On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized

Background photo by Sue Thompson (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Writing from Thailand, Pornchai Moontri hopes and prays for justice for Fr Gordon MacRae who begins a 30th year unjustly in prison on the Feast Day of St Padre Pio.

September 23, 2023 by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri

Note from our Editor: Pornchai Moontri wrote this post in 2020 as he was returning to Thailand after a 36 year absence. The post is mostly about a very important person in his life whom he had to very painfully leave behind. Father Gordon MacRae was wrongly sentenced to prison on the Feast Day of his Patron Saint, September 23, 1994. As Father G begins his 30th year under this injustice, Pornchai implores us all to pray for him that his faith and strength and hope will never fail.

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To My Dear Friends and Family Beyond These Stone Walls : It was not until my friend, Fr Gordon MacRae wrote “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom’’ in 2020 that the weight of this immense change in our lives really hit me. My emotions were on a roller coaster then. Father G and I worked long and hard over the previous 15 years that we had been friends, family and roommates. I could not have imagined on the day we first met that I would be facing this day with hope.

Hope is just one of the emotions competing for space in my heart back then. I was also scared beyond measure, and anxious, and excited, and I was very deeply sad. I guess I have to try to sort this out for myself and for you. I was scared because my whole life, and all that I have known since I was a homeless and lost teenager 32 years ago, was about to change completely.

I was anxious because I was to be cast among strangers for a time, and it was a long time due to Covid-19 pandemic and the constraints on international flights. Weeks after leaving Father G in Concord, New Hampshire Prison, ICE agents took me away to be a prisoner in another crowded, chaotic place where I lived among strangers, taking only the clothes I was wearing.

I was excited because this journey may well be the last of the nightmares of my life. At the other end of that ICE nightmare five months later, I was left in Bangkok, Thailand where I was entirely free for the first time in my living memory. I was adjusting to freedom and a new country and culture all at once. From inside the prison cell we shared for all those years, Father Gordon miraculously built a bridge to Thailand for me through this wonderful blog. Where there was once only darkness ahead, there were now people in Thailand waiting for me and I was not alone.

Father G wrote about my life before prison in an article that changed everything for me. I have not read it myself because I can’t. I will explain why, but I already know what is in it because I have lived it. I am just not ready to see it in print. The article was “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

All that had become familiar to me had to be left behind. Far worse, Father G had to be left behind and for that I am also sad beyond measure. I knew that when that day came, I would likely never see my friend, my mentor, my father, again in this life. There were times as that day approached when I would lay in the dark in my upper bunk in our prison cell at night, and my darkness and dismay about this felt overwhelming. The person who gave me hope would remain in prison while I would be set free, while banished to a foreign land.

But I was set free in another way, too, and it was Father Gordon MacRae who set me free. I can only barely remember being a happy 11-year-old boy living and working on a small farm in the North of Thailand. In December of 1985, I was taken from there and brought against my will to the United States. Though it was my mother who took me, I did not know her. She had abandoned my brother and me in Thailand when I was only two years old. She waited until I was age eleven to come and take me away because her life was under the control of a monster who sent her to bring me to him. It is that simple, and that terrible.

I have always wondered if readers know how unlikely this alliance between me and Father G is. To explain it, I have to go into what happened to me in life. That is very painful, even unspeakable, so I will spare you what is known only to Father G and God. Father G would later write about this in more general terms in an article that shattered my childhood shame for once being a victim. That post was “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.”

I was brought to America as a child. I was eleven when taken from my home and twelve years old when I arrived here. I spoke no English at all so I could not tell anyone what was happening to me. I became afraid to go to sleep at night. This went on for over two years before I escaped into the streets. I was fourteen in a foreign country fending for myself. While trying to protect my mother from what she was also suffering, I kept what had been happening to me a secret even though it had severely affected my mind and destroyed my spirit. This was no story about repressed memories like so many of the stories against Father G and other Catholic priests. My burden was that I could not forget a single moment of what happened no matter how much I tried.

So when I was sent to prison at age 18, I was broken and bitter. It is not a good place to grow up. I was forced to fight, a lot, and I convinced myself that I will never again be anyone’s victim. Eight years after I was sent to prison, I learned that my mother was murdered on the Island of Guam. She was brought there by the man who arranged for me to be taken from Thailand. It’s all in Father G’s article linked above and it is an American horror story.

I ended up in solitary confinement for years, a prison within a prison that just magnified the inner madness. In 2005, at the age of 32, I was chained up and transported to a prison in another state, New Hampshire. As you already know, I met Father G there. I heard why he was in prison. I wanted him to help me transfer to a Thai prison, something that he refused to do, but I also thought that he and I could never be friends. Then I heard that there were articles about him and his charges in The Wall Street Journal so I read them. The articles were the result of an honest investigation. I was shocked by them.

As a childhood survivor of horrible sexual abuse and violence, I felt disgusted by what I knew to be accusations made up for money. This guy, Thomas Grover was seen as credible by a police detective, a prosecutor, and a biased judge, but I did not see how that could be possible. Any real survivor of sexual abuse should see right through this. There was a claim that this con man, high school football player at age 15, was raped by Father G in a rectory office, then the guy returned five times saying that he repressed all memory of it from week to week. The stories of his brothers were even more incredible. Then I read that they all stood to get a $200,000 check from the Catholic Diocese of Manchester and no one questioned any of this???

I read that Father G was offered a plea deal from a corrupt detective and prosecutor. One year in prison. If he was guilty, of course he would take it. Even if he was innocent, but had no integrity, he might still take it. But he was innocent, and he did have integrity, so he refused the deal. Then he was sentenced to more than sixty times the time in prison he would have got if he was guilty. When I read all this, I was furious just as every real survivor of sexual abuse should be furious.

Now I have to jump ahead several years. I made a decision to trust Father G. This was a miracle all by itself because I never really trusted anyone. There is a writer in France named Marie Meaney who somehow wrote about this story. It is not a long version, but she caught every important detail and its meaning in just two pages. Her article is “Untying the Knots of Sin — In Prison.”

Ever Deeper Into the Tangled Threads

As the trust grew between me and Father G, I began to reveal all that happened to me. I did not imagine then that he was storing every detail in support of some future deliverance. We had been living in the same cell for two years when Beyond These Stone Walls began in the summer of 2009. I had been secretly thinking about becoming Catholic then, and had been taking correspondence courses in Scripture and Catholic teaching through the Knights of Columbus. My interest in the Catholic faith was growing because I saw it quietly working every day in the person I was living with in a small prison cell. I remember a day, just after I was moved into the area where Father G lived. It was a few months before we became roommates. I walked into his cell and the first thing I saw was a picture taped to a beat up steel mirror on the wall. I stared at it. The man was balding with glasses, and half in priest’s clothes and the clothes of a prisoner. Father G was busy writing something. I asked, “Is this you?”

It turned out to be the most important question of my life. Father Gordon then told me all about Saint Maximilian Kolbe, of how he was sent to prison in a Nazi concentration camp on fake charges, of how he helped other prisoners, and finally of how he gave his life to save a younger prisoner from execution. Father Maximilian was 41 years old when this happened. Father G was 41 when he was unjustly sent to prison. I learned about not only sainthood, but manhood from these two men. In another miracle, Felix Carroll, the Editor of Marian Helper magazine, wrote a book with a chapter about me. He wrote of this story:

“Eyes that once smoldered with coiled rage now sparkle with purpose and compassion. Through Fr. Gordon MacRae, Pornchai discovered the saints and the Blessed Mother. In St. Maximilian Kolbe he discovered what it means to truly be a man, what it means to be tough. A man doesn’t seek to destroy other men. A man doesn’t hold his own needs above the needs of others. A real man is selfless. St. Maximilian knew what it was like to be stripped of his humanity and dignity. In him, Pornchai found recourse because Maximilian never caved into despair. In 1941 at Auschwitz, he gave his life to save that of another man.”

— Loved, Lost, Found, pp.166-167

Over time, Father G became all of these things for me. He never once put himself first, and he made great sacrifices for me. He told me once that sacrifice is the most necessary part of being a man and a father. While I was slowly being drawn into faith and hope, Father G was always looking out for my best interests, never putting himself first. He became my best friend, and the person I trust most in this world. From prison, he opened for me a window onto Christ.

