later that year. He formally resigned in 2021, citing “ill health”.
After an initial police investigation did not result in any charges against Saunders, Pope Francis ordered a canonical investigation – the first of its kind in Australia – following his 2019 motu proprio Vos Estis Lux Mundi, which established a new set of norms for the universal Church concerning the procedural handling of sexual abuse cases.
The investigation was overseen by Archbishop Mark Coleridge of Brisbane but carried out by private investigators, culminating in a 200-page report.
Police opened a new investigation into the allegations brought against Saunders after they received a copy of the report. In January, detectives from the Child Abuse Squad raided Saunders’ former home as part of “an ongoing investigation into historic child sex offences”.
In September 2023 the Australian news outlet 7NEWS obtained the investigative report, which detailed a pattern of grooming young men and occasions of coercing young men to undress and perform sexual acts.
The report also noted that Saunders held “bunga-bunga” parties, which were attended only by young men.
It said that Saunders “spent hundreds of thousands of dollars grooming vulnerable young Aboriginal males by supplying them with gifts of alcohol, telephones, cash, and travel”.
“The bishop has been variously described by witnesses as … a sexual predator that seeks to prey upon vulnerable Aboriginal men and boys,” the report said.
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