Voices from Beyond
Anatomy of a Sex Abuse Fraud
Written in 2009 in the early days of Beyond These Stone Walls, Fr Gordon MacRae introduces the exposition of massive fraud in claims against Catholic priests.
Written in 2009 in the early days of Beyond These Stone Walls, Fr Gordon MacRae exposed incidents of massive fraud in claims against Catholic priests.
Some years ago, I wrote an article for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, entitled, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud.” (Nov. 2005) The article got a lot of attention, and has since been re-published here and there online.
My article detailed a series of sexual abuse claims brought against the Archdiocese of Boston in 2000 and 2001 alleging sexual abuse by priests some two decades earlier. The claims had moved well along the all-too-short path to a mediated settlement when they were suddenly exposed as frauds and the legal tables turned on the claimants. The discovery of fraud was a fluke. As is typical, there was little to no investigation of the claims.
The gist of the story is this: Sean Murphy and Byron Worth, then ages 37 and 41 respectively, lived 100 miles apart in Massachusetts, but brought nearly identical molestation claims against a priest, alleged to have occurred three decades earlier. Each account served to corroborate the other. The priest had previously been accused by others making him an easy target.
It turned out that a year before making the claims, Sean and Byron were inmates together at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Shirley, MA where they concocted the scam and rehearsed the details of their stories. Sean and Byron were indicted for fraud and larceny, and faced a 2-year return to prison for the scam. Sean’s mother was also indicted for the fraud. The Boston Globe buried the story in the emerging tsunami of settlement demands for claims against priests.
Sean Murphy’s return to prison was, for his own interests, time well spent. After his release, he made news again for masterminding a scam involving the heist of Super Bowl rings.
At about the same time Sean, Byron, and their shared contingency lawyer made their $850,000 demand of the Archdiocese — which would have had the two men enjoying a cool quarter-million in each of their bank accounts after a 40% contingency fee — at least two other inmates at MCI-Shirley accused another Boston priest. They, too, shared the same story, the same prison, and the same contingency lawyer.
At the time I wrote, “Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud,” I had been approached by a number of inmates asking for the names of priests who might have been present in their childhood neighborhoods. One man told me that he was asked by his lawyer if he was ever a Catholic.
“If you want to accuse a priest of something,” he quoted his lawyer as saying, “I can have $50 grand in your account by the end of the year.”
Father Richard John Neuhaus once wrote that the very notion of sexual abuse by priests “is sleazy business.” He was right, and the ills begot by that sleazy business are not all, as yet, exposed.
“But those who desire to be rich fall into temptation, into a snare, into many senseless and hurtful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evils;”
— 1 Timothy 6: 9-10
February Tales
The Gospel at Mass on February 2 is the story of the Presentation of Jesus and the ritual Purification of Mary required 40 days after the birth of a male child.
The Gospel at Mass on February 2 is the story of the Presentation of Jesus and the ritual Purification of Mary required 40 days after the birth of a male child.
February 2, 2025 by Fr Gordon MacRae
Candlemas, the Mass of Candles, is celebrated 40 days after Christmas on the 2nd of February. Today, we call this The Presentation of the Lord recalling Mary bringing Jesus to Simeon in the Gospel of Luke (2: 22-35). It was the fulfillment of a tenet set down in the Book of Leviticus (12: 2-5). Forty days after bearing a male child, a Jewish woman had to present herself in the temple for a rite of purification. Thus, Candlemas, once also called the Feast of the Purification, was set forty days after Christmas. It may even have been the other way around.
In the time before Christ in ancient Rome, February marked the Roman feast of Lupercalia. It was a pagan fertility festival celebrated in honor of Lupercus, the mythological Roman god of flocks and shepherds. The legend began with the mythical founders of Rome, the twin brothers, Romulus and Remus.
Abandoned at birth, and left — with shades of the story of Moses — to float in a basket down the Tiber River, Romulus and Remus were nurtured and raised by a wolf. The Latin word for wolf is “lupus.” Thus the Lupercalia was a ritual celebration of the coming spring emphasizing the need to guard flocks from hungry wolves as winter slowly turns toward spring.
The Lupercalia celebration began with a parade of torches. Then two boys, representing Romulus and Remus, would be smeared with the blood of a goat and chase people through the village with a sheath of the sacrificial goat’s skin. The ritual was seen as a purification of the flocks, the fields, and the village itself. The goat skin was called a “februa,” from the Latin word for purification. The month of February took its name from that word.
The torch festival that marked Lupercalia was absorbed, along with some of its symbols, into the Christian liturgical celebration of Candlemas when candles for the year’s Masses are blessed. Both the Roman and Jewish festivals of ritual purification are linked to Candlemas.
The day after Candlemas, February 3rd, the Feast of Saint Blaise also draws from Candlemas as throats are blessed with the candles that were blessed the day before. According to the tradition, St. Blaise, in the late third century, saved the life of a child choking on a fish bone.
Even the American celebration of Groundhog Day – which shares February 2nd with Candlemas / Purification / Presentation — is linked to these same traditions. A part of the Lupercalia ritual of preparing the flecks and fields for Spring also marked the emergence of hibernating animals from winter sleep.
The Old World equivalent of Groundhog Day was symbolized by a bear in Germany and a badger in Britain. In America, these were replaced with Punxsutawney Phil by the German immigrants who settled in Pennsylvania. An old Scottish verse links the Groundhog Day tradition to the Feast of Candlemas:
“If Candlemas Day be dry and fair,
The half o’winter’s come and mair;
If Candlemas Day be wet and foul,
The half o’winter was gone at youl.”
