Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering The Rights of a Prisoner- Priest

By Ryan A. MacDonald

Bishop John B. McCormack, Aux. Bishop Francis J. Christian and  Fr. Edward Arsenault, announce names of accused

                                     priests of the Diocese of Manchester.     

                        

     

    "I do believe you will agree that we arrived at a point in our handling of these cases where canon and civil law are being eroded to the detriment and I think diminishment, not only of who we are as human beings, but of who we claim to be as Christians." (Catharine Henningsen, Voice of the Faithful Conference, February 5, 2004).

In October, 2000, Mr. Leo Demers - then Director of Engineering for WGBH-TV, the PBS-Boston television station that produces the news program, "Frontline" -  approached the Diocese of Manchester after being contacted by "Frontline" producers with an interest in the case of wrongly imprisoned priest, Father Gordon MacRae. Mr. Demers first called Auxiliary Bishop Francis Christian who flatly refused to discuss any aspect of the MacRae case. Shortly after, Mr. Demers was then summoned to meet with Bishop John McCormack. According to a sworn affidavit of Mr. Demers, Bishop McCormack informed him in this meeting: 

"What I am about to tell you must never leave this room. I believe Father MacRae is innocent and his accusers likely lied, but there is nothing I can do to change a jury verdict." 

Mr. Demers decided that he could not in conscience honor the secrecy demand of his bishop when two years later he learned that the bishop sent the case of Father MacRae to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in Rome seeking his canonical dismissal from the priesthood based upon no evidence other than the fact of his convictions.

A New Hampshire attorney has corroborated the statement of Leo Demers with a statement of her own. Her sworn affidavit reveals that in December 2000, she sought a meeting with Bishop McCormack after learning of the possible interest of Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal in looking at the MacRae case. According to her statement, both Bishop John McCormack and Auxiliary Bishop Francis Christian were present at that meeting, and both unequivocally stated their respective belief that Father MacRae is in fact innocent of the claims that sent him to prison. The two bishops informed the attorney of their intent to explore and fund an appeal of Father MacRae's trial and sentence. 

In 2001, Father Edward Arsenault, Bishop McCormack's "delegate for ministerial conduct," raised the following points in two confidential memos to the Bishop: 

"My suggestion is that we address the inequity in Gordon's lack of base remuneration over the last 8 - 10 years {a calculable number) . . . This would alleviate ... the burden from you for extraordinary measures and would be more consistent with Church law." 

"It was unfair of the Diocese not to assist Gordon with funding an appeal of his sentence leaving him with a public defender for his only remaining hope for appeal."

"We ought to admit to Gordon that we have no reason to doubt that the Grovers  [the accusers] may have embellished their testimony to suit their own purposes and that we have never supported Detective Mclaughlin's tactics.” 

The "base remuneration" never took place. However, other confidential memos to Bishop McCormack from other Diocesan personnel reveal their doubts about the trial testimony against Father MacRae, including these excerpts from a memo from Diocesan Attorney Bradford Cook: 

"Throughout this process it was obvious that all of the Grovers were expansive in their testimony and it was aimed at getting a certain result, and frankly none of the attorneys involved in the criminal or civil cases trusted their testimony to be completely accurate. Whether it was all trumped up or totally manufactured is impossible to know . . .  That it was embellished was clear." 

"Detective McLaughlin has been the instigator of many cases in the Keene area and seems to be a crusader on sexual abuse cases, engaging in questionable activities which border on entrapment on occasion." 

"As to the involvement of Father Scruton or anyone else at St. Bernard's, clearly there were several members of the clergy located at that church who had problems and it is impossible to discount that one or more of them may have been involved with one or more of the Grovers." 

