The “Trauma-Informed” Consultants Behind the Lucrative Sexual Abuse Investigations in New Hampshire

After reading “Vatican Bans Publishing Lists of ‘Credibly’ Accused Priests,” a veteran researcher spells out the ties and connections among the players.

April 3, 2025 by Claire Best, Los Angeles, CA

The Diocese of Manchester list of accused priests should be studied as an example of how flawed these lists are.

Not included in the list of accused or convicted priests is Father Francis Talbot who was convicted and died in prison and who had worked at the Youth Detention Center. That is significant given the fact that the State of New Hampshire has over 1300 cases of child sex abuse claims against it currently. Sex abuse that allegedly took place at the Youth Detention Center where Father Francis Talbot had worked. Ironically, the State lumps within the definition of a Child Placement Agency as being the Department of Children Youth & Families (DCYF), Catholic Charities and their successors.

Nixon Peabody and Divine Millimet law firms represent Catholic Charities and the Diocese. Nixon Peabody is one of the law firms suing the State for the alleged victims of the Youth Detention Center abuse. Nixon Peabody also sorted out the quick settlements for the Diocese for the alleged priest sex abuse.

The list of “credibly” accused priests was published in July 2019 which is after the first victim of child sex abuse at the YDC came forward and an investigation had begun. Coincidentally, Nixon Peabody’s Attorney David Vicinanzo, had sent a letter to the Clerk of Merrimack County DA’s office earlier in 2019, asking for the Grand Jury Criminal Investigation Report on St Paul’s School to remain private. He represented a number of “intervenors” (faculty and administrators) at the school who did not want their names made public. He also represented “pro bono”, the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence (NHCADSV) who lobbied his former partner from Nixon Peabody, then Attorney General (and now Chief Justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court), Gordon MacDonald, for the investigation.

And they got a contract with the school out of it, replete with an “independent compliance officer” and “trauma informed” training. The NHCADSV had hired Brian Harlow of SNAP to join them in 2012 to expand their business. Harlow was the first alleged victim to be solicited by Jim Rosenberg of prior AG Phil McLaughlin’s office to come forward for the Diocese investigation in 2002 which led to the list of “credibly” accused priests being created. Brian Harlow and the NHCADSV endorsed Gordon MacDonald for the NH Supreme Court.

MacDonald had once asked Father Gordon MacRae if he would mind having his name used for two claims against the Diocese (which were false) for a quick settlement. MacDonald was upset with Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ when she published the names of these false claimants. He said there had been a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) but she pointed out that Father Gordon MacRae was not a party to any NDA.

Years later, Gordon MacDonald hired for the St Paul’s School investigation James F McLaughlin. He was the police detective who in 1992 had framed MacRae while investigating priests of the Diocese of Manchester. During the St Paul’s School investigation, James F McLaughlin’s name was added to the list of corrupt police officers but MacDonald failed to reveal this. Then he argued to keep the list private. Eventually McLaughlin’s name slipped out and he had multiple closed-door hearings to get his name removed from the list. These meetings involved not only the AG’s office but also a lawyer for the NH Banking Commission. Journalists and others have only received heavily redacted copies of his disciplinary records but he was known to his own police department as dishonest in the 1980s — well before he framed Father Gordon MacRae, and that the State of New Hampshire ignored the Brady v Maryland 1963 Supreme Court ruling which requires the State to provide exculpatory evidence to a defendant.

In 1998, McLaughlin’s name appeared in a Federal Entrapment case in which he was “the Government” who sexualized minors under 12 years old. (US v Paul Gamache). And yet he was hired by the NH AG’s office for the Diocese investigation and the St Paul’s School investigation. I discovered from Right To Know emails received from the AG’s office that the Attorney General knew there was a conflict of interests between the police department and prosecutor’s office and the Attorney General’s office in the investigation into St Paul’s School in September 2017. But it failed to let the public know this.

One wonders what it knew in the Diocese investigation in 2002 and what it failed to reveal to the public and Diocese. Jim Rosenberg now works for Shaheen & Gordon lawfirm. He represented Andrew Thomson, a State witness who the prosecutor admitted had been given a deal in the Owen Labrie trial which preceded and laid the land for the St Paul’s investigation. That deal was sealed in the trial and when it was revealed months later, the prosecutor retracted her words and the school’s attorney (a former AG of course) said no such deal had been made.

Shaheen & Gordon are allegedly the law firm paying Julie Curtin who is one of the “trauma informed “ investigators for the Diocese of Manchester and on its site. Curtin was the principal police detective in the Owen Labrie and St Paul’s investigations. She lied on a sworn affidavit for his arrest warrant (revealed by a SANE nurse in trial under oath) and she had also tampered with evidence — providing a redacted Facebook post. The prosecutor was taken by surprise when the full unredacted post was supplied by the defense — she’d never seen it before. It was exculpatory.

The DOJ no longer funds “Start by Believing” and “trauma informed” training that had been adopted in New Hampshire. SNAP got caught out for a kick back scheme with lawyers. It had to apologize to a priest in another state for framing him using media. The NHCADSV appears to have taken over where SNAP left off and gets kick backs from settlements brought by attorneys it refers complainants to. Bishop Accountability is an interesting site — I noticed articles have been removed from it which are inconvenient for the AG and US Attorney for New Hampshire and Jim Rosenberg relating to St Paul’s School and the Owen Labrie case.

