Oprah, Geraldo, and a Psycho-Therapist: A Perfect Storm

Popular 1980s daytime television hosts like Oprah, Geraldo and others injected repressed memory into pop psychology bringing unjust harm to a multitude of innocents.

December 3, 2025 by Fr. Gordon MacRae and the False Memory Syndrome Foundation

Just as I was preparing to type this post, an alert reader informed me that my name is mentioned in a brief but brilliant article by William A. Donohue, PhD, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights. The article, “What Happens When Truth Doesn’t Matter” appears in the November 2025 issue of the Catholic League Journal Catalyst. It tells a fascinating but disturbing story about a wealthy woman who had developed a best-selling memoir recounting her newly emerged memories of being raped by a middle school teacher 37 years earlier when she was 12. The story emerged with the help of a psychotherapist and the influence of a psychedelic drug called MDMA. The story propelled her memoir, promoted by Oprah Winfrey and other daytime TV luminaries. But it destroyed the life and career of the now elderly teacher, who had a spotless record and who vehemently denies the claims for which there is no other evidence beyond the memoir itself.

One well-known advocate of the use of the drug MDMA in therapy has gone on record to state that “whether or not repressed memories actually happened — from a therapeutic perspective — does not matter. People develop stories that help them make sense of their life … whether it is true or not, it has value because the emotion is real.” So is the irreparable harm done to an innocent man.

One of our readers sent this story to me because of a curious incident during my 1994 trial. As I sat before Judge Arthur Brennan, twelve jurors and a gaggle of prosecutors and news media in Cheshire County Superior Court in Keene, New Hampshire, the Court was listening intently to some wild testimony from 27-year-old Thomas Grover. He was describing how, a dozen years earlier at age 15, he came to me for five counseling sessions for his drug addiction while claiming to have been forcibly raped at the end of each session. When asked the obvious question of why, after that first horrific encounter he returned again and again, he stated simply, “I don’t know how I got there. I repressed it.”

With pre-trial coaching from Detective James F. McLaughlin and psychotherapist Pauline Goupil, MA (now Pauline Goupil Vachon) — to whom Grover was referred by Robert Upton, his contingency lawyer — the details of a series of fictitious sexual assaults emerged from a dozen years earlier in the summer months of 1983. In earlier interviews between Grover and McLaughlin, the assaults were alleged to have occured in 1978 when Grover was 11, and then changed to 1980 when Grover was 13. Police reports indicate that Detective McLaughlin gave him a copy of my résumé “to help him with his dates.” The allegations were then updated to 1983, one year after my ordination to the Catholic priesthood, but the trial came twelve years later.

In the media-fueled background leading up to that trial was a lot of dishonest hype and consternation for which my Bishop and the Diocese of Manchester felt obliged to respond. Months before the trial began my Bishop issued a press release with the following pre-trial statement:

“The Church has been a victim of the actions of Gordon MacRae just as these individuals. It is clear that he will never again function as a priest.”

The die was cast. The verdict came first, and then the trial. From my perspective, this was never a story of so-called repressed and recovered memory, but rather a massive con perpetrated by a professional con man latching on to the rhetoric of the day for a quick-and-easy monetary settlement. He was given $200,000 by the Diocese of Manchester.

Alarmed at some point that Thomas Grover failed to show up for Ms. Goupil’s pre-trial coaching sessions, she sent him a letter which found its way into my trial, but not for the eyes and ears of the jury: “I have news,” Ms. Goupil wrote to Thomas Grover. “Jim” [Detective James F. McLaughlin] “told me that MacRae is being offered a plea deal his lawyers will want him to take so there likely won’t be a trial. We can just move on with the settlement.”

Unaware of that letter, and of the existence of Pauline Goupil and her pre-trial coaching of Grover, I was informed by my attorney that Prosecutor Bruce Elliott Reynolds presented a pre-trial deal to serve no more than one to three years in prison — later reduced to one to two — if I plead guilty. Because the alleged crimes never took place, I simply could not fathom doing this. I was repeatedly told, even by my own lawyer, that innocent defendants often have to take such deals to control a sentence if convicted. My lawyer reminded me that under New Hampshire law, no evidence beyond the accusation itself is required for a guilty verdict.

