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:

---

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

+ + +

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.”

A Criminal Defense Expert Unfurls Father MacRae Case

Criminal Defense Attorney, Vincent James Sanzone, explains why the case of Father Gordon MacRae has been no measure of justice for either Church or State.

The unjust imprisonment and suffering of Catholic priests at the hands of communist, fascist and other evil despots has and will unfortunately never end. And let’s not forget that Jesus Christ himself told his apostles that the world will hate them as they hated him. Christ was falsely accused and condemned because one man, Pontius Pilate, like most of us, did not have the courage to stand up against the hysterical crowd which did not know, or want to know the truth. As our Lord taught, “The Son of Man came … not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mt 20:28)

When such persecutions occur there is little if anything that the Church can do. Could even our Holy Father, Pope Francis do anything to stop the daily killing of Christians throughout the world today?

Such unjust punishments are not limited to these regimes, and one such travesty of injustice which has been occurring for the last 30 years right here in the United States is the wrongful conviction and imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae. In 1994 this young and dedicated priest was sentenced by a New Hampshire state judge to the draconian sentence of 33 ½ to 67 years, effectively a life sentence. Because Father MacRae refused to admit to a crime which he did not commit so as to take a plea offer before trial, nor will he do so now, he will not be paroled from prison, and is likely to die in jail.

Any reasonable person examining the trial with any degree of fairness can come to no other conclusion: the prosecution and continuing imprisonment of Father Gordon is not only a tragedy for this good and holy priest, for all clergy and the faithful, but is also a blight on our criminal justice system. The machine of the criminal justice system of the State of New Hampshire is not attempting to re-examine this case and rectify it.

It is without dispute that our society in general is quick to condemn someone accused of committing a crime, especially when there is an allegation of a sexual crime, and more so when the accuser claims involvement of a Catholic priest. Even one with the most conservative law enforcement mindset would deny that for the last 25 years the deck has been stacked against any priest charged with a sexual offense, and that it is almost impossible for a Catholic priest to be processed fairly by jury and judge.

At the time of Father Gordon’s prosecution there was a climate of media-fueled national hysteria regarding any allegation of sexual offenses on anyone under 18 years of age, whether true or false, especially if a Catholic priest was purportedly involved. Such a climate almost entirely preempted juries from fairly applying the reasonable doubt standard, as they were and are prone to believe any allegation of sexual misconduct no matter how bizarre. Many legal scholars have examined the hysteria of the 1980s and 1990s, and equate this period to the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century. The prosecution of Father MacRae was also fueled by sensationalistic media hype with little concern for civil liberties and the presumption of innocence. As one court put it at that time:

“[A] series of highly questionable child sex abuse prosecutions … were fueled by a vast moral panic … a period in which allegations of outrageously bizarre and often ritualistic child abuse spread like wildfire across the country and garnered world-wide media attention.” “[T]remendous emotion [was] generated by the public” as a result of which “the criminal process often fail[ed]”

— ”Friedman v. Rehal”, 618 F.3d 142, 155, 158 (2 Cir. 2010).

The genesis of the criminal prosecution of Father Gordon MacRae is no different than what is to be found in most other wrongful convictions. The convergence of factors in this case was a perfect storm for this wrongful conviction. In the wake of these factors, Father Gordon had zero chance of receiving a fair trial and being acquitted of the false charges at trial. As a practicing criminal defense attorney involved in many such cases over the last 25 years, any defendant charged with such a crime must actually attempt to prove his or her innocence. The jury has a sacred duty when charged with deliberating a criminal case: they are to respect that the defendant is innocent and has no burden to prove that innocence, with the burden of proving guilt beyond any reasonable doubt belonging to the prosecution. All of this is often ignored by juries.

In Father Gordon’s case, the evidence is overwhelming that false criminal allegations were brought by a manipulative man with a financial motive to lie. The accuser was trained and coached during the entire process by his attorney, who was seeking a large payout from the diocese of Manchester. The accuser had a long history of alcohol and drug abuse and involvement in the criminal justice system as well as a long history of opportunistic and manipulative lying. Years after the verdict, it was discovered that he bragged to friends and family members how he manipulated the justice system and the diocese. The entire prosecution of Father MacRae hinged upon the inconsistent, contradictory, and incredulous testimony of this one accuser. Father Gordon’s only “crime” had been to try to help this young man who had no family support and was heading down the path to destruction.