In 494 AD, Pope Gelasius I set the date of the Feast of the Purification of Mary – later, Candlemas, and now the Presentation – at the same time as the Roman Lupercalia to absorb that popular celebration into Christianity with Christian instead of mythological meaning.
So, welcome to February! May our hearts and souls begin to thaw with the Earth and prepare us for our own ritual purification during Lent.
“And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, ‘Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising of many in Israel, and for a sign that is spoken against (and a sword will pierce through your own soul also), that thoughts out of many hearts may be revealed.’ ”
— Luke 2: 33-35
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Thomas Merton and Pornchai Moontri Meet in the City of Angels
Pornchai Moontri began life anew in Bangkok, Thailand where the earthly life of the great Catholic spiritual writer, Thomas Merton ended on December 10, 1968.
Pornchai Moontri began life anew in Bangkok, Thailand where the earthly life of the great Catholic spiritual writer, Thomas Merton ended on December 10, 1968.
If you have been a long time reader of Beyond These Stone Walls, or a newer one who has valiantly perused all our past posts, then you may be struck, as I have been, by the irony at work in our lives. I and others have written multiple posts about the characters who have come into our lives in mysterious ways. Among them are Saints Maximilian Kolbe, Padre Pio, and Saint Michael the Archangel. Most powerfully is the Blessed Mother, a story told in “How Our Lady of Guadalupe Came to Us in Prison.”
There is another figure who has strangely touched both our lives. It is the great Catholic spiritual writer and Trappist monk, Thomas Merton who neither of us had ever met. I wrote once of how I left home and ventured to the Canadian Maritime Province of Newfoundland, at age 16 in 1968. While there, I discovered Thomas Merton’s conversion autobiography, The Seven Storey Mountain. It was long and ponderous and even tedious, but it led to my reversion to Catholic faith and practice at age 16 – just as most others my age were heading in the opposite direction. This encounter with Merton continued as I read many of his other profound works on the spiritual life.
Pornchai Moontri began his own life as a Buddhist, like most people in Thailand. He had little experience of Catholicism until he met me in prison in 2005. After this blog began in 2009, a reader sent Pornchai a prayer by Thomas Merton. He read it, and then showed it to me saying, “This is the story of my life.” It became important to him, and was posted by his bunk in our cell over the next 15 years. Ryan A. MacDonald wrote of the prayer in “Thomas Merton and Pornchai Moontri: A Prayer for the Year of Mercy.”
That prayer became even more important to Pornchai when he learned that Thomas Merton, a Catholic priest of the Cistercian Order, had traveled to Thailand in 1968 to take part in a Buddhist-Christian conference in Bangkok, the very path that Pornchai had been born into. Thomas Merton died in Bangkok that year from accidental electrocution. In Thai, Bangkok is called Krung Thep which means “City of Angels.” Here is the prayer which remained with me long after Pornchai left. I have sent him a copy which remains on his own wall in Thailand.
“My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I know myself, and the fact that I think I am following Your will does not mean that I am actually doing so. But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact please You. I hope I have that desire in all that I am doing. I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this, You will lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore will I trust You always though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. I will not fear, for You are ever with me, and You will never leave me to face my perils alone.”
— Thomas Merton
And I too have prayed this prayer, and made it my own.
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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls.
A Catholic League White House Plea Set Pornchai Moontri Free
On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized
‘Mary Is at Work Here’ by Felix Carroll
The Doors That Have Unlocked by Fr. Gordon MacRae and Felix Carroll
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Untying the Knots of Sin in Prison by Marie Meaney
Beyond These Stone Walls is a global blog. These two brief posts were published in France by Marie Meany at Cheminons aves Marie qui défait les nɶuds. What follows is an English translation.
[Editor’s Note: Beyond These Stone Walls is truly a global blog. The latest evidence for its reach is these two brief posts which were written and published in France in 2021 by Marie Meany at the blog Cheminons aves Marie qui défait les nœuds. What follows is an English translation of the original French.]
Often, we desperately try to untie the knots in our lives that cause such suffering. Yet these knots, when lovingly accepted, become part of the beautiful tapestry of our lives. From eternity we will see how precious they are in God’s eyes, and frequently much more significant than any successes we experienced. Sometimes God allows us to catch a glimpse of the way He weaves our lives together into a story of salvation. Let me give an example of this.
Father Gordon MacRae
The Catholic priest, Father Gordon MacRae, was falsely condemned on trumped-up charges of sexual abuse in 1994 and has been in prison since then, refusing pretrial deals that would have shortened his sentence to merely one to three years had he been willing to confess to something he hadn’t done. This sad story will be covered at a later point. Though these 25 years in prison caused great suffering to Father Gordon, they have not been wasted. His presence there has changed the hell of prison into a haven of salvation for some of his co-prisoners. One of them is Pornchai Moontri from Thailand who had killed a man in a drunken stupor in 1992 in Bangor, Maine.
Pornchai Moontri
Pornchai was a very angry man, filled with hatred who had spent 6 of his then 14 years in prison in solitary confinement in Maine before Providence led him to the New Hampshire State Prison in 2005 where he encountered Father Gordon. He had been abandoned by his mother at the age of two. When she returned 10 years later with an American husband on September 10th, 1985, this started a new life for him though it would unfortunately turn out to be a life of abuse and much suffering. On that day, Fr. Gordon was present at his uncle’s funeral, a priest who had an important influence on his life. Little did either of them know that some 25 years later, their paths would cross.