As I mentioned above, Beyond These Stone Walls began in our cell in the summer of 2009. It was another miracle I never would have thought possible. It was proposed to Father G in a phone call and he came to our cell and told me about it. He let me decide what to call it so I chose “These Stone Walls,” I always saw prison as a place where we were sent to be forgotten. Father G said that we could speak to the whole world from here, and we did.

I became a Catholic on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. Meanwhile, Father G’s writing at Beyond These Stone Walls got the attention of others. One of them was Mrs. Clare Farr, a Trademarks attorney in Western Australia. She and Father G teamed up to begin an investigation of my past life. They were relentless, and over time what they accomplished grew and grew. I never thought justice was even possible, but they kept probing and making connections. Then the police came to interview me. They came a second time along with a District Attorney. As a result, in 2017 Richard Alan Bailey was arrested in Oregon and held on $49,000 bail charged with forty felony counts of sexual abuse against a child.

There was to be no trial, however. Richard Bailey took a plea deal. He today stands convicted of all 40 felony charges. His sentence was suspended and he was given probation. This would be an international outrage if Richard Bailey were a Catholic priest. The story of the murder of my mother when he took her to the Island of Guam remains there a cold case unsolved homicide even though there is new evidence pointing to a solid suspect.

Pornchai Moontri’s mugshot at the time of his arrest at age 18 in Bangor, Maine, after having lived on the streets for two years.

True Crime and Punishment

Father Gordon MacRae freed me from the evil this man inflicted on me. He taught me that this evil is not mine to keep. I just see the horrible injustice in the handling of these two cases. My abuser did monstrous things. His assaults were more than the number he was charged with. There were witnesses ready to testify and lots of clear evidence.

He was sentenced to mere probation because I am a prisoner and the prosecutor feared that I would be assailed on the witness stand because of that. So they offered Richard Bailey a plea deal. He took the deal because he is guilty. So for forty counts of rape, he will never serve a single day in jail and all the evidence was never placed before the court.

In the case of Father Gordon MacRae, a plea deal was also offered. It was offered three times, and each time he refused the offer of a single year in prison because he is innocent. These offers were made because Thomas Grover, his 27-year-old accuser at trial, was not credible at all. He was a drug addict with a criminal record that was kept out of the trial by a biased judge. He was biased from the beginning and once told the jury to disregard all the inconsistencies in Thomas Grover’s story. As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in “The Trials of Father MacRae” in The Wall Street Journal, “They had much to disregard.” Father G was not on trial. The whole Catholic priesthood was on trial. Convicted of five counts with zero evidence, he got 67 years in prison.

What do I do with such a story? If Father G had not been here, what would have become of me? This is part of the Cross I now carry through life. I would give my freedom to save his, but he would have none of that.

For the last 14 years in this prison while becoming a Catholic and living as a Catholic, I have also lived in very close quarters with a man I know without a doubt to be innocent. During this time, I have been scandalized by the response of most other priests, and especially by Father G’s cowardly bishop who treats him like a dangerous outcast.

When they have come here for an occasional Mass, they barely speak or even acknowledge him. I am ashamed for their cowardly and petty attitude. Father G says the Church and the Mass are much bigger than the flawed human beings behind them.

After 29 years in prison, 15 of them as Father G’s roommate, and 12 of them as a Catholic, freedom came to me in steps. Three years ago I was freed from this prison, but I will never be free of Father G. It breaks my heart that the man responsible for my freedom was left behind unjustly in prison.

When I asked that question all those years ago — “Is this you?” — I got my answer. It was Saint Maximilian in that picture on the mirror but it is also Father Gordon MacRae, the man who freed my mind and soul from the horror inflicted on me by a real predator.

I could not bear to leave my friend, and I have not. We speak every day, and his fatherly guidance is no less potent now than it was in that prison cell. We have another Patron Saint, Saint Padre Pio who brought about much healing in my life. The day the Church honors him is also the date Father G was cast into prison. They have a special bond. I entrust Father Gordon MacRae to him, and to all of you.

Please do not forget Father G behind those stone walls.

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You may also like these related links:

When Justice Came to Pornchai Moontri, Mercy Followed, by Clare Farr

A chapter in the book, Loved, Lost, Found: The Divine Mercy Conversion of Pornchai Moontri, by Felix Carroll

Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood by Pornchai Moontri

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Old Max Moontri Had a Farm, EIEIO!

Having built with pick and shovel a 150 meter walkway on a property he landscaped, Pornchai Moontri spent his 50th Birthday plowing and planting an acre of farmland.

September 13, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

I stumbled upon a late night TV movie recently — though I do not know the title — just as a young man was visiting his father in prison. I was late tuning into the film so the plot was not immediately clear. It seemed that the father was innocent of whatever crime sent him to prison and his son was very anxious to prove it. I was riveted to the scene. Through security glass where they conversed via monitored telephones, the father was urging his son to move on with his life and be free. The young man protested, “But I want YOU to be free!” His father replied, “My freedom is in witnessing yours.”

I pondered this for a few moments laying there in the dark of night in a prison cell. And then I began to cry. That was most unusual. In nearly 30 years of seeing my life implode from false witness, I can count on one hand the number of times I have shed even a single tear. It just isn’t in my nature to cry easily. I wrote once that women seem to cry much more easily than men. Perhaps men do not cry nearly enough.

That night I could not contain what was spilling out from within me. I realized with an emotional collision of joy and sadness that a part of me now compensates for my loss of freedom by witnessing it unfold in the life of Pornchai Moontri with whom I spent 15 years surviving in a prison cell. In that time, a bond of trust grew between us in a place where trust is the rarest of commodities. We became each other’s family, and the basis of our connection was always fatherhood. Pornchai never had a father. I spent the last forty one years being called one.

I was 20 when Pornchai was born, and on September 10 this week, he turned 50, so do the math. Fatherhood in this case was not an event, but a process. Over time, while learning the entire story of Pornchai’s tragic life, it gradually became my own life’s mission to secure his freedom even above my own.

Overtime, we encountered mystical connections in this bond. They include Divine Mercy and the intercessory graces of a Patron Saint who also surrendered his life in this life to save another. I do not fully understand these connections, but I know in my heart that they are there. Embracing fatherhood makes men see their lives differently. As I quoted in a recent post:

“When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. Now we see dimly as in a mirror, but then we shall see face to face. Now I understand only in part, but then I shall understand fully even as I am fully understood.”

— 1 Corinthians 13:10-12

Three years after Pornchai’s deportation to Thailand, I still find myself, as any true father would, reveling in his freedom as though revisiting an inspired work of art that I somehow had a hand in creating. This was perhaps evident in our recent post about the earliest days of this blog and the first posts I wrote back then. Some readers told me that it made them cry as well, but not just from sadness. I hope you did not miss “Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell.”

A Passage to India

The interconnectedness of our lives did not suddenly end because of time and distance. In his final years here, Pornchai and I were the sole figures offering assistance to other prisoners facing deportation. Regardless of what anyone thinks about whatever offense brought them to this pass, deportation is often an inhumane nightmare impacting bonds within entire families.

One of the persons we assisted in navigating deportation was a young Cambodian man who was brought to the United States at age two. At age 22, he pled guilty to a petty crime without ever being told that doing so would result in his forced deportation. He spoke not a word of Khmer, the language of Cambodia. He was left in the city of Phnom Penh, and since then has disappeared.

One of our good friends here, Abishek, a native of India, had been in the United States for much of his adult life before some out-of-character and out-of-culture domestic dispute and breakup landed him in prison. As with most such situations, Abishek lost not only his freedom, but the entire infrastructure of his life. His close-knit family in India kept in contact from a great distance, but he leaned on Pornchai and me for moral support when he most needed it as the time of deportation approached.

In 2020, Abishek was understandably interested in the process Pornchai was facing because he knew he would soon face the same thing. He was alarmed to learn that Pornchai remained in the dismal custody of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for over five months at the height of the global Covid pandemic. I wrote of this ordeal in 2020 in “ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand.”

We hoped this process would be easier for Abishek once the pandemic receded, but that was not the case. He ended up serving six months beyond his prison sentence, but could not seek release because of the ICE hold on him. After waiting six months for ICE to act, I helped Abishek write to Regional ICE Headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts. Just two weeks later, he was suddenly gone in the night. That was six months ago, and for all that time we assumed that he was safely back in India adjusting to freedom, family and a new life. We thought no news was good news.