THE BOSTON SCANDAL 

In a meeting in early January, 2002, Bishop McCormack promised the imprisoned priest that $40,000 in "non-donated funds" would be set aside to retain appellate counsel for him. Then suddenly the 2002 scandal broke out in Boston, implicated Bishop McCormack, and left Father MacRae outside the rapidly circling diocesan wagons. Bishop McCormack's subsequent memos to the priest continued to promise a defense, but with conditions. The memos called for MacRae's termination of any contact with The Wall Street Journal and Dorothy Rabinowitz before the diocese would agree to assist him further. Bishop McCormack's newer overtures promised help only if Father MacRae would agree to limit any inquiry to the length of his sentence and not the history and merits of the case or the convictions themselves.

Father Edward Arsenault contacted Father MacRae through the prison chaplain in 2002 with an assurance that the Diocese would retain Attorney David Vicinanzo to represent him. Reportedly, Father Arsenault asked the imprisoned priest to forward to his office all defense files retained by the priest. In December, 2002, Father Arsenault answered one of Father MacRae's letters with a statement that he "has not yet had an opportunity to discuss the materials you sent with Attorney Vicinanzo."

Months later, Father MacRae learned that his legal defense files were never given to the lawyer, and were instead taken by the state Attorney General's Office when serving a Grand Jury subpoena for priests' records on the Diocese. From that point on, Father Edward Arsenault and Bishop John McCormack both stopped responding to Father MacRae's letters. 

At the same time all of this was going on, Father Edward Arsenault and the Diocese of Manchester were deeply involved with negotiations with plaintiff lawyers for mediated settlements.  For a stunning review of what went on behind closed doors in these mediated settlements, please see an eye-opening article by Father George David Byers entitled, "The Judas Crisis...Follow the Thirty Pieces of Silver." 

When Bishop McCormack signed an agreement with the Attorney General's Office to publish the files of some 62 priests accused, a part of the agreement was that each priest would have a ten-day period to review and challenge publication of any files pertaining to him. Concerned that privileged legal documents and other materials produced post-trial by Father MacRae were about to be published, the imprisoned priest wrote to Father Edward Arsenault in January, 2003, asking that this ten-day review be afforded to him. He received no reply. 

Ten days after the files were published, in March of 2003, Father MacRae received a letter from an attorney for the diocese describing what he must do to obtain his files and review them before the release. The month-long delay in his receipt of that letter has never been validly explained to him.

After the publication of this vast release of files, Father MacRae wrote to both Bishop McCormack and Attorney General Kelly Ayotte protesting the publication of files that were fraudulently obtained by the diocese and published without regard for the priest's confidentiality rights. Bishop McCormack wrote that he tried to prevent the publication of files that were confidential, but was not successful. Attorney General Ayotte's representative wrote to Father MacRae stating that all files obtained by a Grand Jury in New Hampshire are considered confidential under law, but added that Bishop McCormack signed a waiver of confidentiality enabling all the accused priests' files to be published. 

In 2004, Bishop McCormack proposed in writing that he would like to meet with Father MacRae at the prison to discuss the norms under which he must send Father MacRae's case to the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Then the bishop cancelled this meeting and sent the case with no input from Father MacRae, with no defense, and without MacRae knowing any of the specifics of what was sent. 

In 2005, after Dorothy Rabinowitz published a two-part article exposing the clearly unjust trial and imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae, officials of his Diocese, including his bishop, ceased all communication with him until 2008.

At that time, Bishop McCormack sent a letter to Father MacRae expressing his concern that he has "learned you have retained new counsel" in this case. Bishop McCormack wrote that he has retained counsel to represent him - though no one knows why the Bishop would need representation in Father MacRae's appeal. The Bishop's letter also detailed that he has commissioned lawyers to conduct a review of Father MacRae's trial for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. The Bishop's secret "review" bypassed all the lawyers and investigators diligently working on Father MacRae's appellate defense. Bishop McCormack has refused to divulge to the priest or his legal and canonical advocates the nature of that secret review.