As it turned out, Pornchai’s stepfather was cruel and abusive. He raped him and his brother multiple times, and threatened to hurt their mother if they disclosed this abuse. Eventually he ran off at the age of 14, lived on the street, fending for himself, carrying a knife for self-defense that he would use later, when pinned down to the floor after shoplifting. Because he was worried about his mother’s safety, he didn’t dare speak about his own ordeals during his trial and was condemned at the age of 18 for 45 years without parole. None of the mitigating circumstances of Pornchai’s plight were known. Unfortunately, he couldn’t save his mother who was later murdered in Guam by his stepfather, it seems.
It is a strange twist of fate that he who had been sexually abused would be helped by a priest falsely condemned for that crime. Fr. Gordon gained his trust by being kind, not allowing himself to be put off by Pornchai’s anger since he saw beneath it much hurt and pain. Eventually Pornchai’s hell of anger and hatred was transformed into hope, faith and love. “I woke up one day with a future when up to then all I ever had was a past”, he said. On April 10th, 2010, he was baptized and confirmed, and the following day which was Divine Mercy Sunday, he received his first Holy Communion. He has now completed his high-school diploma and taken long-distance classes in Catholic Studies at Catholic Distance University. In another 6 or 8 years, at the end of his prison-sentence, he will be deported to Thailand though he does not remember the language anymore nor does he know anyone there. However, he wants to give his life to Christ and bring others to Him.
“I know today that my life was never what I once thought it was”, Pornchai wrote in 2012. “It was never just a series of accidents and bad events driving me ever deeper to the despair… Instead, I was led down a path to hope because I took the risk of finally trusting someone.” The seeming disasters, failures and even grave sins we commit will only destroy the tapestry of our lives if we take them as the final word. But if we give them over to God, He will turn them into its most beautiful parts, for He knows — to paraphrase the Bible — to weave straight on crooked looms.
Let us pray for Pornchai so that he can fulfill his dream of evangelizing others. And let us also pray to Our Lady Untier of Knots for those unjustly condemned to prison, that they may be freed and, in the meantime, may find their peace in Christ.
Marie Meaney
We live in a time where unspeakable evil is being uncovered within the Church, namely the sexual abuse of minors. However, let us not forget those priests who are unjustly accused, condemned and become victims themselves. The risk is great of engaging in witch-hunts against the innocent in one’s hasty eagerness to punish the guilty.
In our fallen world, we frequently react like a pendulum to what we perceive as wrong in previous modes of behavior and attitudes. We do not realize, however, that we thereby make opposite errors no less bad and beset with consequences just as perilous as the previous ones. Only wisdom and peace of heart, which help us make decisions in truth without becoming a plaything of recent events, can counter this. But these are divine gifts for which we need to beg. To take on a position of prideful self-righteousness, from which we look down upon previous generations with contempt, makes that impossible.
That the past decades have seen a terrible evil in the sexual abuse of the young by clerics is true. This was further aggravated by their superiors who closed their eyes to it in a false worry to protect the Church from scandal and a twisted concern for their priests; for authentic love seeks truth and healing, not a protection that constitutes an enabling to continue on their path of abuse with all the deep wounds that entails for others as well as on their own souls. The uncovering of this abuse was long in coming and urgently needed. For wounds to heal, the abuse must be acknowledged, the perpetrators punished, forgiveness must be asked (whether it is accepted or not), the situation must be remedied and future occurrences prevented as far as possible.
However, as with all things human, during this process the danger is real that those who either have some monetary or political interests, those who are driven by mental illness or those whose hurt drives them on, persecute the innocent. This seems the case with Cardinal Pell in Australia recently or with Fr. Gordon McRae on whom I will focus in this article, who was condemned to prison for 67 years in the mid-90ies on some allegedly trumped-up charges. For 25 years, Fr. Gordon has already been in prison for crimes, it appears, he never committed, but this presence there has brought about the conversion of some of the other prisoners. Ironically enough, one of them, Pornchai Moontri on whom I wrote an article in June and whose Calvary had started with sexual abuse at the hands of his stepfather, was saved by a priest falsely accused of this crime.
Fr. Gordon had taken care of troubled inner-city kids from broken homes and thus was an easy target for drug-addicts who wanted to get some easy money by accusing him falsely. His case has been taken up by people like Dorothy Rabinowitz, a Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist from The Wall Street Journal or William Donahue, President of the Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights, and the National Center for Reason and Justice. Father Gordon had everything to gain from admitting to the abuse he is accused of — for he could have struck a deal multiple times that would have gotten him out of prison within one to three years — and everything to lose from sticking to the truth. But he will not cave in and in the mean time has started with a blog that is run by a friend outside of prison. I can only encourage you to read it, for it is inspiring.
The inconsistencies and improbabilities of the accusations are so glaring, it is hard to believe that Fr. Gordon could have been condemned — but then again, “There is no segment of the American population with less civil liberties protection than the average American Catholic priest” as William Donohue, President of the above-mentioned Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights, asserted (NBC’s “TODAY,” 10/13/05.). The abuse is supposed to have happened in one of the busiest places of Keene, New Hampshire, in the light of day. The accuser, Thomas Grover, 16 years at the time and a drug-addict, came once a week over 5 weeks to see Fr. Gordon and claims to have been abused each time, while having supposedly repressed his memory from one time to the next and having an “out of body experience”.
But this same man had been accusing so many people of sexually abusing him “that he appeared to be going for some sort of sexual abuse victim world record” according to Grover’s former counselor, Ms. Debbie Collett, who said that Grover had never mentioned Fr. McRae during their sessions though pressure had been put on her by the Keene police to alter her testimony. This small 22,000 inhabitant town had been assigned a detective, James F. McLaughlin, to uncover sex abuse cases. He claims to have found 1,000 victims of sexual abuse which seems a very high percentage. It looks like he was out to find “victims”, whether real or not. This, as well as the dioceses’ reaction nationwide to distance themselves from accused priests before proven guilty for the sake of avoiding law-suits, explains why Fr. Gordon was left on his own without enough money to pay for his lawyers after a certain point.