But we were wrong. A few weeks ago when I called Pornchai in Thailand, he told me that he received a call at 1 AM during the night before. ICE detainees without resources get one free five-minute call per week. Abishek used it to call Pornchai in Thailand. It turned out that for six months since leaving this prison, Abishek was stranded just 50 miles away in a jail where ICE rents space for detainees awaiting deportation. Abishek was now one year past his prison sentence.

Pornchai and I were powerless to do anything directly so I sent an email message from the tablet in my cell in Concord, New Hampshire prison to Clare Farr, a trademarks attorney in Western Australia who helped Pornchai immensely. She then called Pornchai in Thailand who gave what little information we knew about our friend’s plight. Clare contacted the Indian Embassy in Canberra, Australia and conveyed all that we told her. The Indian Embassy in Australia then contacted the Indian Government which in turn contacted the Indian Consulate. Two weeks later, just days before I type this, Abishek’s odyssey came to an end. Thanks to the intervention of Clare Farr in Australia, Abishek is now reunited with his family in India.

The bizarre thread of this story is worth repeating. Indigent ICE detainees get one free five-minute phone call per week. From ICE detention in New Hampshire, Abishek called Pornchai Moontri in Thailand at 1 AM. Pornchai then contacted me in New Hampshire. I contacted Pornchai’s advocate, Clare Farr in western Australia, who then contacted the Indian Embassy in Canberra. Then the Embassy contacted the Indian Government in New Delhi, who contacted the Indian Consulate in New York instructing them to prepare Abishek’s travel papers and fax them to ICE in Burlington, Massachusetts. ICE then booked a flight for Abishek to get him out of ICE detention in New Hampshire. After a six-month delay, Abishek arrived in India two weeks after his free five-minute phone call to Thailand. We could not make this story up!

Chalermpon Srisuttor, Mayor of Phuviang, and Pornchai Moontri.

Pornchai Set His Heart on Plowing Furrows (Sirach 38:26)

As all of the above was going on, Pornchai sent me some photos of his finished, back-breaking work creating a 450-foot walkway on property he landscaped in Pak Chong, Thailand. I actually tried to talk him out of his next project, but as the quote from the Book of Sirach implies above, his mind was made up. Pornchai has not yet received any income from the work we described in “For Pornchai Moontri, Hope and Hard Work Build a Future.”

All his hard work is building hope for a future livelihood as Thailand builds a high-speed railroad with a depot in each of the places where Pornchai is working now. I have been sending him a small amount of money each month for food and expenses. It does not take a lot — $100 U.S. dollars equals about over 3,000 Thai baht at the current exchange rate. It helps Pornchai manage food and necessities for a month while waiting for the tourism season and rental housing customers.

Pornchai is no stranger to hard work so he decided to take on another project while waiting. About 250 miles north of Pak Chong, where Pornchai now lives in the District of Nakhon Ratchasima, is the village of Phuviang (Pu-vee-ANG) . It is the place where Pornchai was born, was orphaned, and then was taken from at age eleven. There is a lot of pain there. There is also a small house and piece of land that once belonged to his mother. The house was only half built when Pornchais Mother, Wannee, traveled to Guam to her death in 2000, an unforgettable story told in “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.”

Not far from that unfinished house is an acre or so of farmland that belonged to Wannee. Pornchai’s extended family cultivates rice nearby, so Pornchai decided to go up to Phuviang and plant a crop. It had to be something that he could plant and then leave alone. He chose to plant cassava, a crop that grows in Asian tropical zones and is self-sustaining until harvested.

The cassava plant grows up to about 8-feet in height and its edible roots are typically three inches in diameter and up to three feet long. The roots are akin to a sweet potato, and are a staple in some Asian countries. Ground into flour, cassava is also used to make sweet bread or cakes.

Growing cassava is easy, but planting it is an enormous amount of work. Cassava roots from a past crop have to be cut into smaller pieces and soaked in water for several days. The pieces are then planted along plowed furrows as in the photo atop this post. Pornchai is pictured there along with a local helper. The photo above was taken by Chalermpon Srisuttor, the Mayor and Town Manager of Phuviang who has become a friend to Pornchai — enough of a friend to help him plow and plant an acre of cassava!

The planting was finished just in time for Pornchai’s 50th birthday. I now want to remind him that when he arrived in Concord, NH from a long stint in solitary confinement in Maine in 2005, I had just turned age 52 while Pornchai was 32. He liked to circulate handmade birthday cards for our friends to sign for my birthday. They contained snarky little phrases like “Father G loves history so much because he was there for most of it!” and “Father G knows Latin because it was his first language!” Pornchai thought I was really old back then.

What goes around comes around! Happy Birthday, Max!

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Upper right: Chalathip Chiradomrong; Chalermpon Srisuttor, Mayor of Phuviang; and Pornchai Moontri. Lower left: Since Phuviang is very near to the Thailand headquarters of the Society of the Divine Word Order where Fr John Hung Le is local Superior, he stopped to spend an afternoon with Pornchai and even to pitch in a bit on the plowing and planting. Upper left and lower right: First signs of growth a few days apart.

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Note from Fr Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

Maximilian Kolbe: The Other Prisoner Priest in My Cell
ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand
For Pornchai Moontri, Hope and Hard Work Build a Future
Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam

The U.S. Territorial Island of Guam has 103 unsolved cold case homicides. The victim in Case No. 70 was the mother of Pornchai Moontri and it needs a new set of eyes.

September 14, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Important Note from Father MacRae: It has not escaped my notice that this is being posted on the Feast of the Exultation of the Cross. That is most fitting. This is an unusual post for us, but a necessary one. It tells a story that has deeply impacted our lives and it has been a long time in the making. Please note that portions of this account may be disturbing. I have done all I can to minimize such content without minimizing the story itself. This post is longer than most, but it is a mesmerizing account with no part that I could justly omit. If you have never shared a post of mine on social media or with others, please share this one.

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The Island of Guam, which at 212 square miles is the largest of the Mariana Islands in the Western Pacific, is today home to about 170,000 people. About 80% are indigenous Chamorro or of Filipino or other Pacific Islands descent. Guam also hosts one of the most strategic U.S. military bases in the Pacific, Andersen Air Force Base. In 1950, United States citizenship was conferred upon all permanent residents of this unincorporated U.S. territorial island.

As in the rest of the U.S., the citizens of Guam elect their Executive and Legislative branches of government. Guam has a federal judiciary appointed by the U.S. president, and superior court judges and an Attorney General appointed by the governor. Guam also has a phenomenon plaguing its law enforcement system. Writing for the Guam Daily Post (November 7, 2021) reporter Nick Delgado penned an article about the extraordinary number of Guam’s unsolved ‘cold case’ homicides.

One of these unsolved cases, number 70 on a list of 103, is that of Wannee Laporn Bailey, the mother of Pornchai Moontri. She was murdered in Guam at age 47 on April 18, 2000. I first wrote of this in “Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam,” an article that lays out the back story of Pornchai’s life before being sent to prison at age 18.

Earlier articles that I wrote about Pornchai’s life garnered some attention from around the world, including from some who had formed erroneous conclusions about him and his offense. What I wrote gave context to a nagging gap in his 1993 trial. That gap was the six years between his arrival in the United States at age 12 and the offense that sent him to prison at age 18.

After reading my articles, Clare Farr, a Trademarks attorney with an Intellectual Property law firm in Western Australia, alerted police and the District Attorney in Maine that something essential was amiss in Pornchai’s trial: an account of six years of trauma prior to his crime. A detective and an Assistant District Attorney then went to interview Pornchai 26 years into his prison sentence.

Then they interviewed Pornchai’s brother, Priwan, two years older. These interviews, now heavily corroborated, resulted in a 2017 warrant for the arrest of Richard Alan Bailey at his Westlake, Oregon home. He was indicted on 40 felony counts of gross sexual assault, charges in which Pornchai and his brother, Priwan, were victims as young immigrant children transported from rural Thailand to the city of Bangor, Maine in 1985. A long held and highly destructive secret thus ascended into the light.