I was told that it all comes down to the credibility of a witness over the credibility of a defendant. Then I was reminded that I am a Catholic priest accused amid a barrage of accusations brought against other Catholic priests in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, all awaiting a lucrative payday. As our title suggests, it was a perfect storm.

Drug-Induced Courtroom Drama

There were some moments of high drama in this trial. A woman seated in the courtroom gallery with line of site to the witness stand was observed to influence Thomas Grover’s testimony. During cross examination from my attorney, Grover protested to Judge Arthur Brennan that he cannot answer the attorney’s questions if he insists on standing near the defendant. So the judge instructed my lawyer to walk to the other side of the court to ask his questions. The question at hand was, “Who did you go to first with your claims, the police or a lawyer?” Instead of answering, Thomas Grover began to cry.

During a break in the trial, two persons who were present approached my attorney to report what they had just observed. The real issue was that while standing next to the defense table to pose his questions, my attorney was blocking the line of sight between Grover and that woman. The two court observers also reported to my attorney that the woman in question was giving Grover hand signals to influence and direct his testimony. This information was then reported to Judge Arthur Brennan, who apparently ignored it. Many years later one of these observers, Leo Demers, a PBS broadcasting official, wrote a letter to Judge Brennan, who again did not address the specific allegation:

“We saw something in your courtroom during the MacRae trial that I don’t think you ever saw. My wife nudged me and pointed to a woman, Ms. Pauline Goupil, who was engaged in what appeared to be clear witness tampering. During questioning by the defense attorney, Thomas Grover seemed to feel trapped a few times. On some of those ocassions, we witnessed Pauline Goupil make a distinct sad expression with a downturned mouth and gesturing with her finger from the corner of her eye down her cheek at which point Mr. Grover would begin to cry on the stand. I have been troubled about this for all these years. I know what I saw, and what I saw was a clear attempt to dupe the Court and the jury.”

— Statement of Leo Demers

In his brief response, retired Judge Brennan did not address any of the specific allegation of Leo Demers. Despite a pre-trial court order to turn over to the defense all records of Grover’s psychotherapy and counseling, the above incident was the first time my defense learned of therapist Pauline Goupil and her pre-trial coaching of Thomas Grover.

In a post-trial statement of Trina Ghedoni, who was Thomas Grover’s wife at the time of this trial, she reported that all information before and during trial passed through Pauline Goupil to Detective McLaughlin. Trina Ghedoni also reported that Pauline Goupil arranged for Mr. Grover to be drugged during the trial.

In “Repressed Memory Therapy: Lies of the Mind,” a foundational 1993 article in Time Magazine, author Leon Jaroff attributed the sensational emergence of repressed memory not to expert opinion, but to trends in popular culture “featured prominently on Geraldo, Oprah, Sally Jessy Raphael and other daytime TV talk shows.” The notion of repressed and recovered memory has never appeared in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association.

Lies of the Mind or a Pathological Liar?

The famous Swiss psychologist, Jean Piaget, once penned an amazing account of false memory from his childhood. From early childhood on into adolescence, Piaget had a firm memory of an incident involving his nurse with himself as the potential victim of a kidnapping attempt. He had a clear memory of his nanny pushing him in a carriage when a man came up and tried to take him. He remembered in vivid detail the location of the event, the villain, the struggle, and the outcome. He recalled deep scratches on his nanny’s arms as she boldly fended off the attacker, and he remembered the police officer who came to their rescue.

However, when Piaget was 15 years old, his nanny decided to atone for her own past offenses. She publically admitted that she made up the entire kidnapping story including scratching her own arms to make it look as though an attacker had done it. Piaget was shocked to learn at age 15 that this story that haunted his early childhood, a story for which he had formed and retained vivid memories, never actually took place. In adulthood, Piaget concluded that his memories of the event arose and took shape solely from the nanny’s retelling of the false story in his childhood. Eventually the scene became rooted in Piaget’s memory as an actual event.

Another troubling story of memory reconstruction as evidence was reported by The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz in her myth-shattering book, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times. The terror this time was inflicted in Boston courts upon 61-year-old grandparents, Ray and Shirley Souza. No one could tell this with more succinctly existential terror than Dorothy Rabinowitz:

“Ray and Shirley Souza’s 24-year-old daughter had a dream one night. In the dream, her parents raped her. It was now the 1990s, the era of the repressed memory syndrome. Ray and Shirley’s grandchildren were taken to see therapists and interrogated. In court they testified that their grandparents tied them in a cage in the basement and raped them with elbows and feet and a big machine. Judge [Elizabeth] Dolan ruled [with no further evidence] that the children’s stories were credible and sentenced the Souza’s to a term of fifteen years in prison.”

