Manning up to the church

Missing, broken and incomplete: John Saunders as a schoolboy. He was abused in the Catholic school system. Photo: 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.

It makes you question the foundations of your own human nature.

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.

John Saunders at his home in Byron Bay. Photo: Heath Missen

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''.

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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.

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Manning up to the church