In the early 1990s it was common knowledge in New Hampshire that the Diocese of Manchester, as other dioceses in the United States, was paying huge sums of money to anyone claiming to have been abused by a priest. The Diocese was making these payments while conducting little or no investigation to determine the validity of the claims. It was a windfall for predatory personal injury attorneys making money off the backs of faithful parishioners, and a dream come true for scammers and fraudsters looking to cash in. Such was Thomas Grover, a foster child of the Grover family, which sought the help of Father Gordon to counsel and help Thomas. His foster parents struggled with their son’s alcohol and drug abuse, as well as with his mental health problems and frequent run-ins with the law. Years later, when Thomas Grover became aware of the large amounts of money that the Diocese was paying out to accusers, saw his opportunity to make a large amount of money. This was the way he “thanked” Father Gordon for all that he had done for him, weaving a string of lies impossible to refute.

There was not a single witness except Grover himself, which makes his story absurd, since he claimed that he was assaulted by Father Gordon in very public areas. Yet, Manchester Diocese paid him nearly $200,000.00.

Based on legal papers submitted in federal court, credible witnesses have now been located and have come forward, willing to testify that Grover admitted committing perjury at trial, and bragged about how he scammed the diocese and the justice system. Grover’s former wife, Trina Ghedoni, and stepson, Charles Glenn, have admitted that he was a “compulsive liar”, “manipulator”, “drama queen” and “hustler” who had a long history of lying to get what he wanted. When confronted with his lies, he “would lose his temper”, and would then admit himself into the psychiatric unit at Elliot Hospital. While seeking “help”, he would accuse others of molesting him. He accused another unnamed clergyman as well as his foster father and baby sitters when he was a child. In addition to his psychological state and alcohol and drug addition, he had an extensive criminal history prior to making his false allegations against Father Gordon. Grover was arrested and convicted for two burglaries, two forgeries, two thefts, theft by deception, assault on a police officer, and aggravated assault on his former wife when he broke her nose during one of many such beatings. His former wife considered him to be a sexual predator, and never left her two daughters from another relationship alone with him while they were living together, as he would eye and grope them.

In April of 2005, the lead detective James F. McLaughlin was confronted with these sobering facts about Grover in The Wall Street Journal articles by Dorothy Rabinowitz about the unjust conviction of Father Gordon. In response to his botched and incompetent investigation, McLaughlin made himself a self-appointed psychologist and responded remarkably by saying: “So we had all these elevated activities with our male victims, so in a sense, when you have a victim present that has this baggage, it’s corroborative of their victimization” (“Story of Jailed Priest Retold”, The Union Leader: Manchester NH, April 28, 2005).

At trial, Grover lied and told the jury that he needed money from his lawsuit with the Diocese for therapy because of the “abuse.” However, after his $200,000.00 payout, and after the trial was over, Grover did not attend one therapy session but took his former wife to Arizona, where he blew it all on alcohol, drugs, cars, pornography and gambling. In fact on that trip he lost about $70,000.00 on a Las Vegas gambling spree. In addition, he stiffed the casino another $50.000.00 on a credit line which he fraudulently applied for by providing false information about his job and income. A collection action initiated by the casino was unsuccessful. His wife finally left him in 1998 when the money was gone, and Grover was caught in bed with his biological sister.

Grover’s testimony at trial did not border on the absurd; it was absurd. His shifty testimony was fantastic, nonsensical and contradictory. When he was spoon-fed by the direct questioning of prosecutor Bruce Elliot Reynolds, he was able to recite his rehearsed testimony. However, on cross-examination it was far different. Every time he was trapped in a lie or inconsistent statement he fell back on his rehearsed line, saying that question “overloads my mind and… leaves me more or less in shock for days after…”

When Grover was confronted as to why he did not report the abuse for 10 years he claimed that he repressed the memory of the abuse, and it was “difficult to talk [about it] in front of people” until he spoke to his attorneys.

The fundamental question must be asked about our justice system; how could any reasonable jury, having the sworn duty to acquit Father Gordon unless the prosecution proves guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, find him guilty under this type of incredulous testimony? The State had the burden of proof. How could they have gotten it so wrong? Before a jury could find him guilty they would have to have found Grover’s testimony completely credible. Under our criminal justice system no competent and reasonable jury should have found this type of testimony sufficient to convict a Catholic priest who, previous to these series of false allegations, had never been convicted of anything.

Not unlike other unjust convictions, the law enforcement investigation of Father Gordon was both overzealous and intentionally unfair. The lead detective, James F. McLaughlin, was not interested in a fair and impartial investigation, but only in creating and spinning the facts to support his — and eventually the prosecution’s — theory of the case. McLaughlin also suppressed any facts which clearly pointed out that Father Gordon was innocent of the false allegations made by the accuser. McLaughlin engaged in investigating this matter in a way that was patently unfair and used his power as a law enforcement officer to suppress witnesses who were willing to testify for Father Gordon MacRae.