— No Crueler Tyrannies, p. 90

Thus began the era of “Believe the Children” and the shame shrouded upon anyone who dared question a child’s account of abuse — even if the account emerged without evidence in the office of an agenda-driven therapist. It was also the era in which the case against me emerged.

And it was the era that gave birth to the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and its efforts to breathe sanity and reason into what can only be described as the emotional takeover of psychology and the justice system. The FMSF was established in 1992 and continued until 2019 to amass a database of false-memory claims and expertise in psychology and the legal system that refuted them. In 2008 the False Memory Syndrome Foundation published the following report on my 1994 trial and conviction:

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From the quarterly journal of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation — Fall 2008, Vol. 17, No. 4, p. 8

FATHER MACRAE

A Reminder That There Are Still Many People in Prison Based Only on Accusations of Recovered Memories

Although there is no doubt of the Catholic Church’s irresponsible handling of thousands of reports of clergy abuse, there are also a growing number of cases in which priests appear to have been wrongly convicted. The case of Rev. Gordon MacRae, which was detailed by Dorothy Rabinowitz in 2005 in The Wall Street Journal, appears to be one of them.

In May 1993, Rev. Gordon MacRae was arrested for sexually assaulting three New Hampshire boys [all three came forward as adults at the same time, with the same claim of repressed memory, but only the claims of Thomas Grover went to trial], when he had been a priest there a decade earlier. The early 1990s were heydays for accusations of sexual abuse based on new-found memories and just about everything that could go wrong for the defense did go wrong.

Among the problems was a letter from Florida informing local police that MacRae was a suspect in a murder/sex crime there. This was the final bit of tinder for a hyper-zealous detective who then repeatedly interviewed many young people who knew MacRae and even attempted a series of “stings.” By the time that the Florida case was declared bogus, there was no stopping the effort to convict MacRae.

Prosecutors offered various plea arrangements to MacRae, who is serving a life term, but he refused them all, declaring his innocence. Indeed, Fr. MacRae would have been released after one to three years if he had taken a plea or would have been released on parole if he confessed. The “Catch-22” of prison is that those who do not admit guilt will not receive parole.

At the criminal trial, witness Thomas Grover’s testimony verged on the bizarre. He had accused MacRae of abusing him during counseling sessions. When asked why he continued to go to the sessions, Grover explained that he had ‘out of body’ experiences and completely forgot between sessions that he had ever been sodomized.

Even the judge’s rulings appeared biased. According to Rabinowitz:

“Throughout his testimony, [accuser] Thomas Grover repeatedly railed at the priest for forcing him to endure the torments of a trial. He would not have much to fear, in the end, in these proceedings, whose presiding judge, Arthur D. Brennan, refused to allow into evidence Thomas Grover’s long juvenile history of theft, assault, forgery and drug offenses. In New Hampshire, where juries need only find the accuser credible in sex abuse cases, with no proofs required, this was no insignificant restriction. The judge also took it upon himself to instruct jurors to “disregard inconsistencies in Mr. Grover’s testimony,” and said that they should not think him dishonest because of his failure to answer questions. The jury had much to disregard.”

To read more about this case: Beyond These Stone  Walls/About

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Editor’s Note: Thank you for reading and sharing this troubling story, which should have had equal time in the influential daytime talk shows that contributed to it. You may also wish to read and share the following published statements of persons with first-hand knowledge of this case who have never been permitted by any New Hampshire judge to offer their testimony under oath.

• Statement of Leo Demers, PBS Television executive

• Statement of Dorothy Rabinowitz, The Wall Street Journal

• Statement of former FBI Special Agent James Abbott

• Statement of Trina Ghedoni

• Statement of Charles Glenn

• Statement of Steven Wollschlager

• Statement of Debra Collett, Thomas Grover’s former therapist

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.”

