Australian bishop acknowledges 8-year delay in justice in Indigenous abuse case but defends process

VATICAN CITY (AP) — A top Australian Catholic bishop has acknowledged the eight-year delay in bringing a fellow bishop to justice on charges he sexually abused young Indigenous men. But he defended the church’s decision to let police take the lead in the case as a necessary guarantee.

Archbishop Timothy Costelloe, president of the Australian Bishops Conference, said Friday he hoped the church could soon reopen its own in-house legal procedures against former Broome Bishop Christopher Saunders now that he has been sentenced criminally .

“We still have to respect the integrity of the Australian justice system,” Costelloe told The Associated Press on the sidelines of a Vatican conference. “That’s been probably the fundamental reason why it’s stretched out as long as it has.”

Saunders, 76, was sentenced to six years and six months in prison on Wednesday after he was convicted by a District Court of Western Australia state jury of 13 out of 19 charges of sexual abuse that occurred between 2008 and 2019 in his sprawling Broome Diocese on the country’s tropical northwest coast.

Prosecutors alleged Saunders lured young Indigenous men to his church-owned house with alcohol and cigarettes paid for with church funds. He denied wrongdoing. It isn't known yet if he will appeal.

Church and law enforcement officials first learned of the allegations in 2018, and the Vatican in 2021 forced Saunders to retire at age 71, four years early. But the Australian police investigation was twice halted for lack of evidence.

The Vatican typically allows criminal investigations to play out before initiating canonical trials so as not to interfere, and that is especially so now in Australia, after the church's wretched legacy there of abuse and cover-up.

“I understand that some people are very, I’d say, even cynical about this and wonder about the response of the church,” Costelloe said. "It hasn’t been held up in a kind of an obstructionist way. We’ve had no choice but to allow the police to act independently and without interference.”

The Vatican began its own investigation into Saunders in 2022, then handed the Western Australia Police Force a 200-page report on its findings the following year. Police reopened the criminal investigation and finally charged Saunders in 2024.

While the report’s contents were never officially made public, they were leaked to Australia’s Seven Network television news, which reported Saunders likely sexually assaulted four Indigenous youths and potentially groomed another 67 Indigenous youths and men.

“I think people who are ready to think this through understand that in order to safeguard the integrity of the process and make sure that the church didn’t or wasn’t seen to be compromising the integrity of that process, we needed to step back,” Costelloe said.

“So I’m very conscious of how long it’s taken, how distressing it’s been, but I believe that in this particularly complex case, this was the right approach to take,” he said.

Costelloe denied that the delay was due to the fact that the original allegations involved men who were over age 18 when the alleged abuse occurred. The Vatican has long looked the other way when priests were accused of abuse involving adults, especially if the priests were bishops .

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