Father MacRae has had no communication from his bishop since that 2008 letter. In a letter to Rome, Bishop McCormack asserted that since his imprisonment, Father MacRae has refused, through unnamed third parties, to have any contact with his Diocese or other priests.  MacRae has consistently maintained that he has never made such a request and has never learned the identities of these "third parties." It was upon review of the events I have described above that the late Reverend Richard John Neuhaus, Editor of First Things magazine, called the case of Father Gordon MacRae “A Kafkaesque Tale," the title of this editorial in the August/September, 2008, issue of First Things: 

A KAFKAESQUE TALE by Rev. Richard John Neuhaus 

"Among the many sad consequences of the sex abuse crisis are the injustices visited upon priests falsely accused. A particularly egregious case is that of Father Gordon MacRae of the diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire. He was sentenced to thirty-three years and has been imprisoned more than twelve years with no chance of parole because he insists he is innocent. 

I have followed the case for several years. Lawyer friends have closely examined the case and believe he was railroaded. The Wall Street Journal's Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz published, on April 27 and 28, 2005, an account of the travesty of justice by which he was convicted. 

Now the friends of Father MacRae have created a website, www.GordonMacRae.net which provides a comprehensive narrative of the case, along with pertinent documentation. Bishop John McCormack, a former aide of Boston's Cardinal Law, and the Diocese of Manchester do not come off as friends of justice or, for that matter, of elementary decency. You may want to visit the website and read this Kafkaesque tale. And then you may want to pray for Father MacRae, and for a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice."

(First Things, August/September 2008)


"For we have made lies our refuge, and in falsehood we have taken shelter." (Isaiah 28:15)

To learn more about the troubling case of Father Gordon MacRae's false accusations and wrongful imprisonment, consult the following: 

http://www.thesestonewalls.com/about/

Exclusive Report: New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest
    by David F. Pierre, Jr. 

A Priest's Story Part One: The Trial 

by Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal 

A Priest's Story Part Two: The Conviction 

by Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal

A Touch of Deja Vu: The Case Against Rev. Gordon MacRae  

by Ryan A. MacDonald 

Psychotherapists  Send an Innocent Priest to Prison  
   by Ryan A. MacDonald at The Daily Estimate 

Should the Case Against Father Gordon MacRae Be Reviewed?     
   by Ryan A. MacDonald 

Truth in Justice: Was the Wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?  
   by Ryan A. MacDonald 

To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and the Gospel of Mercy      
    by Ryan A. MacDonald 

(Ryan A. MacDonald is a Spero News columnist who has written about the crisis in the priesthood for numerous print and on-line venues. He blogs at A Ram in the Thicket). 

http://araminthethicket.blogspot.com/2011/09/touch-of-deja-vu-case-against-father.html

Why Do SNAP and VOTF Fear the Case of Fr. Gordon MacRae?

by Ryan A. MacDonald

A new chapter has begun in the story of accused Catholic pr1ests, but some in SNAP and VOTF seem frantic to suppress it. Why fear the truth?

Last month, I was invited by the editors of These Stone Walls to write a "Special Report" about a new development in the case of Father Gordon MacRae, a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire whom I believe - to a moral certainty - has been wrongly imprisoned for nearly 18 years. My "Special Report" described new evidence presented in a Motion for New Trial filed in the New Hampshire court system. The legal documents are posted in their entirety at the website of the National Center for Reason and Justice, and they are most compelling.  

In the weeks to follow my brief report, David F. Pierre, Jr., author of the book Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, presented an equally compelling synopsis of the new evidence in the case of Father Gordon MacRae in an "Exclusive Report" at The Media Report. If you do not have time to review the extensive legal briefs and exhibits at the NCRJ site, David Pierre's report provides a superb and accurate summary.