#MeToo and #HimToo: Jonathan Grover and Father Gordon MacRae

Jonathan Edward Grover died in Scottsdale Arizona just before his 49th birthday. His role in the case against Father Gordon MacRae leaves many unanswered questions.

Editor’s Note: The following is a guest post by independent writer Ryan A. MacDonald whose previous articles include “The Post-Trial Extortion of Father Gordon MacRae” and “A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court.”

When I read Father Gordon MacRae’s Holy Week post on These Stone Walls this year, I was struck by a revelation that he offered Mass in his prison cell for the soul of a man who helped put him there by falsely accusing him. I do not know that I could have done the same in his shoes, and even if I could, I am not so certain that I would. His post took a high road that most only strive for.

The unnamed subject of that post about Judas Iscariot was Jonathan Edward Grover who died in Arizona in February two weeks before his 49th birthday. An obituary indicated that he died “peacefully,” and cited ‘a “long career in the financial industry.” Police determined the cause of death to be an accidental overdose of self-injected opiates weeks after leaving rehab. In Arizona, he had charges for theft, criminal trespass, and multiple arrests for driving under the influence of drugs. A police report described him as “homeless.”

In the early 1990s, Jonathan Grover was one of Father MacRae’s accusers. MacRae first learned of Mr. Grover’s death from a letter written by a woman who had been a young adult friend of Grover at the time of MacRae’s trial in 1994. She wrote that she is now a social worker with “expertise in PTSD” (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder). The letter accused MacRae of having “murdered” 48-year-old Grover. This requires a rational and factual response.

Of interest, Mr. Grover’s obituary – despite his being 48 years old at the time of death – featured his 1987 Keene High School (NH) graduation photograph when Grover was 18 years old. I had seen this photo before. It was among the discovery materials in MacRae’s defense files in preparation for his 1994 trial. The photograph raised the first of many doubts about Grover’s claims.

At age 18 in 1987, Grover gave Father Gordon MacRae, his parish priest and friend at the time, a nicely framed copy of that photo with a letter written on the back. It thanked MacRae for his “friendship and support,” and “for always being there for me.” It was a typically touching letter from a young man to someone he obviously admired. It was written before addiction and the inevitable justification of enablers took hold in his life.

Five years later, apparently forgetting that he ever wrote that letter, Jonathan Grover became the first of four adult brothers to accuse MacRae of a series of sexual assaults alleged to have occurred more than a decade earlier. So what happened between writing that letter in 1987 and accusing MacRae five years later in 1992? It is one of the burning questions left behind in this story.

The framed high school photograph and its accompanying letter never found their way into MacRae’s 1994 trial, or into the public record, because the trial dealt only with the claims of Jonathan’s brother, Thomas Grover. Jonathan was the first to accuse MacRae, but a trial on his claims was deferred. His story had many holes that did not reconcile with the facts. Investigators have since uncovered a different story from the one Grover and his brothers first told.

Bombshells and Black Ops

The two common denominators in the case against Father Gordon MacRae were expectations of money and James F. McLaughlin. In the 1980s, the city of Keene, New Hampshire, with a population then of about 26,000, employed a full-time sex crimes detective on its small police force. In 1988, McLaughlin launched investigations of at least three, and possibly more, Catholic priests in the area including Father Gordon MacRae.

His targeting of MacRae seems to have begun with a bizarre and explosive letter. In September 1988, Detective McLaughlin received a letter from Sylvia Gale, a social worker with the Division of Children, Youth and Families, the New Hampshire agency tasked with investigating child abuse. Ms. Gale’s letter to McLaughlin revealed that she had uncovered information about “a man in your area, a Catholic priest named Gordon MacRae.”

The letter described explosive information from an unnamed employee of Catholic Social Services in the Diocese of Manchester, who developed a slanderous tale that MacRae had been “a priest in Florida where he molested two boys, one of whom was murdered and his body mutilated.” The letter went on to claim that the case was still unsolved, and that MacRae was removed from Florida by Catholic Church officials to avoid that investigation.

The libelous letter also named a Church official, Monsignor John Quinn, as the source of this information reportedly told to an unnamed Church employee on the condition that she would be fired if she ever divulged it. The 1988 letter generated a secret 70-page report developed by Detective James McLaughlin. He launched a dogged pursuit of MacRae who was unaware at the time that any of this was going on.