To make matters worse, Father Gordon’s bishop at the time of his trial did not support him, but in fact allowed his office to issue a press release prior to trial which literally condemned the accused priest. This misstatement by the bishop helped fuel media hysteria, and it unquestionably tainted the potential jury pool, insuring the prosecution of a conviction. The bishop did not stand up for one of his priests with courage, but rather retreated to bureaucratic-clericalism, more worried about pleasing his lawyers, insurance carrier and insulating the diocese from potential civil liability. This abandonment by the diocese has continued for 30 years. The bishop’s technique accomplished nothing because the diocese paid out monetary awards to any and all accusers. The greater cost, of course, was the loss of any trust of the priests of the diocese for the bishop and chancery. Not only was Father Gordon not able to count on his bishop for support, but the bishop negligently or intentionally acted in such a way as to let the public be given the message that Father Gordon was guilty. The bishop needs to answer questions about sacrificing priests on the altar of insurance considerations. To date it is conservatively estimated that the Church in the United States has paid over $4 billion in claims because of the sexual abuse scandal. How many of these claims were outright false can only be guessed. In any case, the bishop distanced himself from Father MacRae and left him on his own.

If the cards were not already stacked against Father Gordon, his defense attorney at trial was no help. Father Gordon was represented by Ron Koch, an attorney from New Mexico, who died in the year 2000 at the age of 49. Although this attorney did his best to defend Father Gordon, he nevertheless made critical trial errors which hurt the defense and opened the door for the prosecutor to introduce prejudicial evidence which the trial judge had already ruled was inadmissible and not relevant. Mr. Koch was forced to split his time between his active criminal practice in New Mexico and preparing for Father’s Gordon’s trial, which Mr. Koch was unable to do. Mr. Koch failed to conduct important pretrial discovery and inadequately prepared the case for trial. Father Gordon trial counsel was unprepared and out matched, and therefore constitutionally ineffective. Father Gordon’s constitutional rights to procedural due process and a fair trial were eviscerated. Mr. Koch failed to interview and subpoena critical witnesses for the defense, failed to go to the scene in which Grover alleged that he had been touched, and lastly, failed to preserve attorney-client privileged documents which Koch turned over to the prosecution.

Many people unfamiliar with the criminal justice system in the United States believe that the criminal justice system eventually corrects an unjust conviction. This sadly is the exception and not the rule. Under our judicial system the jury verdict is final, and most appeals, regardless as to the justice of the verdict are denied. Father Gordon is going on 30 years of imprisonment. Every appeal has been rejected without hearing. No judge in New Hampshire would agree to hear new evidence or new witnesses in this matter. On March 17, 2015, federal district court Judge Joseph Laplante, who many had high hopes would grant Father MacRae’s writ of habeas corpus, instead, granted the State of New Hampshire’s motion to dismiss on the pleadings. The judge did not even grant Father Gordon an evidentiary hearing.

The Catholic Church cannot proclaim the fullness of the truth without its priests. Every priest has been called by God for this mission. The Church has no alternative but to pursue and fight for authentic justice, and it must start with Father Gordon MacRae. No pope, cardinal, bishop, priest, or anyone among the laity can sit by and permit this injustice to continue. Diabolic advocacy and persecution of the Church has prevailed and will continue. Satan knows his enemy, and his enemy is the Holy Roman Catholic Church, in particular its clergy. Satan’s relentless pursuit is against the only institutional defender of natural law and of life in the world, from the moment of conception to natural death, the Catholic Church.

St. John Vianney, the patron of parish priests, understood this all too well. He was also subjected to outrageous lies about his character when he made this profound statement over 150 years ago:

“When people wish to destroy religion, they begin by attacking the priest, because where there is no longer any priest, there is no sacrifice, and where there is no longer any sacrifice, there is no religion.”

At the end of our brief temporal life all of us will be judged for what we “did and failed to do”; did we all do what is right and just?

+ + +

Vincent James Sanzone, Jr., Esq., loves his Catholic faith, and has been a practicing criminal defense attorney in New Jersey for the last 35 years. Attorney Sanzone is a member of the New Jersey Bar Association, of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys, and of the Legal Center for Defense of Life. He is admitted to the bar in the State of New Jersey and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey as well as Federal Appeals Courts for the Third and Fourth Circuits. In addition, he has been admitted to practice pro hac vice in the Southern District of New York, and in the Federal District Court for the Northern District of Ohio. Attorney Sanzone has argued successfully before the New Jersey Supreme Court, and has tried hundreds of criminal trials. Many of his clients were minority young men and women who were acquitted of all charges at trial and went on to live exemplary lives.