David Pierre’s "Exclusive Report" also had the effect of alerting some of the New Hampshire news media to this emerging story. WMUR News in Manchester, New Hampshire ran a fair and balanced account which can be viewed here. A few New Hampshire newspapers covering the story were far less fair and balanced. The New Hampshire Union Leader blasted Fr. MacRae’s 1994 trial and conviction in front page headline stories, but the recent news of new evidence challenging the conviction was buried in a three inch blurb on page 10. The Keene Sentinel, the sole newspaper in the community in which Father MacRae was tried and convicted in 1994, seemed hampered by its policy of not printing names of accusers in reporting the new evidence.

This is entirely new, of course. Most New Hampshire news outlets covered the 1994 MacRae trial with not only names, but photos, as a pitifully sobbing Thomas Grover described his lurid tales of adolescent abuse from the witness stand. What the news media did not see at that time was something described by witnesses who later came forward. A therapist hired by Thomas Grover's contingency lawyer was also in that courtroom. Two persons have attested seeing her run her index finger over her eye and down her cheek prompting Thomas Grover to begin sobbing. As Grover himself was reportedly overheard saying to friends in the parking lot after trial, "I should get an Academy Award for that performance!"

Indeed he should. There is substantial evidence today that Thomas Grover and his brothers committed fraud and larceny, not just against Father Gordon MacRae and the Diocese of Manchester - which was only too willing to write checks without investigation – but against the court system itself and the people of New Hampshire, including its news media. The citizens of New Hampshire should be rightfully outraged at how these scammers got one over on them. When all was said and done, Church settlements with the Grover family accusers alone amounted to more than $600,000.00. Such fraud has been widely enabled by the climate of Catholic scandal.

NOW COME THE VICTIM ADVOCATES  

Sadly, but predictably, the folks at the Bishop-Accountability website have ignored new developments in this story. They were eager to publish all the dirt on Father Gordon MacRae as it emerged in the great one-sided purge of Church settlement files in 2002 in which every money-driven accusation was treated as demonstrably true. However, more recent efforts to get Bishop-Accountability to live up to its self-description as a clearinghouse for the story of accused priests have met with silence. The Media Report's "Exclusive Report" has not been published by Bishop-Accountability. Several prior reports I have researched and published on this case have also been provided to Bishop-Accountability for publication, but without response. These include, "Truth in Justice: Was the Wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?" and "Should the Case Against Father Gordon MacRae Be Reviewed?"

Just as predictably, the much-diminished New Hampshire Voice of the Faithful (VOTF), along with a few members of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP) have become a tag team trying to stifle news of new evidence in the Father MacRae case. In their predictably toxic comments following secular news reports of Father MacRae's appeal, SNAP and VOTF members seem not only agitated by the new evidence, but frightened by it. A member of New Hampshire Voice of the Faithful has waged a one-woman propaganda campaign that has minimized and misrepresented the new evidence in the hope that readers won't review it for themselves.

Meanwhile, a SNAP spokeswoman invited anyone who wants to score a windfall settlement to accuse this priest anew to help halt the momentum pointing to his innocence. The same formulaic comment by this one SNAP member has followed hundreds of news articles about virtually every U.S. priest who has been accused. Writing this single comment everywhere that will print it seems to be her full-t1me job. And it demonstrates why the names of accusers should be publicized.

SNAP's usual spokesperson, David Clohessy, has been silent, however, apparently busy defending himself against a court order that he turn over all SNAP’s records, files, and financial reports.  Mr. Clohessy emerged from that court hearing to do what he does best in front of any TV camera that will point in his direction: he cried. David Clohessy’s previous news sound bite about Father MacRae described the imprisoned priest's efforts to obtain due process and fair treatment as the work of “a dangerous and demented man.” This spoke volumes about SNAP's agenda, and its corporate fear of any version of the Catholic abuse narrative beyond the one they want the news media to report.

SNAP and VOTF discredit themselves and diminish their own credibility by taking the position that no Catholic priests have been falsely accused. Their attempts to minimize and cloud the emerging new evidence of Father Gordon MacRae's innocence belies their true agenda which has nothing to do with justice or truth or even protecting children. It is to control and manipulate the news in order to characterize the Catholic Church and priesthood as lecherous offenders unworthy of trust.