This all began to unfold one year after Jonathan Grover graduated from Keene High School and presented Father MacRae with that framed photograph and letter of thanks. Armed with Sylvia Gale’s letter, Detective McLaughlin proceeded to question 26 Keene area adolescents and their parents who had known MacRae including members of the Grover family.

Up to that point, not one person had ever actually contacted McLaughlin with a complaint against MacRae, but rather it was McLaughlin who initiated these contacts. As reported below, some of them today claim to have been solicited by McLaughlin to accuse MacRae, some with the enticement of money.

I had to read up to page 54 of McLaughlin’s 1988 report before I came across any effort to corroborate the Florida “murder and mutilation” story with Florida law enforcement officials. By the time he learned that MacRae had never served as a priest in Florida and that no such crime had been committed there, the damage to MacRae’s reputation was already done, and the seeds were sown for the Grover brothers to ponder claims yet to come.

Among those approached by McLaughlin armed with Sylvia Gale’s slanderous letter was Mrs. Patricia Grover, Jonathan’s mother. A parishioner of Saint Bernard Parish in Keene where MacRae had served from 1983 to 1987, Mrs. Grover was also a DCYF social worker and an acquaintance of Sylvia Gale. She had previously worked with McLaughlin in the handling of other cases.

Mrs. Grover also knew Father MacRae. According to McLaughlin’s 1988 report, she was alarmed by the Sylvia Gale letter but doubted that MacRae had ever served as a priest in Florida. She nonetheless vowed to talk with her young adult sons about their relationship with MacRae. Four more years passed before the first of them, Jonathan Grover, accused him.

The “fake news” in the 1988 Sylvia Gale letter set this community abuzz with anxiety and gossip about the potentially lecherous and murderous priest in its midst. Later, Monsignor John Quinn and other Diocese of Manchester officials denied having any involvement in the untrue information about MacRae. They also denied that there was ever any priest who relocated from Florida to New Hampshire under the circumstances described.

Four years later in late 1992, Jonathan Grover became the first of four members of the Grover family to accuse Father Gordon MacRae of sexual abuse dating back to approximately the early 1980s. I use the word “approximately” because Grover and his brothers each presented highly conflicting and multiple versions of their stories and the relevant time frames.

As becomes clear below, Jonathan Grover’s claims became problematic for the prosecution of MacRae, but instead of questioning Grover’s veracity, the police detective engaged a contingency lawyer on Grover’s behalf. In a September 30, 1992 letter from McLaughlin to Jonathan Grover, the detective detailed his conversations with Keene attorney William Cleary who ultimately obtained a nearly $200,000 settlement for Grover from the Diocese of Manchester. From McLaughlin’s letter to Grover:

“As agreed, I contacted William Cleary about your case. Bill believes the statute of limitations has lapsed for a civil action, but this does not rule out the church being financially responsible Bill [Cleary] states he would like to meet with you for a conference. You would not be charged for this. Your options could then be outlined and discussed.”

There is reason to question Detective McLaughlin’s police reports in this case. In most of McLaughlin’s prior cases, he practiced a protocol of audio recording every interview with complainants. In many of his other reports that I have read, he made a point of explaining that he records interviews to protect the integrity of the investigation.

Two years prior to the Grover claims, for example, McLaughlin investigated a complaint against another former Keene area priest, Father Stephen Scruton. From the outset, his reports took pains to document his practice of securing both video and audio recordings of his interviews. He even administered a polygraph test on the accuser. All were standard protocol, but McLaughlin did not create a single recording of any type with any accuser in the case of Father Gordon MacRae. This is suspect, at best, and it has never been explained.

It is made more suspicious by the emergence of other information that has been developed by former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott who spent three years investigating the MacRae case. One of MacRae’s accusers, a high school classmate of Jonathan Grover, recanted his story when questioned by Mr. Abbott in 2008. An excerpt of Steven Wollschlager’s statement may shed light on why Detective McLaughlin chose not to record these interviews.

“In 1994 I was contacted by Keene Police Detective McLaughlin… I was aware at the time of Father MacRae’s trial knowing full well that it was bogus and having heard of the lawsuits and money involved and also the reputations of those who were making accusations… The lawsuits and money were of greatest discussion, and I was left feeling that if I would go along with the story I could reap the rewards as well. McLaughlin had me believing that all I had to do was make up a story about this priest and I could receive a large sum of money as others already had.

