The Boy Who Manned up to the Church
By Michel O'Sullivan
I've seen lonely times when I could not find a friend … By a campfire at a school retreat, a 10-year-old boy sings Fire and Rain, James Taylor's sad and sweet ballad of the times. It is 1972. The boy is John Saunders, the youngest of nine children from a Catholic family that loves to sing. Listening are schoolmates from Marist Brothers Primary, Mosman, and a lay teacher in whom John has found a friend, a man he has come to love and trust. Twenty-five years later, in March 1997, Saunders will recall this evening while making a statement to police, detailing how the teacher betrayed that trust. And in December that year, Saunders will describe his spiral into depression to an eminent clinical psychologist commissioned by the Marist Brothers. The psychologist will report that ''it appears Mr Saunders was 'groomed' over time to become the teacher's pet''. The teacher would invite ''favoured students'' to approach his desk and sit on his lap. With Saunders, he would ''place his hand in his trousers, fondle his penis, blow into his ear and kiss him. This took place once to twice daily over a period of eight months''. For the past 13 years, Saunders has been been fighting the Catholic Church for the right to see this report. The church changed its mind only in February. Reading the document at last, Saunders finds its conclusions galling. While the psychologist found Saunders was suffering chronic depression, anxiety, poor self-esteem and sexual dysfunction, he did not believe the sexual abuse was the main cause. Rather, it was the trauma he endured at the Marist high school in North Sydney, where Saunders reported that peers bullied him and two teachers humiliated and excessively punished him with a leather strap. At primary school, becoming the teacher's pet had led to Saunders being ''teased and bullied by his classmates. In this context, [his relationship with the teacher] was important in reasserting his self-worth and need for nurturence [sic]''. ''These episodes were not interpreted as coercive or unpleasant but rather regarded positively as an expression of [the teacher's] affection for him,'' the report says. ''The attention directed towards him made him feel special and wanted.'' It was only in high school and in response to the harsh treatment there ''that his confidence was undermined and that he became distressed, angry and resentful. In this context, he reinterpreted the approaches of [the teacher] as exploitative''. Furthermore, it did not meet the criteria for a formal diagnosis of post traumatic stress disorder. Months earlier, Saunders' own psychiatrist had diagnosed chronic PTSD and linked it directly to the sexual abuse. She noted his inability to concentrate at school, his HSC mark of 127 out of 500, his succession of jobs and bouts of unemployment, his fear of the dark, shame, struggles to communicate with his partner and children, suicidal fantasies and despairing remarks: ''Who would love such a failure?'' The Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse expects to hear evidence from 5000 people. Saunders may be one of them. The conflicts and complexities in his story demonstrate the colossal task of the six commissioners. In 1998, the church made an ex gratia payment of $55,000 to Saunders but with a denial of legal liability. Neither the church nor the teacher admitted Saunders was sexually abused. He now regards that payment as ''hush money''. He had signed a deed of release, which he refers to as a ''gag order''. And he believes the church's refusal, until now, to hand over his psychological report compounded a ''cover-up''. The church has persistently denied such motives. However, a spokeswoman for the Archdiocese of Sydney said: "It should not have taken so long for Mr Saunders to receive a copy of his report. Under the practices and procedures the Archdiocese of Sydney follows today this would not have occurred, and the report would have been provided to Mr Saunders when he requested it." She said the archdiocese no longer required "these psychiatrists' or psychologists' reports of victims or deeds of release" under Towards Healing, the protocol for dealing with abuse complaints. The Saunders case also involves repressed memories. Under legislation before the NSW Parliament, victims would have 10 years after an assault to make a complaint. Child victims would have 10 years from their 18th birthday. Saunders was 28 when he had his first crisis but 35 when he found the resolve to go to police - too late under the proposed law. Saunders is now 51, living at Byron Bay, fighting fit and perpetually haunted by the memories of his abuse. This week he is self-publishing a book, Sexual Abuse Survivor's Handbook - One Man Fights the Catholic Church. In painful detail, it recalls that night around the campfire. After he sang, his teacher asked him to come and see him before bedtime. He agreed but didn't go because he was playing with a friend. Back at school, the teacher called Saunders to his desk. This time he ''didn't let me sit in his lap''. He showed Saunders a book listing pupils' names. Beside them was a column with arrows pointing up or down, indicating who had behaved well or poorly on the camp. ''I was the only one who had an arrow pointing down, apart from my friend who I had played with on the night. I cried and told him that I was sorry. He was very angry with me but he said that if I was good and did what he told me to do, he would make the arrow point upwards.'' Saunders' book confirms a critical point in the clinical psychologist's report: as a 10-year-old, he welcomed the teacher's attention. ''I'd never had so much affection or felt so loved and appreciated … I thought why couldn't my own dad be this way.'' Saunders recalls how the fondling ''made me tingle inside. I felt lovely and mushy''. He has no problem with the psychologist recording how he felt then. What he cannot