SNAP Judgements Part II: Ground Zero of the Catholic Scandal
. . . So I was not at all surprised when prisoners came one after another to my cell door during "Court TV's" coverage of the Father Geoghan trial. After some incredible testimony from the accuser, they showed up during commercials to ask, “Are you watching this?" I was watching it, and I heard what they heard. The twenty-something-year-old accuser testified that a dozen years earlier, when he was eleven, he was in a public swimming pool. He said that he recognized Father John Geoghan as someone who had visited his housing project. While trying to climb out of the pool, the young man testified, Father Geoghan came up behind him and, under the guise of helping him to climb out, squeezed his buttocks. Based upon this testimony, the 68-year old priest was convicted of sexual assault and sentenced to nine years in prison. It was a death sentence. . . . Am I defending Father John Geoghan? Not at all. Do I doubt that this accuser told the truth? Not at all. The behavior ascribed to Father Geoghan was consistent with what scores of others said of him, and an egregious example of how much his own reasoning and judgement skills had deteriorated. The Church had a responsibility to protect young people from John Geoghan and a responsibility to protect Father Geoghan from himself. Church officials failed on both counts. I don't question the truth of any of it. . . .
New on These Stone Walls: Loose Ends and Dangling Participles
. . . Another reader wrote that she liked "Saints and Sacrifices," but pointed out that it was my third post in 12 weeks about Adolf Hitler, and I'm "beginning to sound a bit like the History Channel." OUCH! There's a strange irony in that. There's no character in history that I loathe more than Hitler. The irony is that as my trial ended in 1994, the prosecutor compared me to Adolf Hitler in his closing remarks to the jury.It was the sort of inflammatory statement that usually isn't allowed in court, but it was allowed in that court. The jury looked visibly alarmed, and I can only imagine how I looked to them. As with the rest of that trial, the Hitler comparison like Hitler himself - had nothing to do with the truth or with justice. . . .
Catholic Scandal and the News Media: William McGurn Told the Truth!
. . . William McGurn filled in an essential part of the story that Laurie Goodstein conveniently left out of the New York Times. Jeffrey Anderson, a lawyer quoted at length by Ms. Goodstein isn’t just a lawyer "for five men who have brought four lawsuits" against the Church. He is a lawyer who has become ravenously wealthy suing Catholic institutions for decades. He is a lawyer who once boasted to a newspaper that he is "suing the sh-- out of them everywhere." . . . The information that Jeffrey Anderson has made a long career of suing the Catholic Church was well known to Goodstein and The New York Times. As far back as 1988, Mr. Anderson spoke of receiving referrals from other lawyers with clients interested in suing Catholic dioceses and religious orders. He appeared on the "Geraldo [Rivera] Show" on November 14, 1988 to speak of his representation of a man who had been in prison and was then suing a priest for sexual abuse. I wrote of this in . . .