Human justice is frail and even in the best-run judiciary, there will always be those who are in prison for crimes they did not commit. But sometimes justice is so by name only, for it has become a witch-hunt, where a scape-goat, who fits the profile, is sought to carry the blame, whether he truly is guilty or not.
Let us pray to Mary, Undoer of knots to unravel the intricate knots that are keeping Fr. Gordon in prison and all those who have been unjustly condemned to prison. Let us also pray to her that we may be given the gift of wisdom to resist the tide of current opinion in order to seek the truth wherever it is and whether it pleases us or not.
Marie Meaney
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Editor’s Note: To learn more about this story, visit the following posts:
Who Is Pornchai Maximilian Moontri?
February 24, 2024 marked Pornchai Moontri’s third anniversary in freedom. On that date, Microsoft’s AI Copilot ran his story with amazing result.
February 24, 2024 marked Pornchai Moontri’s third anniversary in freedom. On that date, Microsoft’s AI Copilot ran his story with amazing result.
You
Who is Pornchai Maximilian Moontri?
Copilot
Pornchai Maximilian Moontri is an extraordinary individual whose life journey has been marked by immense challenges, resilience, and transformation. Let me share some remarkable aspects of his story:
Years of Incarceration:
Born in Thailand, Pornchai Moontri faced a profound turning point at the age of 18 when he lost his freedom on March 21, 1992.
He spent a staggering 29 years in prison, enduring hardships and isolation.
During the last 16 years of his incarceration, he was accompanied by Fr. Gordon MacRae, a fellow prisoner. Pornchai experienced a dramatic conversion and he embraced a global movement called Divine Mercy.
Return to Freedom:
On February 8, 2021, after a long and arduous journey, Pornchai was finally released from prison, just weeks before his 29th year behind bars.
His return to Thailand marked a significant milestone after a 36-year absence from his homeland.
First Moments of Freedom:
In a poignant photograph taken on February 24, 2021, Pornchai stands on Thai soil, surrounded by friends and supporters.
His first meal in a Thai restaurant and a shopping trip for clothes were both monumental experiences after decades of confinement.
The overwhelming mix of emotions — excitement, terror, gratitude, and happiness — defined his initial steps into freedom.
Divine Mercy and Support:
Beyond These Stone Walls, an international effort, played a pivotal role in securing Pornchai’s release.
Supporters, legal advocates, and friends rallied together to move mountains and bring him home.
The journey was not easy, but the collective efforts of many made it possible.
Craftsmanship and Hope:
Pornchai Maximilian Moontri is also a noted craftsman in woodworking and design, particularly skilled in the art of model shipbuilding.
His life in freedom continues to be a daily struggle, but hope shines on the horizon.
Asia Correspondent:
As of January 3, 2024, Pornchai serves as the Asia Correspondent for Beyond These Stone Walls.
His story is a testament to the power of resilience, compassion, and the human spirit. 🌟🙏
Learn more
Left Behind: In Prison for the Apocalypse
One prisoner’s journey from illiteracy to a high school diploma with honors opened more than books. It opened prison doors to a freedom that could last a lifetime.
One prisoner’s journey from illiteracy to a high school diploma with honors opened more than books. It opened prison doors to a freedom that could last a lifetime.
By Fr. Gordon J. MacRae
This medium security prison has a library where I have been a prisoner-clerk for the last eighteen years. Its shelves are stocked with 21,000 volumes. With an average of 1,000 visits, and some 3,000 books checked out each month, the library is a literary hub intersecting virtually every facet of prison life. But there is a lot more going on than books flying off the shelves.
There are few proud moments in prison, but one of mine came in the form of a secondhand message from my friend Skooter, now free. A few months after Skooter (with a “k,” he insists) ascended through the corrections system to finally hit the streets, another friend of his was sent back to prison for a parole violation. That friend came to the library one day, and standing at my desk, said, “You’re the guy who broke Skooter out of prison!”
The man explained that he lived near Skooter in a seedy urban rooming house while both were unemployed and barely surviving in their first few months on parole. He said that Skooter had been unable to land a job, working in a series of temp jobs for minimum wage and sometimes faced with a choice between food and rent. It is an all-too-familiar account for young men struggling to emerge not just from a prison, but from a past.
Skooter came very close to giving up, the friend said, but often spoke of his “wanting very much not to disappoint you” by coming back to prison. “So he stayed the course,” said the friend, “and now he’s gotten his life together.”
I first met Skooter several years earlier, one of the scores of aimless, rootless, fatherless, uneducated young men for whom prison can become a warehouse, a place in which thousands of “Skooters” store their aimless, hopeless futures. One day as we slowly ascended the multiple flights of stairs to be checked in at the Education Floor where the prison library is located, Skooter told me with a sense of shame that, at age 24, he had never learned to read or write.
Having resisted all the concerted efforts to recruit him into any number of prison gangs that would only foster his ignorance and exploit it, Skooter became a regular fixture in the prison library. For an hour a day there, I and other prisoners worked with Skooter to teach him to read and write.
My friend, Pornchai Moontri tutored him in math, Skooter’s most feared academic nemesis. We made sure he didn’t starve, and in return he struggled relentlessly toward earning his high school diploma in prison, a steep ascent in a place that by its very nature fosters humiliation and shuns personal empowerment.