McLaughlin reminded me of the young child and girlfriend I had and referenced that life could go easier for us with a large amount of money… I was at the time using drugs and would have been influenced to say anything they wanted for money.”

— Steven Wollschlager

In “The Trials of Father MacRae,” a 2013 article by Dorothy Rabinowitz in The Wall Street Journal, Detective McLaughlin described the above account simply as “a fabrication.” What struck me about Mr. Wollschlager’s statement, besides the fact that he had nothing whatsoever to gain by lying, is that he never went to Detective McLaughlin with an accusation. Instead, he alleges that it was McLaughlin who approached him, and the approach alleges the enticement of money.

Steven Wollschlager was not the first person to report such an overture. Given the nature of his account and others, it is unclear today whether Jonathan Grover and his brothers initiated their first contacts with this detective. This suspicion was a contentious issue in MacRae’s 1994 trial. Thomas Grover, the brother of Jonathan Grover, was asked under oath to reveal to whom he went first with his claims, the police or a personal injury lawyer, but he refused to answer. To this very day, that question has never been answered.

What became clear, however, is hard evidence that placed Detective James McLaughlin investigating at least some of this case, not from his office in the Keene Police Department, but from the Concord, NH office of Thomas Grover’s contingency lawyer, Robert Upton, before MacRae was even charged in the case.

A Conspiracy of Fraud

In a report labeled Case No. 93010850, Detective McLaughlin produced the first of several conflicting accounts of untaped interviews with Jonathan Grover. Note that the first two digits of McLaughlin’s report, “93,” seem to indicate the year it was typed, but the date on the report is August 27, 1992. The content of this report is sexually explicit so I will paraphrase. The report has Grover claiming that when he was 12 or 13 years old he “would spend nights in the St. Bernard rectory in Keene.” During those nights, he alleged, he was sexually assaulted by both Father Gordon MacRae and Father Stephen Scruton.

But there was an immediate problem. MacRae was never at St. Bernard’s Parish in Keene until being assigned there on June 15, 1983, when Grover was 14 years old. Father Stephen Scruton was never there before June of 1985 when Grover was 16 years old. These dates were easily determined from diocesan files, but McLaughlin never investigated this. The report continued with claims alleged to have taken place in the Keene YMCA hot tub:

“It was during these times that Grover would be seated in the whirlpool and both Father MacRae and Father Scruton would be joined in conversation and they would alternate in rubbing their foot against his genitals. Grover was unsure if the priests were acting in concert or if they were unaware of each other’s actions.”

This report is highly suspicious. Just months earlier, Detective McLaughlin had previously investigated Father Stephen Scruton for an identical claim brought by another person alleged to have occurred in 1985 after Scruton’s arrival at this parish. “Todd,” the person who brought that claim against Scruton, was also a high school classmate of Jonathan Grover.

After McLaughlin’s investigation, “Todd” obtained an undisclosed sum of money in settlement from the Diocese of Manchester. That interview with “Todd” was labeled Case No. 90035705 dated just 18 months before Jonathan Grover’s identical claims emerged. Unlike the Grover interviews, the interview with Todd was tape recorded by McLaughlin. Here is an excerpt from the report:

“Father Scruton was a regular at the YMCA. Todd went to the YMCA with Father Scruton. They decided to use the hot tub… At one point, Father Scruton took one of his feet and placed it between Todd’s legs and rubbed his genitals… The touching was intentional and not a mistake. A rubbing motion was used by Father Scruton… I asked Todd where he stood on civil lawsuits.”

It defies belief that a small town police detective could write a report about a Catholic priest (Scruton) fondling a teenager’s genitals in a YMCA hot tub, then 18 months later write virtually the same report with the same claims of doing the same things in the same place, only this time adding a second priest, but nothing in the second report seemed to even vaguely remind the detective of the first report.

After “Todd’s” YMCA hot tub complaint in 1990 — 18 months before Jon Grover’s own YMCA hot tub story — Father Stephen Scruton was charged by McLaughlin with misdemeanor sexual assault. He pled guilty and received a suspended sentence and probation. One year later, McLaughlin has someone else repeat the same story, only now involving both Scruton and MacRae, but two to four years before either of them was present in Keene.