Richard Bailey Brought to Justice — Sort Of

On September 12, 2018, Richard Alan Bailey entered a plea of “no contest” but was found guilty in a Maine Court on all 40 felony sexual assault charges. A testament to the nature of these proceedings was that of Pornchai himself whose testimony was read into the court record by Assistant District Attorney Alice Clifford:

“Your Honor, Richard [Bailey’s] actions have had a catastrophic impact on me, and I believe it is important for the Court to understand this in the context of my life history. I am an inmate of New Hampshire Prison for Men. I am in prison because when I was only 18, I killed a man and I have been in custody ever since. In 1993, I was sentenced to a term of 45 years in prison. I am now 46 years of age and have spent 60 percent of my life in prison.

“What Richard [Bailey] did to me began when I was only 12-years-old. The few years that I have spent in his “care” — and “care” is in quotations — were the worst years of my life. Worse even than the last 26 years in prison.

“I accept responsibility for the crime I committed. However, the responsibility for turning me into an angry, alienated and despairing young man who killed a man belongs to Richard Bailey. And he has never faced up to what he did to me. Nor has he faced up to what he did to my brother and our mother, Wannee.

“I was born in Thailand, and at the age of two I was abandoned by my parents and then raised by my grandmother living on a small farm in the north of Thailand. When I was 11, my mother came to retrieve me and my brother and told us that she had married an American, that she would take us to live with him in the United States, that we would have a great life, and want for nothing.

“We came to America in December of 1985 when I was 12. Within two weeks, Richard Bailey began to sexually assault me. The first time was when I was lying on the floor covered with a blanket while I was watching television. Richard placed himself under the blanket and began to fondle me. I was terrified.

“On another occasion … he got in the shower with me and began to explain male physiology while fondling me. At other times he would make me watch pornographic material. It wasn’t long before things graduated to sodomy. He would do such things when my mother was not in the vicinity. He would take me for drives or go camping and he would sodomize me. I hated it. I hated him. I could not speak English, but Richard was clear that if I told about the sexual assaults there would be dire repercussions.

“At home, Richard was a tyrant and a drunken bully who was physically abusive to me, my mother and my brother. We lived a life of fear, intimidation, and violence. No one was allowed to speak Thai in the house and we were not permitted to have friends come over … He completely controlled our lives …

“I first ran away from him to escape the abuse at age 12, only to be returned to him by the police. I spoke very little English and wasn’t able to tell the police that Richard had been sexually assaulting me. I could not tell my mother at that time because Richard threatened what would happen to her if I told.

“Richard Bailey sexually assaulted me more times than he is charged with … I ran away again and again, living in juvenile detention centers, the homes of friends, or finding a place of shelter wherever I could. Sometimes my mother would bring me food when I was living under a bridge in Bangor. When I had no food, I would steal. When I was caught I was sent to juvenile detention where I told counselors about the abuse and they reported it.”

— End of Transcript Excerpts

Maine Youth Center

Justice Delayed — Repeatedly

Because Pornchai was a prisoner when Richard Bailey was finally brought before the Court, the D.A feared putting Pornchai on the witness stand in a trial. So Bailey was offered a plea deal, and like most guilty defendants, he accepted it. For 40 felony counts of child sexual abuse, Bailey would serve no time in prison and 18 years on probation. After registering on the State of Maine Sex Offender Registry, he quietly returned to his lakeside Oregon home. He is clearly not “Father” Richard Bailey.

Over the six years when Pornchai was 12 to 18 years of age leading up to his own offense, Maine officials received reports about the sexual abuse of Pornchai. These interventions were inexplicably ineffective. Official reports from the Maine Youth Center and Department of Human Services should have resulted in a protection order for Pornchai, an investigation of Richard Bailey, and criminal charges, but none of that happened. Here are excerpts:

November 8, 1989: “Pornchai alleges that his stepfather, Rick Bailey, perpetrated sexual and physical abuse upon him. [He] is concerned that Mr. Bailey will take out revenge on his mother.”

November 10, 1989: “Pornchai has trouble explaining himself in English, so it was hard to get more details from him. Also, he is protective of his mother.”

December 14, 1989: “[The sexual abuse] totally destroyed boy’s faith in family — mother made aware — did nothing. Boy began to habitually run away. Boy terrified some type of revenge will be taken out on mother.”

December 21, 1989: “Pornchai has opened up to me information about sexual abuse by his stepfather. This was a significant breakthrough with Pornchai since he has been holding this in … At this point we have notified the Dept. of Human Services.”

February 15, 1990: “In terms of the allegations of sexual abuse, Pornchai has to go to Bangor. He will have to make a tape or prepare some kind of testimony and he is having a very difficult time even thinking about the events that occurred.”

April 26, 1990: “Pornchai has been going through some major crises in his life … He went to court in Bangor and was made a ward of the State. His allegations of sexual abuse do not seem to have progressed … His mother was in to visit him and told him that she did not want him to go through with this issue any further. He fears that he will be harming his mother if he proceeds with this.”

From an undated Interagency Protocol Report: “Boy states that stepfather started touching him, talking “dirty,” showing porno movies and progressively became more abusive. Made Pornchai perform oral sex on him. He would pull his hair and slap him if he refused. He would set up situations where he would have Pornchai alone. Stated if he told anyone his mother would suffer.”

The record contains dozens of similar reports of violent sexual abuse, some much more graphic and disturbing. Sheriff’s deputies once found Pornchai escaping Bailey’s house by running along railroad tracks out of Bangor, but they did not understand his protests as — with shades of the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer story — they forcibly returned him to Richard Bailey. They wrote a report of their suspicions, however, but nothing happened.

Pornchai’s mother found blood on his bedding and underwear, but Bailey kept her in a silent state of poverty, desperation and helplessness according to statements from neighbors and others. One neighbor confronted Bailey after seeing 12-year-old Pornchai beaten and bloody. Bailey beat Pornchai again while forbidding him from interacting with others. A school nurse documented suspicions that Pornchai was sexually and physically abused, but she was advised to keep silent and not get involved.

Penobscot County Jail

Pornchai’s Offense

From there on Pornchai spent most of his childhood living on the streets of Bangor, a broken child. Harassed by a Bangor gang, he carried a knife for protection. At the 2018 plea deal hearing for Richard Bailey, the D.A. read again from Pornchai’s Statement:

“A few months after I turned 18, I was involved in an incident at the local supermarket and I killed a man when I was highly intoxicated. I was tackled by Michael Scott McDowell, a man having a much larger frame than myself, and in a kneejerk reaction I took my knife and stabbed him and he later died. It was unintentional. At the moment I stabbed at him my mind was Richard Bailey on top of me and I never wanted to be in that situation again.”

It was not up to Pornchai Moontri to investigate and prosecute Bailey. That was the job of the State of Maine and the State failed him miserably. Pornchai was a traumatized child who neither spoke nor understood English when Bailey’s assaults commenced. After all the above interviews with DHS and Maine Youth Center staff, sheriff’s deputies interviewed Richard Bailey — and him alone. In his response, he gave them a well-rehearsed story about having lovingly opened his home to Pornchai, who doubled-down on his youthful shunning of a kind stepfather’s discipline by making false claims against him.

The sheriff’s deputies who interviewed Bailey in 1990 never questioned Pornchai, his brother, their mother, or any of the Maine Youth Center staff who made the above reports. This was not a case with dubious claims of repressed or recovered memory. No one can rightly claim today that sexual abuse just wasn’t on the radar in 1990. At the same time the above reports were made, a high-profile panic about sexual abuse by Catholic priests was brewing right next door to Maine in New Hampshire.

At Pornchai’s own trial in 1993, Bailey feared for what Pornchai might divulge to police and the Court so he took matters into his own hands. He wrote a letter to presiding Judge Margaret Kravchuk. He presented himself as a caring stepfather whose discipline was rejected by this wild child who turned on him. He blamed influence from Pornchai’s drug-infested and delinquent friends in order to deflect blame in case Pornchai pointed a finger at Bailey. These friends today describe that letter as “a pack of lies.”

Meanwhile, while held in Maine’s Penobscot County Jail waiting trial at age 18, Pornchai’s mother, Wannee, came to him, sent by Richard Bailey to deliver a message about what would happen to her if Pornchai told anyone about Bailey’s abuse of him. So he remained silent, refusing to participate in his own defense. Bailey’s egregious witness tampering took place right under the noses of Maine officials. Pornchai’s fear for the safety of his mother was well founded. The evidence for that loomed just over a distant horizon.