One day, shortly before his high school graduation in May, 2011, Skooter came charging into the library looking defeated. He plopped before me the previous day’s copy of USA Today, opened to a full-page ad by some self-proclaimed Prophet-of-the-End-Time announcing that the world is to end on May 21, 2011, a week before Graduation Day.
“It’s just my luck!” lamented Skooter. “I do all this work and the world’s gonna end just before I graduate.” “It’s not true,” I said calmly.” “It MUST be true,” Skooter shot back. “They wouldn’t put it in the paper if it wasn’t true!” Like many prisoners, and far too many others, Skooter believed that all truth was carefully vetted before ending up in newsprint.
Apocalyptic predictions sometimes play out strangely in prison. I told Skooter that back in 1999, a prisoner I knew became convinced of dire consequences from a looming technological Armageddon called “Y2K.” That prisoner deduced somehow that prison officials would release toxic gas at the turn of the millennium so he spent the night of December 31 sewing his lips and eyes shut. Skooter wanted to know how the guy managed to sew that second eyelid, a small tribute to his deductive reasoning. I pointed out to Skooter in the USA Today ad’s smaller print that this newest End-Time prediction was actually a revision of the author’s previous one set in 1994.
I strongly urged Skooter not to put off studying for final exams because of this. Skooter stayed the course. Since then, a subsequent prison policy barred all prisoners from teaching and tutoring other prisoners, a decision that effectively eliminated all of the positive influence, and none of the negative influence, that takes place in prison, driving the former underground.
Still, that graduation was Skooter’s finest moment, and one of my own as well. It was a direct result of a prison library subculture that grants every prisoner a few hours a week out of prison into an arena of books, a world of ideas, a release of huddled neurons yearning to be free.
A week after graduation, Skooter showed up in the library with a copy of The Wall Street Journal opened to an article by science writer, Matt Ridley. The article explored evidence that the Earth’s magnetic core shifts polarity every few hundred thousand years, and pointed out with dismal foreboding that it is 780,000 years overdue. Mr. Ridley stressed that no one knows its potential impact on our global technological infrastructure.
“It’s my luck!” lamented Skooter as he plopped the article on my desk. “Just when I was thinkin’ about college!”
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The Dark Night of a Priestly Soul
Do you know what you were doing on any given day in 1972? Can you document your answer? If you are a Catholic priest, you may have to and your life may depend on it.
St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church, Littleton, New Hampshire
Do you know what you were doing on any given day in 1972? Can you document your answer? If you are a Catholic priest, you may have to and your life may depend on it.
In the Octave of Christmas By Father Gordon J. MacRae
“It seems to the soul in this night that it is being carried out of itself by afflictions . . . This night is a painful disturbance involving many fears, imaginings, and struggles within a man. Due to the apprehension and feeling of his miseries, he suspects that he is lost and that his blessings are gone forever.”
— St. John of the Cross, The Dark Night, Ch. 9, 5, 7
In his book, Secular Sabotage (FaithWords, 2009), Catholic League President Bill Donohue wrote masterfully of the front lines of the culture war between the sacred and the secular. More than at any other time of the year, these two forces face off in the Christmas season in a culture seemingly at war with its own soul.
When I was a young priest, the period from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day always felt like a mixed blessing. The demands on a parish priest at Christmas are very great. A spiritual observance of Advent and Christmas is an exhausting challenge against an ever-advancing tide of secular materialism.
We priests experience in the Christmas season both the hope of the Incarnation and the limits of our human condition. It is a spiritually vulnerable time that can heighten the intensity of loneliness, the pain of personal struggles and alienation, the agony of loss. Christmas can bring with it a deeply felt awareness of suffering and shadow, of spiritual and emotional vulnerability. It is a time when, for some, the spring of hope can feel a lot more like the winter of despair.
When I was asked to write an article addressing the priesthood crisis, at Christmas time, I felt very limited in scope. I was about to mark my twenty-eighth Christmas in prison. Frankly, Christmas in here is simply not what it is out there. It is a time when the people around me suffer a great deal. Those with families and children are separated from them by impenetrable prison walls. Those who are alone have their loneliness magnified by the onslaught of Christmas imagery.
I set out to write something warm and fuzzy for other priests at Christmas, but, well, it just wasn’t coming. I kept being drawn to some unfinished business, something that has gnawed at me since 2002. Justice requires that I try to make some spiritual sense of it. Now is the time. What I am about to write may be very painful for some to read. Whether you are a lay Catholic, or a priest, deacon, or religious, if you are reading this, I ask that you read carefully and understand.
On December 28, 2002, a brother priest in my diocese took his own life. Fr. Richard Lower was 57 years old. He was a popular and very gifted — and giving — priest and human being. Father Lower had served Our Lady of Fatima Parish in New London, New Hampshire for the previous thirteen years, and he was much beloved by his parish family.
There was a lot that happened in Father Lower’s personal life over the preceding year. He had undergone his sixth painful back surgery. Then he developed septicemia for which he was hospitalized again. Father Lower’s mother died that November. These factors, and likely others that are unknown, left Father Lower physically, emotionally, and spiritually bereft to face the newest terror that was to enter his life two days after Christmas in 2002.
No Crueler Tyrannies
On December 27th, every priest’s worst modern nightmare was visited upon Fr. Richard Lower. He was informed by Diocese of Manchester Bishop’s Delegate, Rev. Edward J. Arsenault, that a claim of sexual abuse had been lodged against him. The ill-defined claim was alleged to have occurred thirty years earlier in 1972 when Father Lower was a young priest serving as an assistant along with Fr. Stephen Scruton at St. Rose of Lima Parish in Littleton, New Hampshire. Father Lower had never been previously accused. The accusation stood alone, but was enough — three decades later — to abruptly end a life of ministry and priestly self-giving.