 

For the most part, SNAP and VOTF were once comprised of apparently good and honest people who took on a cause they believed to be right. What they have become, however, is a fearful lynch mob trying to influence justice through revulsion instead of due process. It is time for Catholics and the mainstream news media to give them the attention they deserve. Let the truth be heard.

Related links:

SNAP's last Gasp! The Pope's Crimes Against Humanity

Psychotherapists Help Send an Innocent Priest to Prison - Spero News 

Thy Brother's Keeper: Why Wrongful Convictions Should Matter to You

To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and the Gospel of Mercy 


Be Wary of Crusaders: The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well

Rev. David L. Deibel, J.D., J.C.L., An Advocate for Truth and Justice

By Ryan A. MacDonald


Canonist, Fr. David Deibel has endured unjust criticism as an advocate for Fr. Gordon MacRae at These Stone Walls and Fr. Frank Pavone at Priests for Life.

The Rev. David L. Deibel, J.D., J.C.L. is a respected and deeply committed Catholic priest with training and expertise in both civil and canon law. As such, he has proven to be a great asset to the U.S. Catholic Church throughout the last two decades of scandal and cultural upheaval.

Many Catholic priests who are accused of wrongdoing have found themselves without the benefit of solid canonical advice and advocacy to their own detriment and the detriment of the entire Church. Some canon lawyers with whom I have spoken are reticent to advocate for priests accused in decades-old sexual abuse claims because they say some U.S. bishops have themselves discarded observance of many of the tenets of canon law that provide for due process for priests accused. This has been especially so since the enactment of the Dallas Charter adopted by the United States Conference of Bishops in 2002.

The Charter and its much nuanced "zero tolerance" policy came as a result of the bishops' invitation to SNAP members to address the conference. It was, in effect, the sole voice the bishops heard as they embraced what many now believe to be a panic-driven policy that summarily discards the rights of priests and inflicts great harm on the relationship of trust between priests and their bishops.

For the moment, however, the American Catholic church has to live with this policy. Let me be clear here that the concerns I raise for both its efficacy and its fairness are mine and not Father David Deibel's. But he is left with some of its wreckage, and a part of that has been his unqualified and courageous canonical defense of a Catholic priest who I and many others have determined was falsely accused. For 18 years, Father Deibel has helped to preserve this man's rights under Church law when far too many in our Church were prepared to discard those rights.

A number of prominent writers have drawn that same conclusion, not least among them Dorothy Rabinowitz, the Pulitzer-Prize winning investigative journalist for The Wall Street Journal who authored "A Priest's Story" in 2005. This gripping two-part series blew open the doors of judicial and prosecutorial tyranny that resulted in the 1994 witch hunt trial and conviction of Father Gordon MacRae. In that series, Dorothy Rabinowitz commended Father David Deibel, the sole Catholic official to tell the truth when the rest of the Church and court system was willing to settle for "a negotiated lie" in their condemnation of a priest, but with no evidence or corroboration whatsoever.

This is why the late Father Richard John Neuhaus referred to the MacRae case as reflecting "a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice." The problem for nearly everyone involved in that debacle of a trial is that Father MacRae did not just go quietly into the night. He has been writing, and what he writes has captured the attention of fair-minded Catholics everywhere, and others willing to hear another side of the sordid story of sex abuse and unquestioned monetary settlements that have been its driving force in more recent decades. In "A Voice in the Wilderness," an article for Catholic Exchange earlier this year, I wrote of These Stone Walls:

"Sitting in his cell on an empty plastic bucket in front of an old Smith-Corona typewriter, Father MacRae has produced some remarkable writing about the scandal of the last decade, about the church in Western culture, about fidelity, false witness, and prison itself...The amazing result is These Stone Walls, an eye-catching, conscience-grabbing blog that is both riveting and spiritually uplifting. This blog's fidelity to the Church, and to the truth, has been deemed by many to be the finest example of priestly witness the last decade of scandal has produced."