I am informed that there was some internal discord at Shaheen & Gordon over the revenue they expect to get from the claims against the Yourh Detention Center. Coincidentally, they threatened me with a defamation suit in 2021 for statements I had made about their client, the NHCADSV, being involved in a “Kids for Cash” type scheme. It’s not defamation if it is true.

And if the Vatican could do one thing that would help Catholic and Episcopalian institutions around the world who have become subjected to these media fueled witch hunts, it would be to stand up and call out the profiteering and racketeering that has been going on with these law firms, victims advocacy groups, and the police, prosecutors and media they are in business with. All these people did was create sensationalist headlines and then set out to create evidence out of no evidence and hide evidence that was exculpatory. Follow the money and look at the lawfirms and non-profits and see how they got rich.

+ + +

Editor’s Note: For more on this story see “Vatican Bans Publishing Lists of ‘Credibly’ Accused Priests” by Fr Gordon MacRae and William A. Donohue, PhD.

The Ordeal of Father Gordon MacRae

by William Donohue, Ph.D., President of the Catholic League

Noted sociologist Dr. Bill Donohue, President of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, investigated the unjust imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae.

On September 23, 1994, Father Gordon MacRae was shackled and led out of Cheshire County Superior Court in Keene, New Hampshire. He had been convicted by a jury of sexual assaults that allegedly happened nearly twelve years earlier. The 41-year-old priest was sentenced to a prison term of 33 ½ to 67 years.

MacRae says he is innocent. So do those who have looked into his case. Count me among them. “I did not commit these crimes,” MacRae says. “In fact, no one did.” Pointedly, he maintains that he wasn’t the one on trial. “The priesthood itself was on trial. No evidence whatsoever was introduced to support the claims. My accuser committed a $200,000 fraud, the amount in settlement he received from my diocese.”

No one has covered this story better than Dorothy Rabinowitz, a columnist for The Wall Street Journal. MacRae’s accuser, Thomas Grover, has a history of theft, drugs, and violence. More than anyone else, he is responsible for the ordeal that MacRae has endured. He provided not a single witness, even though the alleged offenses took place in populated areas; the places were so busy that it is unlikely that no one would notice if something were awry. Moreover, Grover was coached by professionals, people more interested in getting a priest than justice. His attorney put him in touch with a counselor who came in quite handy. She stood at the back of the courtroom during Grover’s testimony, away from the sight of the jury, instructing him when to feign crying. On cue, he cried loudly, often at some length.

At the trial, Grover said MacRae sexually abused him when he was 15-years-old during five episodes. Rabinowitz captures the essence of what was really going on. “Why, after the first horrifying attack,” she asks, “had Mr. Grover willingly returned for four more sessions, in each of which he had been forcibly molested? Because, he explained, he had come to each new meeting with no memory of the previous attack.” If this is not preposterous enough, the accuser said he had “out of body” experiences that blocked his recollection. Just as we might expect, Grover conveniently changed his story many times.

Before the trial, MacRae had twice been offered a plea deal, but he turned them down. Midway through the trial, he was offered another opportunity. It sounded reasonable: plead guilty and the sentence is one to three years; refuse and risk spending decades in prison. He refused for a third time. The trial moved forward and he was found guilty. The sentence was obscene: it was thirty times what the state had offered in the plea bargain.

Why do I believe MacRae is innocent? We have been writing to each other for years, and I have read his account many times. The clincher year for me was 2012: recently discovered evidence emerged showing how manipulative his accuser is.

Grover’s former wife and stepson say that he is a “compulsive liar,” “manipulator,” “drama queen,” and “hustler” who “molded stories to fit his needs”; he could also “tell a lie and stick to it ’till his end.'” When he was confronted with his lies, he would lose his temper and sign himself into the psychiatric ward at a local hospital.

The former wife and stepson testify that Grover bragged how he was going to set up MacRae and “get even with the church.” What the stepson said is worth repeating at length:

“Grover would laugh and joke about this scheme and after the criminal trial and civil cash award he would again state how he had succeeded in this plot to get cash from the church. On several occasions, Grover told me that he had never been molested by MacRae…[and] stated to me that there were other allegations, made by other people against MacRae and [he] jumped on and piggy-backed onto these allegations for the money.”

Grover’s former wife, who acknowledges that he “never stated one word of abuse by [MacRae],” knew early on in their marriage that something was wrong. She had two daughters when they met, and both were frightened of him from the start. They saw him as a “sick individual who was obsessed with sex and teenage girls”; thus did they label him a “creep” and a “pervert.” They recall that he was “constantly eying” and groping them. When they woke up in the middle of the night, they would sometimes find him in their room, between their beds, staring at them.

When the trial was over, and Grover got a check for over $195,000 from the Diocese of Manchester, he photographed himself with $30,000 in cash. He bragged to his buddies, with bags of cash in his hands, that he had succeeded in “putting it over on the church.” That was in March 1997. In August, he took his former wife with him to Arizona where he blew it on alcohol, drugs, gambling, pornography, and other vices. In a three-day gambling spree, he went through $70,000 and he even had a Nevada casino hunting him down for another $50,000.

Please keep Father MacRae in your prayers. We can never give up hope.