Getting Away with Murder

Wannee’s life had been a hard one even before meeting Bailey in Bangkok in the later 1970s. She was but 19 years old when she was abandoned in the rural north of Thailand by her first husband while raising two-year-old Priwan and still carrying the unborn Pornchai. In 1975, out of the desperation of poverty, she left them when they were two and four years of age hoping that her extended family would care for them.

Wannee traveled nine hours to Bangkok in search of work. Her first job was in construction. This small and frail young woman carried two large cement buckets on a pole as an indentured servant earning her meals and fifty cents a day. She later worked as a cook.

Richard Bailey had been a civilian helicopter pilot in Vietnam, but frequented the Bangkok area when the war ended. In the later 1970s, he and Wannee met. They married in Bangkok on February 14, 1980, then relocated to Bailey’s hometown of Bangor, Maine. There, with Wannee now in a foreign land where she spoke no English, he controlled her every move and would not allow her to pursue citizenship. He obtained work for her as a hotel chambermaid, but tightly controlled her income. Bailey knew that she left two young sons in Thailand, but he had no interest in them until they were 11 and 13 years old. Then, in 1985, he sent Wannee to retrieve them.

Two years after Pornchai was sentenced to prison, Richard Bailey sold his home in Maine and relocated with Wannee to the Western Pacific Island of Guam. Bailey secured work with the Federal Aviation Administration as an air traffic controller. They purchased a home in Talofofo, a small seaside town in the south of Guam. His life there was privileged, secure, and far from the wreckage he left behind in Maine.

The next few years passed by in relative comfort for Bailey living a new life in Guam, but Wannee grew increasingly troubled by all that had transpired. Finally, in late 1999, she became resolved to leave Bailey and filed for divorce in a Guam court. On February 14, 2000, a divorce decree was finalized with a judgment against Bailey which included the following provisions:

1. That Bailey pay Wannee monthly alimony payments of $1,000;

2. That the jointly owned home in Talofofo be sold and the proceeds be divided equally,

3. That upon Bailey reaching the age of 59½, he pay to Wannee $8,000 as her share of his IRA; and

4. That Bailey pay Wannee $25,000 from a money market account in May 2000.

Wannee had built up the courage to leave and return to Thailand, but both her sons were in their 20s living in Maine. Pornchai was in his eighth year in prison where he was stranded with no family help or support at all. While in Thailand, Wannee used what little funds she had to secure a small parcel of land and began to have a house built for her and her sons whom she hoped to redeem from the past. However, back in Guam Richard Bailey simply ignored court orders for payments to Wannee. So she planned a fateful return to Guam to seek justice.

On her way back to Guam, Wannee visited Pornchai in prison in Maine. She apologized for not believing him as a child, and for the years of torment he suffered. She told him that she had divorced Bailey and was going to expose all that he had done to her, Pornchai, and Priwan. But first, she said, she was returning to Guam to seek enforcement of the divorce decree. She had no idea she was going to her death.

Weeks later, while alone in a Maine prison, Pornchai received word from Richard Bailey’s sister in Maine that Wannee had died in Guam. Pornchai was left with an impression that his mother had accidentally fallen from a high cliff, but his instincts knew better. He asked Bailey’s sister, “Did Richard kill my mother” There was a moment’s pause before she answered, “I don’t know.”

After all the wreckage of the past, this news was devastating for Pornchai. He gave up on his life and ended up serving the next several years in the maddening cruelty of Maine State Prison’s “SuperMax” solitary confinement unit. (PBS Frontline produced a video documentary on Maine’s solitary confinement.) Pornchai had surpassed nearly all other prisoners in the amount of time spent there. Then, in 2005, he was transferred to the neighboring New Hampshire State Prison where he spent the next 15 years with me.

Over these years, as the story of Pornchai’s life unfolded, I wrote several additional articles. Solicitor Clare Farr, Pornchai’s legal advocate in Western Australia, joined me in an effort to investigate. Among the many inroads we made was one to officials in Guam who released Wannee’s April 2000 autopsy report. It revealed that her cause of death was ruled a homicide.

Wannee had been beaten to death according to the autopsy report. Her broken ribs caused devastating injuries to inner organs and a broken wrist revealed defensive wounds. Wannee was 47 years old at the time she died. Back in Concord, NH, Pornchai sat in our cell and wept openly upon learning the truth about the death of his mother. It was what Richard Bailey always said would happen, and what Pornchai always feared the most.

Courtesy of Dontana Keraskes / The Guam Daily Post

Cold Case Homicide

According to Guam police statements, Richard Bailey had reported that Wannee was on the Island visiting with him, but went missing. Two days later, Bailey reported finding Wannee’s body himself. Because this technically remains an open cold case homicide, though now dormant for 22 years, Guam police have seemed reluctant to provide further information.

However, an interview with Wannee’s niece conducted by Clare Farr in 2016, revealed that Wannee telephoned her from Guam on the day she died. She said Wannee was frantic, saying that Richard had threatened her. Richard could be heard shouting in the background. Wannee told her niece in Thai, “If I am found dead, Richard did it and I want you to demand an investigation.”

Bailey never did pay Wannee the money she was owed in alimony, or the money due to her from his IRA and the money market account and the sale of their jointly owned Guam property. And on her death, he should have paid the money due to the executor of Wannee’s estate. However, Bailey never told the executor that there were court orders in place and that he owed money to Wannee, so the money never went into Wannee’s estate for distribution to Pornchai and Priwan, who had been Bailey’s victims of abuse. This money would have been of crucial importance to Pornchai tasked with starting life over after he emerged from prison. He returned to Thailand penniless with nothing but the clothes he was wearing.

None of the above — not the background about Richard’s crimes against Pornchai and Priwan that he desperately wanted covered up, nor the telephone call from Wannee to her niece — was known to Guam police at the time they first investigated the homicide of Wannee in 2000. We believe that there is now sufficient cause to reopen this case and identify a suspect.

In a December 19, 2021 Guam Daily News article by Nick Delgado, “GPD Enhancing Efforts to Solve 103 Cold Cases,” Guam police Chief Stephen Ignacio described new efforts to investigate and close these unsolved cases. He also revealed that he led the Guam Cold Case Task Force in the early 2000s, the time of Wannee’s death. The Guam police have posted a short video describing these cases. A box containing the case of the homicide of Wannee Laporn Bailey is visibly at the top — and it is in the top graphic on this post along with a photo of Wannee and Pornchai.

Wannee’s cremated remains were returned to Thailand after her death in 2000. Upon his own return to Thailand in 2021, Pornchai prayed at her tomb for the first time and slept in the half-built home she had hoped to complete for him. Pornchai is overwhelmed with the wreckage not only of his own life, but with the lives of Wannee and Priwan as well. Rebuilding is a daunting task, but Pornchai Moontri is today a man of unconquerable faith and an inspiration to many.

Richard Alan Bailey still resides at his lakeside Oregon home. After Wannee’s death in 2000, he traveled to Thailand and returned with a new Thai wife 31 years younger than himself.

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Please click here for a printable pdf version of “Getting Away With Murder on the Island of Guam”

Please click here to view the Guam Court orders for restitution to Wannee and her estate for which Wannee died while Bailey ignored the Court orders.

Please share this important story and visit these related posts:

Former Maine Man to Serve no Prison Time for Sex Abuse in the 1980s (Bangor Daily News 09/12/2018)

Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam

For Pornchai Moontri, a Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Pornchai Moontri: A Night in Bangkok, a Year in Freedom

Documents in the Story of Pornchai Moontri

To help Pornchai rebuild his life, visit our “Special Events” Page

ICE Finally Cracks: Pornchai Moontri Arrives in Thailand

The most amazing account of survival and conversion in modern American Catholicism begins a new chapter as Pornchai Moontri is sent home to Thailand after 36 years.

I have read many riveting accounts of human survival and life changing conversion. In virtually all of them the most harrowing chapters are the last as the story turns down the road of some final test. This has been true in the story of Pornchai Moontri as well. If you are not yet familiar with all that preceded the most recent six months of his life, you should consider catching up. Many lives have been changed from this account of a soul ascending from the torment humans can inflict upon each other to the pinnacle of a life lived in the light of Divine Mercy. The best place to take that short journey is, “Pornchai Moontri: Mercy Inside Those Stone Walls,” by Felix Carroll.