understand, he tells Fairfax Media, is the expert using this information to draw a conclusion that ''diminishes the lasting impact'' of the abuse. The psychologist stands by his report. He now says: ''I accept that Mr Saunders' own psychiatrist may offer a different clinical judgment based on his/her assessment of a client. Diagnosis in psychological/psychiatric [cases] is achieved by taking into account symptoms and signs based on clinical interviews and, although there are guidelines for diagnostic criteria, these are often reliant on judgments made by clinicians. As a consequence, differences in clinical opinion are common - this is often seen in compensation cases.'' He adds: ''My assessment of clients seen by me, irrespective of their source of referral, is objective and unbiased. Any claim to the contrary is defamatory. ''My objectivity is evidenced by reports on clients that supported their claims against the church. At no stage have I been pressured or influenced by the church in offering clinical judgments on cases.'' In correspondence in 2000, the church's insurance arm, Catholic Church Insurances Ltd, asked why Saunders and his lawyers wanted to see the report. Saunders made clear it was because he would be seeking further compensation - now for his treatment at high school. He and his lawyers believed the 1998 payout had been only for the alleged sexual abuse at primary school. Sydney archdiocesan secretary Father Brian Lucas replied that the ex gratia payment had covered both. He noted that the deed of release Saunders signed ''includes a reference'' to the psychologist's report, which he said dealt with the high school matters. But this was the very report the church would not give Saunders or his lawyers. The insurer, noting the prospect of litigation, refused to release it. Lucas wrote that no further payment could be made. In 2004, Saunders was told Cardinal George Pell was ''willing to make a pastoral response … by way of a quite modest ex gratia payment''. That payment was $10,000, of which Saunders saw $5000 after costs. He had to sign another deed of release, accepting that the first payment had covered all his claims. ''I was desperate and exhausted,'' he says. ''At the time, I had my daughter full time, I was a lone parent and I was struggling in my small local advertising business. I accepted my lawyers' advice to sign.'' Saunders is not meant to disclose the amounts paid but believes people need to know. "I would have been compensated far more if I had my nose broken by a celebrity." Saunders is banking on the church acting in the spirit of its declaration to the commission that it will waive every confidentiality agreement to allow victims to tell their stories. The original deed also forbids him naming the alleged perpetrator. Saunders is respecting that condition. When he went to police in 1997, he identified four classmates who had sat on the teacher's lap. The teacher denied assaulting Saunders and the prosecution could not rely on memories from so long ago. In 1999 the teacher pleaded guilty to one count of indecently assaulting a male and was given a one-year deferred sentence. Saunders recalls seeing the old man in court: ''I had this strange impulse, as if I was an excited little boy again, to run up and hug him.'' The thought filled him with confusion, then revulsion. Yet in leaving his tormentor nameless, he says: ''I do have compassion for these people. They are part of a system that allowed the abuse to happen.'' Saunders was 28 and living in Noosa when he first confronted the abuse. ''One of the guys I had seen molested walked into the pub. We hadn't seen each other since we were 14. It was like looking at an old war buddy. We didn't really talk about it but at one stage he said to me: 'There's others like us. You know that.' '' Saunders again put the memories aside. Then, at 33, two years before he would complain to the church and police, came another trigger - a news story about a child-abusing priest. From then he slowly unravelled. ''I'd been running a corporate training and communications business. I had clients like Nestle´ and Parramatta Eels. I was doing pretty well, but it all started falling apart.'' It affected his relationships with his partner, their baby daughter and his two stepchildren. ''I had horrible moments of self-doubt. I'd be playing with the kids, or changing a nappy, and I'd think about the reports on the cycle of abuse - that victims become perpetrators - and wonder if that would happen to me. It didn't but I was unsettled. ''This teacher had been someone who not only educated me but gave me my spiritual and moral coding. So it makes you question the foundations of your own human nature. ''The church is so much a part of who we are. So you don't want to confront it because that means confronting yourself. You ask, is there a god? Is there any point? I deal with this almost every day.'' In 1999, Saunders and his partner separated. They and their children remain close. In his book, his stepdaughter, now 28, says he could be fun loving but ''part of him was missing, broken and incomplete''. His childhood memories are not all bad. As the ninth child, it could be hard for him to be heard but there was joy and music. In Albury, before the family moved to Sydney, they were the Singing Saunders Family. Siblings made it onto Bobby Limb's TV show. Saunders wonders if repressed memory is a misnomer. ''You don't so much forget as put it out of the way. It's like the first time you drove a car. If someone asks you, it come backs - what colour it was, who was in the car, what streets. But if no one asks …'' Saunders hopes to use his psychological report in a duty-of-care case against the church. He is strong enough now to sing about his abuse in a band for which he is drummer, songwriter and lead singer. He doesn't do covers. If he did, he admits Fire and Rain would be a stretch.
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