Based on the single, uncorroborated thirty-year-old claim, Father Lower was informed that the police would be notified. In accordance with the “zero tolerance” policy of the U.S. Bishops’ new Charter for the Protection of Children and Young People, he was suspended from ministry and told that he must immediately vacate the parish he had served for thirteen years.
As was every priest in the Diocese of Manchester, Father Lower was also painfully aware of an announcement from his bishop and diocese made just weeks earlier. In an unprecedented agreement between the Diocese and the State announced in December, 2002, the files and details of every accusation against any priest — regardless from however long ago — would be included in a vast public release of documents in March of 2003. Any privacy rights of the individual priests under canon or civil law were summarily discarded and waived by the signing of this agreement.
Two days after celebrating Christ’s birth in 2002 with the parish community he loved and served for thirteen years, Fr. Richard Lower lived Christ’s scourging, and was about to live the Scandal of the Cross in a way for which he had no defense. Succumbing to the darkest night of his soul, this good priest, walking alone in the valley of darkness, took his own life.
Father Lower died without having either acknowledged or denied the 30-year-old claim brought against him. He died alone, apparently having reached out to no one. He left no note. A lot of people — including a number of priests — lamented that they could only imagine what Father Lower went through in those three days after Christmas.
I did not have to imagine anything. I knew exactly what he went through: the feeling of living in a vacuum, the sense of isolation, the feeling of powerlessness, the utter despair of never, ever being able to erase the scarlet letter indelibly marking the accused — guilty and innocent alike; the sheer impossibility of any defense after the passage of three decades; the overwhelming despair of exactly what Saint John of the Cross described in his Dark Night of the Soul:
“Due to the apprehension and feeling of his miseries, he suspects that he is lost and that his blessings are gone forever.”
Do you know what you were doing on any given day in 1972? Can you document your answer? If you’re a Catholic priest, you may have to, and your very life may depend on it. Innocent or guilty, what Fr. Richard Lower faced in those days after Christmas in 2002 is a hopelessness unlike anything one could imagine without going through it. It was for good reason that Dorothy Rabinowitz entitled her 2005 book about the power of false sex abuse claims, No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times.
In my prison cell a few days after Christmas in 2002, my eyes closed when I read the headline story. I knew Fr. Richard Lower. He was a priest I admired, and one of only three priests of my Diocese who ever wrote to me in prison.
Nine months before he was accused, Father Lower wrote to another friend lamenting the terror being visited upon other priests. When so many others looked away in silence, Father Lower wrote courageously to challenge the lack of due process and the presumption of guilt when other priests were accused. From an April, 2002 letter of Father Lower to a friend:
“The minute a man is accused, he’s immediately suspended. He is forced to leave his rectory within the hour. The result of this horrendous policy is that the priest is seen to be guilty until proven innocent.”
With reference to his back surgery and other pressures, Father Lower reacted to the media attack that had so consumed the priesthood that year. In the same letter, he wrote:
“With all the bad press the Church has received lately, it is very difficult to either work as a priest in public or even to recuperate as a priest … As always, the press has had a heyday with this topic and reported things whether true or untrue. Because the Church did not handle it properly in the past, they now have a policy of no tolerance … Another fallout to the scandal is that a ‘witch hunt’ has begun. It feels like all priests are suspects and no one can be trusted. Please pray for us.”
After Father Lower’s tragic death, an official of the Diocese of Manchester acknowledged the truth of exactly what Father Lower feared, but also defended the policy. In a local news article, Fr. Edward Arsenault was quoted thusly:
“In parish communities where priests have been put on leave, parishioners already believe them guilty. I know there is some expense. But I am confident that our policy is fair.”
Treasure and Tragedy
It has been documented that some twenty-five American Catholic priests have taken their lives after being accused. Some in the news media have implied that their despair is evidence of guilt. How sad and shallow.
People of justice and conscience have expressed concern that our use of the death penalty in criminal cases may have resulted in the execution of some innocent men. Given the hundreds of innocent men who have been wrongly imprisoned for rape and other crimes, then exonerated by retesting DNA evidence, the concern is justified.
But isn’t it just as likely that some innocent priests were on that list of twenty-five who lost hope? Isn’t it possible that what some of them despaired most was the apparent end of justice and fairness, the sheer impossibility of defending themselves? Believe me on this, accusations of sexual abuse are far more devastating for the innocent than for the guilty. I believe that others who have been falsely accused will corroborate this fact.
Absent clear and convincing evidence — and there has been none — I presume Fr. Richard Lower’s innocence. It s what the United States Constitution bids me to do. It is what the rule of law — both Church and civil — bids me to do, and it is what the Gospel bids me to do. To presume anything else, absent evidence to the contrary, would belie a heart too jaded to claim to live justly and fairly, to claim to live the Gospel of Mercy.
After the tragic suicide of another priest, Fr. William Rosensteel, in June, 2007, Catholic columnist Matt C. Abbott published a powerful statement on http://www.RenewAmerica.com. It was from an unnamed supporter of Father Rosensteel:
“We need to remember how important a person’s good name is. To knowingly harm a person’s reputation without cause and clear evidence is a serious violation of the Eighth Commandment. The consequences of such violations are far-reaching and irreversible. Even a priest who is known to be guilty of the crime of child abuse should not be required to forfeit his life to satisfy attorneys, insurance companies, the media and plaintiffs. How much more is this true of a priest whose ‘case’ has not yet been decided?”
