The Western Australian Police have called on Church authorities to hand over the bombshell Vatican report into an Australian church sex scandal.
On Monday night 7NEWS revealed the explosive contents of the 200-page report – which found the former Bishop of Broome Christopher Saunders had likely committed sex abuse against four youths – and potentially groomed 67 more.
The top-secret inquiry was the first of its kind in Australian history and personally ordered by Pope Francis.
Two of the four men alleging they suffered or witnessed abuse from the Bishop have detailed the attacks.
One of them explained he first met the Bishop at a backyard BBQ at his home. The Bishop invited him to return in the following weeks and do some gardening.
After the gardening was complete, the Bishop offered the use of his shower. The youth alleges he was in the shower when the Bishop climbed in with him.
“He started washing me with soap and shampoo, rubbing me all over my body - in my private part, my front part,” the man said.
“I was scared. He was a big fella and I was just a teenager at the time.”
He said the Bishop started giving him cash, clothes, a new mobile phone, phone credit, cigarettes and alcohol.
The report claims the Bishop was well known for throwing so-called “Bunga-Bunga” parties – where only male guests were invited.
The second man alleges the Bishop would proceed to get the young men drunk and demand they remove their shorts and shirts.
“I seen him kiss and hug…and touch them in the private parts you know,” he said.
“I was really shocked.”
It makes an astonishing number of findings against Saunders, who had been working in the Broome diocese for almost 50 years.
These include at the Youth Catholic Festival in Perth where a victim allegedly “woke up with the bishop laying naked on top of him” and a nun who wrote of a boy at a youth camp where “while he was in his sleeping bag, the bishop tried to get in with him”.
“The Bishop has been variously described by witnesses as… a sexual predator that seeks to prey upon vulnerable Aboriginal men and boys,” the report states.
It claims the alleged offences date back 50 years – to the time when Saunders was newly-ordained and first working as a parish priest at Clovelly Sydney in 1976.
