Former Catholic bishop sentenced for abusing indigenous men in Australia

The Catholic Church in Australia has been marred by abuse allegations in recent years.

Ribbons in support of Catholic Church abuse survivors are seen tied to the fence of St Mary’s Cathedral ahead of a 2023 mass in Sydney, Australia [File: Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images]

A former Roman Catholic bishop has been sentenced to six and a half years in prison for sexually abusing two young indigenous men in Western Australia.

Seventy-six year old Christopher Saunders was sentenced by the District Court of Western Australia and showed no reaction during Wednesday’s sentencing hearing.

In August, a court found Saunders guilty of one count of sexual penetration without consent and 12 counts of indecent assault.

The offences took place between 2010 and 2019 when he was bishop of Broome, a remote diocese in northwestern Australia.

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, president of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference, issued a statement apologising for the pain and suffering Saunders inflicted on victims, saying their trust had been “profoundly betrayed by a leader of the Church”.

Saunders was ordained a priest in 1976 and initially worked at mission stations in outback regions from the 1970s onwards. In the 1990s, he was appointed bishop of Broome by Pope John Paul II.

Following the abuse allegations, Saunders suspended his duties in 2020 and in August 2021 Pope Francis accepted his resignation. The clergyman has consistently denied the allegations.

It was revealed in court that the bishop had groomed his victims.

He is said to have regularly invited young indigenous Aboriginal men and teenagers to a beach house or a Catholic Church residence, providing them with alcohol and cigarettes, and giving them money and mobile phones.

The assaults on the two young men reportedly took place while they were heavily intoxicated.

Royal Commission and history of abuse

In 2013, Australia’s government set up a Royal Commission , a high-level inquiry into institutional child sexual abuse, after a series of scandals involving the Catholic Church.

In 2017, the commission revealed that most of the abuse took place in churches, with seven percent of Catholic priests accused of abusing children in Australia between 1950 and 2010. It said allegations were almost never investigated.

It found that 4,444 alleged incidents of child sexual abuse had been reported to church authorities. In some dioceses, more than 15 percent of priests were perpetrators.

The commission also heard testimony from the Vatican’s former finance chief Cardinal George Pell, who was found guilty in 2018 of sexually abusing choirboys in Melbourne, Australia in the 1990s.

Pell – who had been Pope Francis’s anti-corruption tsar – was released from prison in 2020 after a court quashed his conviction. He died in Rome on January 10, 2023, at the age of 81 due to heart complications following hip surgery.

近年来，澳大利亚天主教会因虐待指控而声名狼藉。

在澳大利亚悉尼，圣玛丽大教堂的围栏上系着丝带，以声援天主教教会性侵案的幸存者，当时正值2023年弥撒前夕。[图片：Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images]

一名前罗马天主教主教因在西澳大利亚性侵两名年轻原住民男子而被判处六年半监禁。

76岁的克里斯托弗·桑德斯被西澳大利亚地方法院判刑，在周三的量刑听证会上他没有任何反应。

8 月，法院裁定桑德斯犯有一项未经同意的性侵犯罪和 12 项猥亵罪。

这些罪行发生在 2010 年至 2019 年期间，当时他是澳大利亚西北部偏远教区布鲁姆的主教。

澳大利亚天主教主教会议主席蒂莫西·科斯特洛大主教发表声明，对桑德斯给受害者造成的痛苦和折磨表示道歉，称他们的信任“被教会的一位领袖深深地背叛了”。

桑德斯于1976年被任命为神父，从20世纪70年代起在内陆地区的传教站工作。20世纪90年代，他被教皇约翰·保罗二世任命为布鲁姆主教。

在性侵指控曝光后，桑德斯于2020年暂停职务，教宗方济各于2021年8月接受了他的辞呈。这位神职人员始终否认这些指控。

法庭上披露，这位主教曾对受害者进行性诱骗。

据说他经常邀请年轻的土著男子和青少年到海滨别墅或天主教堂住所，为他们提供酒和香烟，并给他们钱和手机。

据报道，两名年轻男子遭到袭击时，他们都处于严重醉酒状态。

皇家委员会和虐待史

2013 年，在天主教会爆出一系列丑闻后，澳大利亚政府成立了皇家委员会，对机构性虐待儿童问题展开高级别调查。

2017年，该委员会披露，大多数虐待事件发生在教堂内，1950年至2010年间，澳大利亚有7%的天主教神父被指控虐待儿童。委员会表示，这些指控几乎从未得到调查。

调查发现，教会当局共接到4444起涉嫌性侵儿童的举报。在一些教区，超过15%的神父是施害者。

委员会还听取了梵蒂冈前财务主管乔治·佩尔枢机的证词，他于 2018 年被判犯有在 20 世纪 90 年代在澳大利亚墨尔本性侵唱诗班男孩的罪行。

佩尔曾是教皇方济各的反腐专员，2020年法院撤销其定罪后，他被释放出狱。2023年1月10日，他在罗马去世，享年81岁，死因是髋关节手术后的心脏并发症。