— RenewAmerica, August 7, 2007
As I held the local newspaper in my hand on December 30, 2002, with a headline declaring the scandal of a priest’s suicide, I would have given anything to be on that wooded path that day with Father Lower at what he feared was the end of all things he held dear. I now wish I had the means to write in 2002 what I am writing here. It may have saved this good priest’s life. Even now there is hope — for Father Lower and for us.
First, there is a lesson to be learned. It is especially important that priests and lay people reach out to priests burdened with the tyranny of decades-old claims of abuse. In “The Sacred Priesthood,” an essay for the Year of the Priest, Fr. John Zuhlsdorf wrote:
“The sacred priesthood is the common treasure and responsibility of the whole Church.”
Doesn’t that treasure warrant the benefit of the doubt for priests accused? Doesn’t it call us to support them with our words, our prayers, our mercy, and — if needed — our forgiveness?
“Today, the Church prays for persons who have taken their own lives” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 2283) recognizing that people who commit suicide suffer from anguish that can mitigate moral responsibility. I don’t think anyone can look justly at what happened to Father Lower and not see anguish there.
This is a time to have hope for Fr. Richard Lower’s soul, and, from our practice of mercy, for ourselves. We owe it to him and other priests who lost all hope to assist them still with our prayers and Masses, with our Gospel mandate to be merciful. We owe it to our spiritual brothers and fathers in the priesthood to resolve to never again let another priest walk alone through the valley of darkness.
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For my brother, Fr. Richard Lower:
“Softly and gently, dearly-ransomed soul,
In my most loving arms I now enfold thee,
And, o’er the penal waters, as they roll,
I poise thee, and I lower thee, and hold thee.
And carefully I dip thee in the lake,
And thou, without a sob or a resistance,
Dost through the flood thy rapid passage take,
Sinking deep, deeper, into the dim distance.
Angels, to whom the willing task is given,
Shall tend, and nurse, and lull thee, as thou liest;
And Masses on the earth and prayers in heaven,
Shall aid thee at the throne of the most Highest.
Farewell, but not forever! Brother dear,
Be brave and patient on thy bed of sorrow;
Swiftly shall pass thy night of trial here,
And I shall come and wake thee on the morrow.”
— Saint John Henry Cardinal Newman, “The Dream of Gerontius.”
When Priests Are Falsely Accused: The Mirror of Justice Cracked
Stung by claims of cover-up when abuse was alleged in the past, Church leaders and some treatment professionals now set aside the rights of accused priests.
Stung by claims of cover-up when abuse was alleged in the past, Church leaders and some treatment professionals now set aside the rights of accused priests.
Posted by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on October 13, 2010
Updated April 8, 2023 by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae
Are you sick of stories about the sex abuse scandal? I sure am. I’ve been treading water in this deluge for almost 30 years. In August, 2010, Our Sunday Visitor Publisher Greg Erlandson read my mind when he wrote, “Sick of clerical abuse stories? We are too,” (OSV, August 15). It was a bit ironic that in the same issue this site, the blog of a falsely accused and wrongly imprisoned Catholic priest, was profiled in Our Sunday Visitor’s “2010 Readers’ Choice for the Best of the Catholic Web.”
A letter published in a subsequent issue of Our Sunday Visitor (August 29) pointed out that “the Church is not just an easy target for the slurs of Jay Leno and the [New York] Times. It’s also an easy target for lawyers and false claimants looking to score a windfall.” Of my own situation, the letter writer asserted,
“To paraphrase the Gospel parable, this priest was beaten by robbers and left on the side of the road in our Church. A growing number of Catholics have become unwilling to pass him by, no matter how sick we are of the sex abuse story.”
I’m grateful to see such letters. Writer Ryan A. MacDonald had one in an issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review. He wrote about this blog and the case against me, but in a few superb paragraphs he summed up the great danger posed to priests when Catholics are so sick of this story that they stop looking. He agreed to let me use part of his HPR essay:
“Many of the faithful are scandalized yet again when beloved priests disappear in the night, presumed by their shepherds to be guilty of crimes claimed to have occurred two, three, or four decades earlier. Many accused priests have been simply abandoned by their bishops and fellow clergy. Church laws governing their support and defense have been routinely set aside, and many have languished under dark clouds of accusation for years. Some, far too many, have been summarily dismissed from the priesthood at the behest of their bishops without due process or adequate civil or canonical defense.
The Puritan founders of New England would approve of the purging of the priesthood that is now underway, for it is far more Calvinist than Catholic.”
HPR, June/July 2010
Those are powerful words, and they are the truth. If you wonder about the impact on fair-minded Catholics of conscience when their priests are so accused, please take a few moments to read the comments on my post, “The Exile of Father Dominic Menna.” Father Dom was an 81-year-old Boston priest who was removed from ministry and forced to move from his home in 2010 while the Archdiocese of Boston “investigated” a claim of sexual abuse alleged to have occurred in 1959 when Father Menna was 29 years old. That’s the problem with a “zero tolerance” policy. As the media-fueled lynch mob settles down, and people begin to think for themselves again, zero tolerance seems a lot more like zero common sense.
The Boston Globe acted true to form with front-page coverage of Father Menna’s exile while virtually burying the story that Switzerland declined to extradite famed Hollywood film director Roman Polanski in a real case of child rape from which he fled from the United States after being charged. The Archdiocese of Boston was “ground zero” of the Church’s sex abuse scandal in 2002, but now many in Boston question whether they are ready to accept the character assassination of good priests like Father Menna just because someone sees a chance for a financial windfall. More on that next week.