If that is the truth - and I believe it is - then Father David Deibel's advocacy for Father Gordon MacRae, and his recent advocacy for Father Frank Pavone and Priests for Life is the second finest example of priestly witness the last decade of scandal has produced. It takes great courage to stand up for the truth, but even greater courage to stand up to an institution grown too complacent about compromising truth and justice. I shudder to think of the fate of these two priests without the canonical advocacy of Father Deibel in the current climate.


The Wall Street Journal commends Father David Deibel for the courage of his advocacy. So does The Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and The National Center for Reason and Justice. So do the many thousands of readers drawn to These Stone Walls and Priests for Life on a daily basis.

The Church owes a great debt of respect and admiration for the work of Father David Deibel, an advocate for Father Frank Pavone and Father Gordon MacRae, and for Church law itself. There is a far more expert opinion on the matter of this dauntless pursuit of truth and justice, and I defer to it.

Click here to read: "The Duty of a Priest: Father Frank Pavone and Priests for Life"

Truth in Justice: Was the Wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?

"Doubt" is a terrific film about an accused Catholic priest starring Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman. The real Oscar-winning character in the film, however, was doubt itself. Early in the film, Father Flynn (Hoffman) delivered a homily about it saying: "Doubt can be a bond as powerful and sustaining as certainty."

It made me spontaneously think of the 1994 trial of Father Gordon MacRae, a priest of the Diocese of Manchester who will soon mark his seventeenth year in prison for crimes that I and lots of other people now doubt he committed. I wonder what certainty Father MacRae's jury had when they determined this priest to be guilty after weighing the case for less than two hours following an eight day trial in 1994.

It could not have helped that the priest's own bishop and diocese, apparently advised by their own lawyers to quickly settle the simultaneous lawsuits brought by the priest’s accusers, declared him guilty in a pre-trial press release that had the effect of demolishing his civil and canonical rights.

In the ensuing years I have studied the case against Father Gordon MacRae with a fine-toothed comb, and I am left only with doubt. What I have found most alarming about his trial is the fact that a court and a jury convicted him with no evidence at all beyond the lynch-mob hype of local media and a police detective and prosecutor determined to find the priest guilty at the expense of due process and civil liberties. Equally alarming is the fact that there was much evidence that Father MacRae's jury never heard at all. I have examined some of that evidence in the form of police reports and pre-trial dispositions of the priest's accusers. The cold hard fact is that Father Gordon MacRae's accusers originally also accused another priest - Father Stephen Scruton - who fled the state when subpoenaed for MacRae's trial. What happened next is an account that will leave you exactly where it left me: filled with doubt about whether a priest who has staunchly maintained his innocence for seventeen years in prison was guilty of anything at all.

What follows is an account of the evidence Father Gordon MacRae's judge and jury never saw or heard. When you read it, and I hope you will, I am certain you will join me in the only possible conclusion: doubt.

Let's hope our common doubt creates the enduring bond Father Flynn predicted. There is an innocent priest languishing in prison who needs our help. Originally published at These Stone Walls, "Truth in Justice: Was the wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?" is by far the most important document I have ever written.

A Lesson for Catholics from a Duke University Sex Scandal.

The day is long past in which most people can feel insulated from the tyranny of false witness. It could happen to you or someone you love just as easily as it happened four years ago to three Duke University lacrosse players. Three young men were indicted and faced trial - and nearly lost their freedom - when an accuser's false accusations set in motion a trial-by-media that condemned them.
Catholics especially have a lesson to learn from the Duke case. For too long, Catholics have abdicated the well being and rights of accused priests to groups with an agenda, like S.N.A.P. and Voice of the Faithful. It's time to reclaim the rights and dignity of the falsely accused in our own Church. Click here to arm yourself with the truth - a truth told powerfully by Father Gordon J. MacRae, the voice in the wilderness behind These Stone Walls.