What is most suspect about this claim of Jonathan Grover involving both priests is that in 1994, one year after writing the report, McLaughlin responded to a question under oath:

On occasion, I have had conversations with Reverend Stephen Scruton, however I have no recollection of ever discussing any actions of Gordon MacRae with the Reverend Scruton.

(Cited in USDC-NM 1504-JB)

But this all becomes more suspicious still. In the investigation file on these claims was found a transcript of a November 1988 Geraldo Rivera Show entitled “The Church’s Sexual Watergate.” It was faxed by the Geraldo Show in New York to Detective McLaughlin at the Keene Police Department two months after his 1988 receipt of the Sylvia Gale “Florida letter.” It was two years before “Todd’s” YMCA hot tub claim about Father Scruton and four years before Jonathan Grover’s claims. Here is an excerpt:

“Geraldo Rivera: What did the priest do to you Greg?
Greg Ridel: Around the age of 12 or so, he and I went to a YMCA. And I was an altar boy at the time. And the first time I was ever touched… he began stroking my penis in a hot tub, I believe it was, at a YMCA. From there it went to what you might call role playing in the rectory where the priests stay.”

— “The Church’s Sexual Watergate,” Geraldo Show, Nov. 14, 1988

Detective McLaughlin’s 1993 police report also had Jonathan Grover claiming that Father MacRae paid him money in the form of checks from his own and parish checking accounts in even amounts of $50 to $100 in order to maintain his silence about the abuse. McLaughlin never investigated this, but Father MacRae’s lawyer did investigate. Father MacRae’s personal checking account was researched from between 1979 to 1988. It revealed no checks issued to Jonathan or Thomas Grover.

However, the attorney uncovered several checks written from parish accounts to both Jonathan Grover and Thomas Grover. All were in even amounts between $40 and $100 and dated between 1985 and 1987 when these two brothers were 16 to 20 years of age respectively. The checks were filled out and signed by Rev. Stephen Scruton.

Days before Father Gordon MacRae’s 1994 trial commenced, his attorney sought Father Scruton for questioning. He declined to respond. When the lawyer sought a subpoena to force his deposition, Scruton fled the state. During trial, the jury heard none of this. Because the trial involved the shady claims of Thomas Grover alone, the defense could not introduce anything involving his brother, Jonathan.

In April, 2005, The Wall Street Journal published an extensive two-part investigation report of the Father MacRae case (“A Priest’s Story” Parts One and Two), but it omitted Father Stephen Scruton’s role in the story — perhaps because he could not be located. Diocese of Manchester officials reported for years that they had no awareness of Scruton’s whereabouts.

In November 2008, former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott was retained to investigate this case. He located Father Scruton at an address in Newburyport, Massachusetts just over the New Hampshire State Line. First reached by telephone, Scruton was reportedly agitated and nervous when he learned the reason for the call. The investigator heard a clear male voice in the background saying, “Steve if this is something that might help Gordon I think you should do it.” Scruton reluctantly agreed to meet.

The former FBI agent drove from his New York office to Newburyport, MA on the agreed-upon date and time, but Scruton refused to open the door. He said only that he had “consulted with someone” and now declines to answer any questions. The investigator then sent Scruton a summary of his involvement in this case and requested his cooperation by telling the simple truth.

Days after receiving it, Stephen Scruton suffered a mysterious fall down a flight of stairs and never regained consciousness. Father Stephen Scruton died a month later in January of 2009. He took the truth with him, and now Jonathan Grover has done the same. But facts speak a truth of their own. Readers can today form their own conclusions about this story.

I have formed mine, and I remain more than ever convinced that an innocent man is in prison in New Hampshire, a blight on the American justice system. Having thus far served 24 years of wrongful imprisonment for crimes that never took place, Father Gordon MacRae still prays for the dead.

“After three years of investigation of this case, I have found no evidence that Father MacRae committed these crimes, or any crimes.”

— Affidavit of former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbot

Editor’s Note: Please share this post which could be of great importance to Father MacRae for justice in both Church and State.

Ryan A. MacDonald has published extensively in both print and online media. Ryan’s articles include:

The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud

How Psychotherapists Helped Send an Innocent Priest to Prison

In the Fr Gordon MacRae Case, Whack-a-Mole Justice Holds Court

Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester