St. Bernard Church, Keene, NH: Justice and a Priest's Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester
A right of defense for accused priests
is supported on paper in the Diocese of Manchester, but in one case it has been
suppressed and obstructed at every turn.
Keene is a small city with a population
of about 23,500 - not counting the 5,000 students enrolled in Keene State College. The social and economic hub of
southwest New Hampshire, it boasts the widest Main Street in the United States,
and its bustling downtown collection of quaint and busy shops, restaurants, a
theatre, offices, and concerts on the Keene Commons is the envy of many cities
its size. Keene's downtown begins at the
doors of St. Bernard Church, today part of a three-parish community known as
the Parish of the Holy Spirit.
Saint Bernard Church and Rectory are
depicted above. The building in the background is Saint Joseph RegionalCatholic School (grades K to 8). The entire complex is bordered on the left by
the bustling campus of Keene State College, and on the right by busy downtown
Keene. Across the wide, heavily traveled Main Street from the rectory is the
region's largest and busiest U.S. Post
Office, a pizza take-out, and a convenience store conducting a brisk
college town business 24/7.
Just above is a closer view of the Main
Street driveway between Saint Bernard Church and Rectory. It's a scene I wanted to see for myself, and
was the reason for my summer drive to Keene.
Note the flat roofed adjunct just to the left of the building. It was added on at some point to the large
old mansion that became St. Bernard Rectory.
The rounded
doorway on the building's left side was in 1983 the rectory's main
business entrance. Just to its left is a large window. In 1980, a closed
circuit television camera was installed just above that door because the
rectory had been the scene of a number of urban burglaries and an armed robbery or two. In the late 1970s, two priests and the pastor's
elderly mother were tied up in the rectory basement while the house was ransacked and robbed in the middle of the night.
On the other side of that door in the 1980s was the desk of a receptionist and secretary staffed
in two shifts from 9:00 AM until 9:00 PM.
There was also a waiting area for parishioners wanting to see one of the four
priests assigned there in the early 1980s, and for daily clients of the region's busy St.
Vincent DePaul Society seeking assistance with food, clothing, and emergency shelter.
On the right of the
church building just across the narrow driveway from the rectory was
the most heavily used entrance and exit for parish activities. These doorways to the church and rectory were the busiest places in or
around that parish church. The photo
above was taken very early in the morning.
At virtually any other time, it is a hubbub of activity.
Note the large
window just to the left of the rectory's main entrance with its monitoring TV
camera. It was just behind this highly
visible office window - in full view of the daily hustle and bustle of Main
Street traffic and the steady stream of visitors into and out of this busy rectory and
church - that 27-year-old Thomas Grover claimed that he was four times
sexually assaulted by Father Gordon MacRae between April and November of 1983.
It was here behind
this highly visible window where Grover claimed that in the months just
prior to his 16th birthday he sought MacRae out for counseling for his
drug addiction, but instead was threatened, berated, made to cry, and
then raped. It was here that 220-pound
Thomas Grover claimed
to have returned four times from week to week unable to remember the sexual
assaults he claimed to have occurred during previous visits.
Like so many who
have looked at this case, I was aghast when I first became familiar
with the details of the trial of Father MacRae.
I wrote of this trial in an article entitled "Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Fr Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison." As The Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote
recently in "The Trials of Father MacRae":
"Those aware
of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of
justice it represents."
Once I became
aware of the facts of this case, I had to see for myself exactly where this
was all claimed to have taken place. What I saw in the scenes depicted
above is a compelling visual to accompany something Attorney Robert Rosenthal included in his appeal briefs to the New Hampshire courts:
"In what the
petitioner asserts has been revealed as a scam to obtain a cash settlement from
the Catholic church, Tom Grover, a drug addict alcoholic and criminal, accused
Father Gordon MacRae of molesting him years before. Grover's civil suit
- featuring MacRae's conviction - earned him nearly $200,000. No witnesses to the alleged acts could be found, despite that they were to have
occurred in busy places. Grover's claims were contradicted by objective facts
(e.g. inoperable locks that he
claimed worked, acts in an office to which MacRae did not have access, claims
about a chess set that had not [yet] been purchased)."
Thomas Grover
claimed that these assaults occurred in this office commencing in April 1983
and ending just as he turned 16 years old in mid-November 1983. Father Gordon MacRae did not arrive at St.Bernard Church until mid-June 1983, and did not have access to this particular office
because it was occupied by another priest until the end of July 1983. Upon learning this pre-trial, Grover then
vaguely moved one of his claimed assaults to an adjacent busy office to which MacRae also had no access that summer.
In the summer of 1983, St. Bernard Rectory employed a full and part-time staff of twelve, including the four priests who lived in this house, and a total staff of 25 parish and school employees all coming and going throughout the day and evening. And yet, the prosecution
produced not a single witness to these acts. No one ever testified to
seeing Thomas Grover there. No one ever opened the door to admit him, or saw
him leave. No one ever claimed to have heard anything.
A lock Grover claimed that MacRae used to secure the office door had been dismantled and painted over years before the priest arrived. An ornate marble chess set Grover
claimed was inside that office during the assaults was not purchased by the priest until three years later in 1986. Today, Grover's former wife, Trina Ghedoni says that Grover admitted to her that he perjured himself throughout the MacRae trial, and said he offered perjured testimony about the chess set because "it was what he was told to say."
The one person who could have helped to
inform this appellate defense - Father Robert Biron, a prominent pastor in the
Diocese of Manchester - refused to help. The above scene was his office several
years before MacRae arrived, and again for several more years after MacRae left
St. Bernard's. Father Biron might have
spoken to the improbability of much of what had been claimed. He might have described the painted over
office door lock that didn't work, the shade on the office window that wasn't
there in 1983, the absence of air conditioning requiring that this office
window remain wide open to the scene overlooking the main entrance and busy
Main Street throughout summer months.
Father Robert Biron might have attested
to the traffic; to the noise of people coming and going, noise that easily
penetrated that office door in both directions. He might have attested to the
waiting area just outside that office door, and its steady stream of
people. But he refused. In his answer to Father MacRae's plea as the
investigation for this appeal began, Father Biron wrote on his official Our
Lady of Fatima Parish stationery,
"I can't be of any help to you, and
don't see the necessity of entertaining any further correspondence from
you." (Letter of Father Robert Biron, January 19, 2009)
I wrote of this letter and others from priests
of Fr. MacRae's diocese in "To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and The Gospel of Mercy." Father Biron's cold letter was received by the imprisoned
priest just after the Bishop of Manchester at the time, now retired Bishop John
McCormack, insisted to Vatican officials and others that he and the Diocese of
Manchester fully support Father MacRae's right of defense.
Earlier, Bishop McCormack offered Father MacRae $40,000 toward an appellate defense, but with conditions: he wanted
the diocese to choose MacRae's lawyers, wanted the priest to sever all
contact with Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal, and wanted him to
agree not to review the history and merits of this case, appealing only his
sentence and not the convictions. Bishop McCormack then reneged on his offer in a grueling and cruel "stringing
along" of this imprisoned priest that I described in detail in
"Bishop Takes Pawn: Plundering the Rights of a Prisoner-Priest."
When Father Gordon MacRae was on trial in 1994, and the prosecution finished presenting its case, which consisted of nothing more than Thomas Grover's hysteria and evasiveness, Judge Arthur Brennan instructed Fr MacRae not to take the stand in his own defense or else the judge would open the door for Thomas Grover's brothers to testify to their own false claims brought in civil suits. Gordon MacRae was the only person never heard from in this trial.
When Judge Arthur Brennan sentenced Father MacRae to more than 30x what had been offered in a plea deal, the judge never permitted the priest to speak. Now, today, both New Hampshire courts receiving this appeal have dismissed it without Fr. MacRae being allowed to utter a word. Even in the Diocese of Manchester, the Bishop presented Father MacRae's case for dismissal to the Holy See without his ever even knowing what was put forward or having any opportunity to defend himself. Fortunately, to date, the Holy See has not seen fit to act solely on such unilateral information. The silence forced upon Father Gordon MacRae has been deeply unjust. This case must move forward and be fully heard.
What are they all afraid of?