But it is of the last six months that I now write. First, let me recap the previous 36 years. Most readers know that Pornchai was removed from his home in Thailand against his will in 1985. Taken by false pretense at age 11, he was brought to Bangor, Maine where he suffered years of sexual abuse and violence. Multiple attempts to flee resulted in police reports by local officers who did not understand his protests while he was handed back over to his tormentor. Finally, he escaped at age 14 and became homeless, and then a ward of the State, and then homeless again.

It was not until reading of Pornchai’s life of torment in these pages that law enforcement in the State of Maine took an interest, and opened an investigation into Pornchai’s life. Thirty-four years after the commission of his crimes, Richard Alan Bailey was convicted of forty felony counts of sexual abuse of Pornchai. The last person to confront Bailey about his crimes was Pornchai’s mother in the year 2000. As a proximate result, she was beaten to death in what remains today an unsolved “cold case” homicide on the Western Pacific U.S. Territorial Island of Guam.

Pornchai was in solitary confinement in the Maine State Prison when he learned of his mother’s death at the hands of the man who haunted his nightmares. He sank to the lowest bottom of life, a point from which he believed he could never return. There was no hope, no redemption, no future, and no God. All had been taken from him.

Five years later, Pornchai was moved to the New Hampshire State Prison. He could have ended up anywhere in the country, but Divine Providence had another plan. One year later, in 2006, he was living in a cell with me. Just imagine this. After all he had silently endured in life, he ended up in a prison cell with a Catholic priest falsely accused of the very things that destroyed him. Only God could have devised such a starting point for a relationship that would reshape lives and redirect the future.

Four years later, in 2010, Pornchai was received into the Catholic faith on Divine Mercy Sunday. He took the name, Maximilian, after the Saint of Auschwitz who gave his life to salvage the life of another prisoner. A new life had arisen from the wreckage of the past. Finding redemption in the most unlikely place, Pornchai’s new life gave voice to Saint Paul’s revelation in Romans (5:20):

“Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more. ”

— Romans (5:20)

Two years later in 2012, Pornchai delivered the Valedictorian address for his high school graduating class. From there he obtained a scholarship for Catholic Studies at Catholic Distance University from where he maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA. Then he completed two diploma programs in psychology and social work at the Stratford Career Institute, and a certificate in Culinary Arts at the NH Prison’s Career and Technical Education Center. I was an eager beneficiary of that particular new skill. He also completed hundreds of hours in programs like Restorative Justice, Interpersonal Violence Prevention, Alternatives to Violence (for which he became a mentor and facilitator), and Father Michael Gaitley’s entire Hearts Afire list of programs. Father Gaitley then invited both of us to official membership in the Marian Missionaries of Divine Mercy.

Part II: Thrust Back upon the Road to Perdition

Clare Farr, a trademarks attorney in Western Australia and part of a small Intellectual Property law firm, worked with me and together, from two continents, we brought Richard Alan Bailey to justice. Pornchai could never imagine this to be possible, but it happened. Clare also assisted me in negotiations with the Maine prison system that had jurisdiction over Pornchai's case. No one who came to know this story believed that his own offense would have ever happened had he not first been the victim of horrible crimes. We were successful, and Pornchai was granted substantial earned time off his sentence for his remarkable efforts at rehabilitation.

On September 8, 2020, Pornchai was handed back over to Maine officials for the final days of his sentence. He wrote of this moment in a most moving guest post, “Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind.” Just three days later, on September 11, 2020, Pornchai was handed over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for removal from the United States. This became the final test that I mentioned at the beginning of this post.

September 11 was a Friday so Pornchai spent that weekend locked alone in a cell in the Cumberland County Jail in Portland, Maine. The fact that his sentence had already been served in full seemed completely lost on his keepers. He was told repeatedly that he is no longer a prisoner, but is now an ICE detainee. Alone in his cell, he had no contact with anyone, no access to a telephone, and no information. Clare Farr contacted ICE and was told that Pornchai would be moved to the Boston area on the following Monday to prepare for his travel to Thailand. When Monday and the ICE officers came, they told Pornchai the same thing, adding that he will be in Thailand by the end of September.

That night, he was taken to an air field in New Hampshire and flown along with dozens of Latino detainees on an ICE plane to Texas. Others detained at the Southern border were picked up there, and they were all flown to a private, for-profit GEO Group ICE detention facility in Pine Prairie, Western Louisiana. Meanwhile, ICE agents instructed the Royal Thai Consulate in New York to send Pornchai’s official travel documents to Boston — where they sat, lost, for weeks.

It took me a few days to find Pornchai. I had given him the number of his Godmother, Charlene Duline, and coached him to memorize it. I told him to call her collect from anywhere, and from there we could get funds onto a telephone account for him. He called, but did not understand that the system requires several minutes to process a collect call. Charlene, a former State Department Foreign Service Officer well acquainted with bureaucracy, was doing her best but Pornchai kept hanging up after waiting several minutes. Calls to the for-profit ICE facility for assistance were only met with rude refusals to assist.

I tell this story to convey the ridiculous nature of the one-size-fits-all treatment of ICE detainees. We had a team working on three continents to assist Pornchai, but we were challenged to our limit. What must some poor Mexican or Honduran family go through to navigate the nightmare of ICE? Not accepting defeat, and refusing to lose touch with Pornchai, I had to call Clare Farr in Australia who in turn called the ICE officer assigned to Pornchai’s case in Louisiana. He then had to call the GEO facility in Pine Prarie, LA, to tell a staff member to walk 20 feet to Pornchai’s cell and tell him to stay on the phone until his call can be processed.

It went like this day after day, week after week, month after month. ICE agents would show up once a week and Pornchai would ask them when he is leaving. “Maybe in a week or two,” he was always told. Inquiries from Clare Farr met with more cooperation, but no more honesty. She was told that ICE is actively working with the Thai Consulate to arrange travel. This was said on October 1. Two weeks later, Clare’s email to the Thai Consulate revealed that no contact from ICE had ever taken place.

Because Pornchai was originally under the jurisdiction of the State of Maine, we reached out to the office of Maine Senator Susan Collins for assistance. Her office declined to become involved. We then reached out to the office of Senator Angus King. His office made a determined effort to intercede with ICE, but received only a blunt refusal on the part of ICE to cooperate. It was made clear to us that ICE is accountable to no one.

Part III: Jena, Louisiana

Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of all this is the exploitation of detainees and their loved ones, most of whom are already financially challenged. Food portions are scant, and then food is sold to detainees at astronomical rates. Phone calls to loved ones were charged at 11-cents per minute with big kickbacks to the facility. A tablet for messages and games was available for lease at the rate of $24 per 8-hour shift. On a weekly basis, we provided funds for food and phone so Pornchai could remain in touch. I insisted that he call daily. I knew only too well how easily someone could simply “disappear” in ICE detention.

In the first week of October, Pornchai was suddenly moved to a facility in Jena, Louisiana in the center of the state. It was another for-profit detention center owned by GEO Group. We inquired with ICE headquarters in Washington, DC and were told that if Pornchai was moved to Jena, it’s because he is “very close” to a flight to Thailand. In a noisy, chaotic environment with up to 70 detainees in a room with blaring lights on around the clock, I feared for Pornchai’s safety and sanity.

The census consisted mostly of Central Americans detained at the Southern border. Only three of the 70, including Pornchai, were Asian: one from Laos, and one — an 18-year-old who spoke no English — from Vietnam. The young Vietnamese man had been there in Jena for over a year and had no contact with anyone outside. Pornchai asked if he could buy some extra food for him. I was embarrassed that he asked. He very quickly moved into the bunk above Pornchai who managed to keep him out of the drama always raging around them.

We hoped and prayed that the stay in Jena would not be long, but October came and went. Pornchai said he protested one day that his prison sentence is over so why is he still in prison? He was told, : “If you don't like it, you shouldn't have come to this country.” That spoke volumes about the amount of background ICE bothers to gather about detainees in their custody.

Complicating matters somewhat, Thailand had closed its borders to travellers with the exception of the repatriation of its own citizens. We were able to obtain a monthly list of repatriation flights to keep Pornchai’s hopes up. Several of these flights were out of New Orleans where jurisdiction over Pornchai’s ICE file resided. We would pour over these lists of flights trying to determine which ones Pornchai might be on. This became a futile and frustrating effort as October turned to November with no progress in sight.

