Former Broome bishop Christopher Saunders allegedly used boxing and wrestling as a “subterfuge” to make physical contact with young Aboriginal men, a Perth court has heard.<\/p>\n
The 76-year-old faced the first day of his District Court trial on Monday over 26 charges, including indecent assault and sexual penetration without consent.<\/p>\n
As reported by the ABC, prosecutor Adam Ebell told the court Mr Saunders hosted alcohol-fuelled parties at his Catholic Church-owned Broome residence while serving as bishop.<\/p>\n
The court heard the gatherings had a “shirts off” dress code and an “endless supply” of alcohol and cigarettes, which prosecutors allege gave Mr Saunders access to young Aboriginal men.<\/p>\n
Most of the charges relate to one alleged victim who was aged 16 or 17 when the alleged offending began.<\/p>\n
Mr Ebell told the jury Mr Saunders allegedly performed sexual acts on the teenager and asked him to do the same.<\/p>\n
The court heard Mr Saunders had also allegedly brought alcohol by plane into a dry Aboriginal community before giving some to the teenager.<\/p>\n
Mr Ebell said the alleged victim felt shame about what had happened and believed he could not say no because of the power imbalance between them.<\/p>\n
“The power balance is an important aspect of the state’s case,” he said, the ABC reported.<\/p>\n
The jury was shown photographs of the alleged victims and other young Aboriginal men without shirts, which prosecutors said were taken by Mr Saunders.<\/p>\n
Mr Saunders is also accused of offending against two other men, including one aged 24 and another in his late teens.<\/p>\n
The court heard further witnesses would give evidence about their experiences with Mr Saunders, although those allegations are not the subject of charges before the jury.<\/p>\n
Mr Saunders served as Bishop of Broome for 25 years before retiring in 2021.<\/p>\n
The trial is expected to run for three weeks.<\/p>\n
Mr Saunders denies the charges and has maintained his innocence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Broome bishop Christopher Saunders allegedly used boxing and wrestling as a “subterfuge” to make physical contact with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":817806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,21562,286729,49,48,17610,286728,70460,89295,51140,82],"class_list":["post-817805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-broome","tag-broome-bishop","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-catholic-church","tag-christopher-saunders","tag-kimberley","tag-remote-communities","tag-sexual-abuse","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/817806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}