'No-one believes this could ... happen': family's fury at grave desecration

Eleven days later his family were handed what turned out to be pieces of his coffin found on the ground above.

Bendigo-based Remembrance Parks Central Victoria has since accepted responsibility for the desecration of his grave and apologised.

His grieving family are furious.

Theresa and Dennis Ness, from Romsey, want their son's coffin moved from Sunbury Cemetery.

They believe it was drilled into just days after the funeral.

The family is angry at what they say was a failure of Remembrance Parks to promptly and honestly acknowledge what happened.

The incident follows a public uproar that lasted for months after personal mementos were removed from graves at RPCV-managed cemeteries at Eaglehawk and Shepparton from late 2022.

"When you bury a child, you just want them to sleep quietly," Theresa Ness, a slight, dignified woman with red-rimmed eyes, told ACM's Bendigo Advertiser.

"No-one believes this could even happen."

Fragments of wood and metal found near the surface of James' grave have now been confirmed by the family's funeral service company to have come from his coffin.

RPCV, a grade A cemetery trust, which handles maintenance and contracts for the smaller Sunbury Cemetery, said that it accepted the findings.

"We have been informed by White Lady Funerals that the fragments located are definitely from Mr Ness' coffin," the trust's CEO, Lauretta Stace, said on February 2 in answers to questions put by the Advertiser.

"We accept this and are deeply saddened by the additional grief that this situation has caused the Ness family."

Sunbury Cemetery had initially issued a statement, on January 31, casting doubt on the claim the coffin had been damaged.

James Ness was a lovable character, kind and friendly and involved in the community.

"He was friends with everyone, he was a bubbly person, very energetic," his twin sister, Jacinta, said.

"He was involved in theatre and he loved his sport. He was just a bit of larrikin, really."

After the 39-year-old took his own life at the end of December there was an outpouring on social media from those who knew him at the amateur Windmill Theatre Company.

The members of his regular gym, Body Fitness Training Altona North, where he was the first person to clock up 500 sessions, were similarly shocked.

After a January 19 funeral service at St Anne's Catholic Church, which 300 people turned up to, there was a burial at the Sunbury Cemetery, where James was expected to "find his eternal rest".

But a few days after the funeral Dennis Ness came back to the cemetery to find the grave and grassy area surrounding it dug up, with deep holes drilled into it.

By January 31 the area looked like an excavation site. It was dotted with patches of concrete that had been poured into the holes and there were steel rods poking up out of it.

One of the rods, Mr Ness is convinced, has gone straight through the foot of his son's coffin.

A contractor involved in a separate dispute with RPCV gave Dennis Ness a collection of fragments he had found.

"The pieces were spread across the top and had just been raked over," Mr Ness said.

"They've drilled down where they shouldn't have and gone through the coffin."

After it heard about the issue, Remembrance Parks Central Victoria halted the foundation works and cooperated with Sunbury Cemetery in issuing a media release stating it would have its contractor dig around the site with hand tools to establish if James' coffin had shifted.

However, the family were not directly informed of the plan for exploratory work and the tone of the release was skeptical.

That changed after the wood and metal fragments found were confirmed to have belonged to James' coffin, which prompted RPCV to accept that the family wanted their funeral directors to exhume his body and take it to another cemetery.

The trust would work with the funeral director and the Department of Health to plan and organise the process, accept responsibility for the costs and support the family in any way it could, it told the Advertiser on February 2.

Remembrance Parks Central Victoria also committed to conducting a review of other work in Sunbury Cemetery's Roman Catholic 'T' compartment, where there were reports other graves had been damaged.

Despite these admissions, RPCV continued to insist the Nesses were warned when they bought their son's gravesite about what would happen to it.

"We strongly advised the family to look at an alternative site but they insisted on that particular site," Ms Stace's answers said.

According to Theresa Ness, that simply "doesn't make sense".

"Who would make that choice?" she said.

"Who would actually purchase a plot for someone they love knowing it would be dug up? Who would pay $8000 for it?"

James' sister, Jacinta, described the claim as "infuriating".

The family agreed that in a discussion with a staff member about sites, they were told work was due to be done to create new graves with concrete footings at the ends of the existing rows.

They said they had explicitly asked for confirmation that the spot they had chosen for James in the middle of a row would not be affected.

Their plan was to wait a year or so until James' grave had settled then employ their own stonemason to make a headstone, sinking footings for it if necessary.

According to industry sources, in addition to the quality of the footings work that has been done, there was a question about why it was undertaken on a fresh grave.

A year ago Remembrance Parks Central Victoria was at the centre of a major controversy over the removal of adornments from graves at Eaglehawk and Shepparton cemeteries.

At the time there were allegations the organisation had been slow to listen to and believe the aggrieved parties and to acknowledge the depth of the problem.

The year before, the trust copped significant criticism for the suggestion it would implement dramatic price increases.

Since then there has been an overhaul of operations at RPCV, which has included a change of leadership.

On Monday Dennis Ness received a call from the trust's CEO Lauretta Stace, who spoke to him at length and agreed to meet and assist the family in Sunbury this week.

The family are hoping now to see James re-interred as soon as possible.

"I just want it to be over so I can go to the grave and put flowers there," Theresa Ness said.

"And hopefully move through the trauma of it all."