When Pornchai was moved to Louisiana, jurisdiction over his Thai citizenship was transferred from the Royal Thai Consulate General in New York to the Thai Embassy in Washington. The Embassy was more than cooperative with us, and highly professional — a real tribute to the government and people of Thailand. The travel documents issued by the Embassy were valid for ninety days and would expire on December 10. Surely, we thought, ICE would not simply let them expire without action leaving Pornchai stranded and having to start all over again.

But that is exactly what they did. It was at that time that Catholic League President Bill Donohue and I put together a petition to the White House to spark some action in this matter. We had no idea at the time just how mired in its own drama the White House would become. Hundreds of Catholic League members and our own readers took part in that petition, and I thank you all. We may never know what impact this had on the final outcome, but my respect for Bill Donohue and the Catholic League has become immense.

Starting in early November, one of our friends, nurse and prolife activist Claire Dion, developed a plan that would allow Pornchai and me to speak each day. She sacrificed a lot to bring this about. Seven nights a week, Claire would be available to facilitate a conference call between Pornchai and me. This great effort is demonstrated in the photo below. It depicts one of our conversations which, for my part, became a daily pep talk to give Pornchai hope that even being encased in ICE will one day come to an end. The photo is somewhat humorous as Claire placed two cell phones with microphones and speakers opposite each other, but it worked.

Part IV: Navigating through the Night

Navigating Pornchai’s pain and frustration in these nightly calls was equally frustrating for me, but the calls were very necessary. As 2020 turned to 2021, our entire team had become almost as despondent as Pornchai. Was there to be no hope? On December 30, at my request, Clare Farr in Australia filed a civil rights petition with the Department of Homeland Security in Washington. As the agency that oversees ICE, we asked DHS to review Pornchai’s case for removal. As with other efforts, we may never know what impact, if any, this had behind the scenes. Bill Donohue and the Catholic League doubled down on their effort to bring this story to the White House.

Then our contact in Thailand obtained from the Embassy a list of the repatriation flights for January. There were only seven, and all were flying out of JFK International in New York. On that same day, I received a message from Australia with news from ICE that Pornchai would soon be relocated to New York. We were so hopeful that I made the mistake of conveying both pieces of news to Pornchai. Just days later, my heart sank as I had to tell him the news that all the repatriation flights scheduled for JFK for the month were filled and he did not make the cut. We were both devastated.

In mid January we received word that Pornchai was scheduled for a non-repatriation flight on January 25 to Seoul, South Korea. From there, he would board another flight to Bangkok. Pornchai was elated beyond measure with this news, and so were we. However, three days before the flight I had to convey to him the bad news that ICE postponed it. I believe that the ICE bureaucracy arranged the flight from New York to Bangkok but neglected to arrange to get him from Louisiana to New York.

We then learned that the flight was rescheduled for February 8. This became even more hopeful when ICE flew Pornchai from Louisiana to New York on February 3. His last five days in ICE custody proved to be the worst of all. He was locked in solitary confinement with only 20 minutes per day out of his cell with a choice of either a shower or a phone call. He had plenty of time alone to let his anxieties run amok. He feared another postponement and an extension of that nightmare. But he prayed, and knew that I prayed as well.

I would be remiss to not add the most important paragraph of this post. I was at the end of my third attempt at a Novena to Mary, Undoer of Knots. By this third effort, I had transitioned from prayerful, to cautiously hopeful, to downright demanding. She had, after all, intervened for us many times to undo the inevitable knots of prison. Surely ICE would not defeat Her! And it did not.

At noon on February 8, ICE agents escorted Pornchai aboard a Korean Airlines flight to Seoul out of JFK Airport. Sixteen hours later he boarded another flight from Seoul to Bangkok arriving at 11:27pm (Bangkok time) on February 9. He was exhausted but ready to face a new challenge in his life, and adjustment to freedom and a country and culture he had not seen for 36 years.

The Thai government has taken many steps to confront the Covid-19 crisis including the closing of its borders to international flights. Returning Thai citizens are required to spend their first 15 days home in quarantine at a hotel assigned by the Thai government. Our friend and Thai contact, Viktor Weyand scrambled to raise funds for the hotel stay and the reservations were made. Pornchai was assigned to a spacious room at the Holiday Inn Express Bangkok near the center of the city. He arrives there early in the morning on the day this is posted.

After all these years living with me in a 60-square-foot cell, he may find his room at the Holiday Inn to be too daunting and the bed just a bit too soft. I have already made him promise not to sleep in the bathtub.

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Addendum: Unlike Pornchai’s entire five-month stay with ICE, the two ICE agents who escorted him to Bangkok had obviously done a bit of homework. He reports that they were both professional and kind. Yes, even in a government bureaucracy one can be both. I commend these agents and I thank them.

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Donors purchased an iPhone for Pornchai which was left in his Holiday Inn Express hotel room to figure out. He has never touched, or even seen, a smart phone. For that matter, neither have I. But we will be speaking as soon as he can take a call. That will hopefully happen on the day this is posted. I asked him what is the first thing he will do after his 5-month ordeal in ICE. He said he will take a 6-hour bath and then sleep. Pornchai lost 20 pounds during his stay with ICE, but Viktor Weyand sent me a copy of the hotel’s Thai menu. Those pounds are not lost for long!

I will keep you posted on progress — and maybe a few selfies taken with the iPhone. Pornchai has the challenge of his life ahead. He is now adjusting to freedom and a new country and culture all at once after 28 years in prison and a 36-year absence from his homeland. Please pray for him.

He said he can’t wait to see Beyond These Stone Walls, on his iPhone, and then tell me what it looks like.

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Here are the related links presented in this post:

Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind

and one other that I recommend:

Saint Maximilian Kolbe Led Us into the Heart of Mary.

Please share this post!

St. Maximilian Kolbe Led Us into the Heart of Mary

A new battle in spiritual warfare; a new catastrophe behind these stone walls. Hope was at the brink as a Patron Saint spoke to broken hearts: “Behold your Mother!”

“We fly to thy protection O holy Mother of God. Despise not our petitions in our necessities, but deliver us from all danger, O ever glorious and blessed Virgin.Sub Tuum Praesiduum, 250 A.D”

— Sub Tuum Praesiduum, 250 A.D.

I usually try to shield readers from the darker realities of prison, but in 2016 I wrote a rare post entitled “Hebrews 13:3: Writing Just This Side of the Gates of Hell.” I presumed wrongly that most readers would not want to know about what really happens in the shadowy background behind These Stone Walls, but that post turned out to be among the most read and shared of the year. The wildly popular site, SpiritDaily.com featured that post, and sent readers to it by the thousands.

Of all the posts that I thought might get Spirit Daily’s attention that one came as a total surprise. It was an eye-opener for many about just how bad a few bad days in prison can be. We lived in another place then, under far more trying circumstances. Violence and treachery were daily events there, and the constant vigilance needed to cope with them took a mental and spiritual toll.

We were delivered from that place two years ago. I had been confined there for 23 years, and my friend, Pornchai Moontri was there for twelve years after having spent thirteen years in another prison, including seven in that prison’s solitary confinement. I described the relative freedom of the place to which we were moved, and our arduous path to get there, in “Pornchai Moontri at a Crossroads Behind These Stone Walls.”

We hoped this new place would be free of the drug culture and the violence and shady deals it spawns, but this is still prison. There has been less of it, for sure, but it is always lurking in the background. Complicating this, I was warned recently by a spiritually astute reader who told me of a troubling dream. In it, I became a target of the Evil One and the snares with which he engages in spiritual warfare.

There was a time when I may not have taken such a dream seriously. That time has long since passed. To tell you the story that I must convey to you now requires that I include our most recent round of spiritual battle that took us once again into darkness. Brace yourselves, for this account brought us to the very brink of ruin.

On Saturday, July 20, 2019, at 8:30 PM, Pornchai Moontri walked out of our cell, as he does every night at that time, for the trek outside and down eight flights of stairs for med-call. At that time, prisoners line up in the dark to enter an office two at a time for prescribed medications. You may recall that Pornchai takes meds at night to treat PTSD and to inhibit nightmares. But they could not prevent the nightmare about to unfold.

