Dr. Christopher Longhurst KSO
The former Catholic Bishop of Broome, Christopher Saunders, has finally been convicted of sexually abusing young Aboriginal men. But the most damning fact in this case may be that the system had years to protect those vulnerable men—and failed.
Saunders was not an obscure priest operating in the shadows. He was a bishop for 25 years. Ordained a priest in 1976, he became Bishop of Broome in 1996. He had status, money, institutional authority, access to remote Aboriginal communities and the credibility that comes with wearing a mitre and representing the Catholic Church.
The young men who accused him had none of that.
Read More: The downfall of sexual predator Bishop Christopher Saunders – ABC News
On 13 August 2026, a Western Australian jury found Saunders guilty of 13 sexual offences against two young Indigenous men. The offences occurred between 2008 and 2019. He was acquitted of six charges, while seven others were discontinued before the trial began.
But this cannot be the end of the story. The question now is not merely, “What did Saunders do?” but “Who failed those boys?”
In 2018, police investigated an allegation that Saunders had sexually abused a young man when he was a teenager. The investigation was closed without charges because police said there was insufficient evidence.
The investigation went nowhere. The bishop stayed.
It was not until a Vatican investigation began in 2022 that the case changed direction. A 200-page report was eventually handed to Western Australian police.
The police investigation was reopened. Saunders was charged in 2024. Two years
later, he was convicted.
The court heard that Saunders hosted gatherings at Church properties involving alcohol and young Aboriginal men. Prosecutors alleged that alcohol and cigarettes were used to attract young men, and that Saunders used boxing and wrestling as opportunities for physical contact. One complainant told the court that Saunders was “the boss” and that he felt unable to say no.
This should destroy the lazy assumption that vulnerability is simply a question of age.
Power matters.
Saunders had access to Church property, money, transport and a diocesan aircraft.
He was the senior Catholic cleric across an enormous and geographically isolated region. The young men were not meeting him on equal terms. Yet when allegations surfaced, the burden effectively fell upon them to overcome the credibility of the bishop. This is where the story becomes especially ugly.
The defence challenged the credibility of complainants by pointing to their histories of alcohol and drug use and offending.
But a criminal history does not make someone incapable of being sexually assaulted. Addiction does not make someone incapable of telling the truth. Poverty does not make someone less credible, and being an adult does not erase an overwhelming imbalance of power.
The Vatican investigation reportedly identified four Aboriginal men who may have been sexually assaulted and as many as 67 possible victims who may have been groomed. Those 67 are not established criminal victims, and that distinction must be respected. The scale of the concern is impossible to ignore.
Therefore, we have to ask: How many people had to speak before somebody finally listened? And how many remained silent because experience had taught them that accusing a bishop was futile?
This is precisely why Church authorities cannot congratulate themselves because a jury eventually got it right. The criminal justice system dealt with 19 charges. The Church had a much larger obligation. It must account for what happened before those charges reached a courtroom.
Who knew what? When did they know it? Who received complaints? Who investigated them? Why was the first police investigation closed? Why did Saunders remain bishop until 2021? Why did it take a Vatican investigation to generate information that helped reopen the case? And why were vulnerable Aboriginal men apparently required to fight their way through an institutional credibility hierarchy in
which the bishop started at the top?
There is a particularly bitter irony here.
The Catholic Church’s hierarchy has spent decades telling the public that safeguarding means putting vulnerable people first. Yet in this case, the vulnerable people were young Aboriginal men, and the institution failed to protect them.
That is not simply the failure of one individual. It is the failure of a system that gave extraordinary power to one man and then proved far more capable of protecting institutional status than the young vulnerable people who accused him.
Saunders has now been convicted. But that verdict cannot become an institutional escape hatch. Now the Church needs an independent reckoning with every decision that preceded the conviction. Not another apology. Not another carefully worded public statement. Not another assurance that lessons have been learned.
Who failed those boys?
Saunders had the power. The Church had the resources. The police had the authority. The Vatican eventually had the evidence. But the young men had only their voices, and it took years before anyone listened. That’s the scandal, again!
Yet there is another question that cannot be avoided. Despite the Vatican’s much- vaunted policy of “zero tolerance”, Saunders remains a bishop emeritus. His resignation in 2021 ended his governance of the Diocese of Broome, but resignation from a diocese does not, by itself, erase his episcopal status. He remains publicly identified by the Church as Bishop Emeritus of Broome.
That raises an uncomfortable question: What exactly does “zero tolerance” mean? If a bishop can be convicted by a criminal court of 13 sexual offences and still retain the ecclesiastical designation of bishop emeritus, what does “zero-tolerance” actually look like?
Perhaps this is the final indignity for those courageous young men. They had to confront a bishop’s power. They had to survive the credibility gap. They had to endure years of investigation and delay. They had to wait for the system to catch up with what they had been saying. And now, even after conviction, the institution has not answered the fundamental question: Why did it take so long to believe them?
The Vatican cannot answer that question with another apology. It must answer it with accountability because the scandal is not simply that a bishop abused his power.
The scandal is that the system built to protect the vulnerable, once again, failed to use its power to protect them.