It was 100 degrees Fahrenheit in Concord, New Hampshire that night. The frayed nerves of an already unstable balance among prisoners had begun to unravel. I was on a telephone call on my GTL tablet up in our cell while Pornchai waited patiently in line for his medications down below. Fifteen minutes after he left the cell in which I now write this, someone walked in and handed me a scribbled note with four ominous words: “Pornchai is being lugged.”

The Truth Will Set You Free … Maybe

“Being lugged” is prison-speak for being taken away in restraints to solitary confinement. If you know of Pornchai and his history, this had shocking reverberations. I quickly ended my call and went down below to find out what I could — which was not much. All I heard was a collection of muddled stories and conflicting accounts about a quick but brutal outburst of violence.

The initial story — the one told first and loudest — is too often the one that prevails. That story was that Pornchai violently assaulted two prisoners, sending one to the hospital. I was told that Pornchai may never be back. Two hours later, at 10:30 PM, officers showed up in our cell with bags. They asked me to pack all of Pornchai’s belongings and bring them down to the office for inventory — a sure sign that he may not be returning.

I cannot convey in words what that night was like. After thirteen years as Pornchai’s roommate — thirteen years of pulling him, in his own words, “out of a deep dark pit” and rebuilding a shattered life — all was wiped out in an instant. I was determined, however, to find out the real story and get at the truth. But in prison, “truth” is often clouded by dark agendas, gang ties, and identity politics at their worst.

Sunday brought another day of 100-degree heat. After a sleepless night pondering what could have happened, I approached the Unit Sergeant at 7:00 AM. I knew that if he filled the empty bunk in my cell, as would usually happen, then Pornchai could never return. There was a lot at stake. Many had just labored for years to bring about the elusive restorative justice that Australian attorney Clare Farr described in these pages: “When Justice Came to Pornchai Moontri, Mercy Followed.”

I asked the Unit Sergeant if he would wait two days to reassign Pornchai’s bunk until we could discover exactly what took place. He said he would leave the bunk empty until Wednesday — three days away — while he investigates the story told by the two “victims.” Fortunately, he and other dedicated prison staff members did not immediately buy the story as told. Their knowledge and experience of Pornchai did not support what they were first told.

Meanwhile, over the next three days, Pornchai languished in intense heat and sleepless solitary confinement. He was unable to communicate or to learn anything at all. He kept running what happened through his mind, wondering what he could have done differently. As the hours in solitary stretched interminably, his hope began to fray.

The immensity of loss began to weigh heavily as he fought against despair. This was the setback of all setbacks for him. He knew and trusted that I would be working on it, but he also knew that prison imposes grave limitations. He began to pray, asking his Patron Saint, Maximilian Kolbe, for guidance and the preservation of hope. As time wore on, however, darkness enveloped him.

Pornchai could not know that the real story slowly unfolded as several more reliable witnesses were summoned to give statements. Then staff had the tedious job of reviewing camera footage and other evidence to corroborate them. This is what was learned:

As Pornchai stood in line that night, just as his turn to enter the door to retrieve his medications was coming up, two prisoners rushed up on either side of him and cut into the line in front of him. He politely asked them to go to the end of the line, telling them that this is unfair to him and to all the prisoners waiting in line. The two then turned on him in hostile confrontation.

Not knowing Pornchai at all, one claimed to be an “ex Golden Gloves boxer” and then threatened Pornchai to stay out of their way. The second wasn’t waiting for a reply. He delivered two violent blows to Pornchai’s face. In a split second, Pornchai’s instincts for self-defense — and they are formidable — kicked in. The man who delivered the blows was delivered to the ground while “Mr. Golden Gloves” ran away.

It turned out that the two of them had devised a plan to attempt to retrieve and sell their prescribed drugs to help pay off their mounting debts for contraband Street drugs. It’s a process common in prison — or at least attempting it is common. Their plan required that they provide cover for each other to distract the person dispensing the meds.

They would then tuck the medication capsule into a cheek, and then pretend they swallowed it only to retrieve it for sale once out of view of security staff. Carrying out this plan meant having to present themselves for meds at the same time, and that meant cutting in line.

Now Comes a Patron Saint

The man who delivered the one-two punch into Pornchai’s face was taken to a hospital where he was found to have multiple injuries. As is protocol for such events in prison, the last man standing was presumed to be the aggressor and was taken away in restraints for a stint in solitary confinement. “Mr Golden Gloves” ran to his cell where he concocted a story about the out-of-control Asian who violently attacked them unprovoked. The truth slowly unfolded.

I commend the professionalism of officers here who did not jump to conclusions. It turned out that most of the real assailant’s injuries were the result of multiple other fights that he had been in. This is the stock in trade of the illicit drug scene in prison. But even after all of this became known by Monday night, I was still being told that Pornchai would not be returning.

So on that night, I did the only thing left to do. The one item of Pornchai’s that I had not packed, but held onto for safekeeping, was the St. Maximilian Rosary made for him by TSW  reader Kathleen Riney in Texas. So once again facing a sleepless night, I spent it in prayer for Pornchai, asking his namesake, Saint Maximilian Kolbe, for his intercession.

As he always does, he reminded me early on Tuesday morning that I had neglected something. As I awoke at 5:00 AM after just an hour or two of fitful sleep, my first thought was that I should pray the Memorare. I imagined Saint Maximilian himself praying that same prayer in his final hours on the morning of August 14, 1941, when he did not starve to death fast enough to suit his captors.

“Remember, O most gracious Virgin Mary, that never was it known that anyone who fled to your protection, implored your help, or sought your intercession was left unaided. Inspired by this confidence, I fly unto you, O Virgin of virgins, my Mother. To you do I come, before you I stand, sinful and sorrowful. O Mother of the Word Incarnate, despise not my petitions, but in your mercy hear and answer me. Amen.”

As you know, Saint Maximilian was in that cell dying because he chose to sacrifice himself for the life of another prisoner. As I prayed the prayer, a thought came to me. I quickly rummaged through the “working on it” stack of paper in a corner of my tiny cell to find a copy of “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

Armed with that document, I made my way in the dark of early morning to the offices down below, the scene of the “crime.” At 6:45 AM, the Unit Lieutenant arrived for his shift. A fair and “by the book” man, I asked for a few minutes. In his office, I gave him the copy of that post and challenged him: “Before you decide the fate of someone under your authority, I believe you should at least know the person and what has gone on in his life.” He said he would read it.

I learned later that Pornchai, after his third fitful night in solitary confinement also awoke at 5:00 AM, and he also asked for guidance from his patron saint who also reminded him to pray the Memorare. Sitting on the concrete floor in the dark, he did the best he could going solely on memory. “You know what is in my heart, Blessed Mother,” he prayed, “and thanks to Saint Maximilian I know what is in yours.”

Three hours past, then his cell door opened. In walked Lieutenant Brown, the rolled-up article still in his hand. “Mr. Moontri,” he said. “The investigation has cleared you of culpability in this matter. After all you have been through, it is time you had a break. I’ll try to have you out of here this afternoon.”

“Where am I going?” Pornchai asked. “Back where you belong,” the Lieutenant said.

Addendum

I returned from work that afternoon to a traumatized but much relieved roommate sitting on his upper bunk surrounded by plastic bags filled with the sum total of his worldly possessions. It was a while before he could speak. For the next hour, we both recounted those three days and nights from our own perspective. The saddest moment was when Pornchai told me that from the tiny window in his solitary confinement cell he could see up over a wall to the very top of the door of the cell that we live in. It only deepened his sadness and sense of loss.

After showering and sleeping — neither of which he was able to do in solitary confinement — Pornchai was up early the next morning waiting for Lieutenant Brown’s arrival down below. He asked the Lieutenant what has happened to the young man who punched him. “He is now where you were,” said the Lieutenant, “but he finally told the whole truth.” Pornchai asked if that man could be allowed to come back.

“He needs a time out for a month or two because of his behavior,” said the Lieutenant, “Why are you asking?” “Maybe I could work with him; maybe I could show him a better way,” said Pornchai. “Why?” asked the surprised Lieutenant. “It’s what someone did for me. It’s what our Mother would want from me,” said Pornchai. “It’s what I want from myself.”

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AN IMPORTANT NOTE TO READERS FROM FATHER GORDON MACRAE:

In honor of Saint Maximilian Kolbe who points us always to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, a special These Stone Walls Facebook Page is being launched on August 14. Please visit, “like” and follow this page.