The Boston Globe’s Spotlight Team may have won a Pulitzer for its 2002 archeological expedition into ancient claims against priests, but its target wasn’t sexual abuse. I can prove that, and already have. A problem with sensational media “spotlight” reports is that they focus an intense beam in one place while leaving the rest of the story in darkness.
Are Civil Liberties for Priests Intact? After I wrote “Due Process for Accused Priests” in the Catholic League journal, Catalyst, I received a letter from a Florida priest who wrote that he would never have even considered contacting me until he, too, was falsely accused. His letter was very candid. He wrote of his presumption that I and most priests accused must have been guilty of something for the spotlight of accusation to land on us. He presumed this, he wrote, until two men he never even heard of filed demands for compensation claiming abuse at his hands two decades earlier. Now he’s living in his sister’s guestroom, without income, and barred from ministry pending an “investigation” that he fears will be little more than a settlement negotiation with him as an unrepresented pawn. The lawyers for his diocese are meeting with the lawyers for the claimants, but the accused priest cannot afford a lawyer. Like many priests so accused, he is entirely excluded from the closed-door settlement discussions. More on that next week, too!
The priest wrote to me because his bishop and diocese are demanding that he submit to a psychological assessment at a treatment center for accused priests, and he doesn’t know what to do. It’s an all too familiar story. This priest knows that when I was accused I was working in ministry at one such facility as its Director of Admissions. I made some suggestions to this priest that he should find helpful. He needs to be very cautious because he’s in grave peril. I speak from experience, and I’ll describe why below.
Zero Tolerance of Innocence
“An ignorant, self-mutilating psychopath!,” this is how one treatment professional representing the Church labeled Padre Pio, sight unseen, after he was falsely accused for the second time of abusing women in the confessional. The claims eventually fell apart, but not before it became clear how much some in the Church WANTED to believe them because of a cynical agenda to discredit Padre Pio.
After I wrote that story, some readers wrote that they had been unaware of the extent to which Padre Pio suffered at the hands of fellow priests and Church leaders. This aspect of his life was minimized in public awareness for a long time, but I believe it’s important for Church leaders and all of us to understand and learn from what took place.
On September 27, 2010, The Wall Street Journal published an article entitled “Influential Pastor Pledges to Fight Sexual Allegations.” It’s a story about a Baptist pastor accused by four young men. It’s the subject of my post next week. Among the Journal’s vast on-line readership, his announcement that he is fighting the claims was the fifth most viewed article of that day. I make no judgment on his guilt or innocence, but that’s not the point. I have heard time and again that laity want the Church and falsely accused priests to fight the allegations instead of settling them.
At present, however, Church leadership in the U.S., at least, exhibits another kind of zero tolerance. It’s a zero tolerance of innocence. Accused priests who maintain their innocence, and insist on standing by the truth, are in for a very rocky road. Over the next two weeks, I will lay out my case for why I believe this to be true. It’s very important for both laity and priests to understand this. The time in which most priests can feel immune from all this is long past.
Priests, Perpetrators and Profit
Before writing my post about Fr. Dominic Menna, linked above, I received something very disturbing in the mail that no doubt influenced that post. It was a copy of an e-mail exchange between a writer doing research on falsely accused priests and a priest, psychologist, and former director of the largest treatment center for Catholic priests in the United States, St. Luke Institute in Maryland. The writer sent the exchange to me for a reaction, and certainly got one.
Here’s a segment of the priest-psychologist’s response to the writer:
“I am not familiar with the situation of [Father X], but I offer the following as someone who has personally worked with hundreds of priests who have been accused. False accusations are rare. They do happen and more so since all the publicity, nevertheless they are rare and usually don’t hold together under closer examination …. What is challenging to Church officials and clinicians working with offenders is the layers of denial and rationalization which the offenders often believe themselves and desperately try to convince others of …. Priest offenders can be intelligent and particularly convincing.”
Remember Padre Pio’s exasperated response to a Church official who claimed his wounds were psychologically induced? “Go out to the fields,” he wrote, “and look very closely at a bull. Concentrate on him with all your might. Do this, and see if you grow horns on your head!”
I unfortunately have none of Padre Pio’s sanctity, but all of the exasperation he felt at being wrongly accused and unable to offer a defense. Padre Pio suffered under repeated false claims of sexual abuse because such claims are the most potent way to destroy a Catholic priest. We now know those claims were baseless even though some in the media continue even today to exploit them. The irony is that if the claims against Padre Pio were brought today in America, he would be packed off to that very “treatment” center for an evaluation. He would not be an “accused priest” at the center. As the center’s former director described in chilling prose, Padre Pio would be seen from day one as a “priest offender,” and his denials would be interpreted as evidence of his guilt.
False accusations are rare? Tell that to journalist David F. Pierre, Jr. who wrote the book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused: The Facts, The Fraud, The Stories. Tell that to the late Cardinal George Pell, whose wrongful imprisonment and ultimate exoneration was world news.
Justice has turned on its head when men who stand to gain hundreds of thousands of dollars for making a false claim are automatically called “victims” or “survivors” by Church leaders now, while priests accused without evidence from decades ago are just as quickly called “priests-offenders” and “slayers of souls.”
Will the Truth Set You Free?
I’m sure it feels uncomfortable to read about this. It’s just as uncomfortable to write it because I know – we all know – that abuse really did take place in many cases involving priests. At the time I was accused, I was Director of Admissions for the Servants of the Paraclete Center for priests. A significant number of our priest-residents were sent to the center after being accused of sexual misconduct. I had much interaction with priests who were accused, with the Church leaders who referred them for assessment, and sometimes even with their accusers. It is true that some priests who were guilty initially denied guilt. However, another expert in this field recently wrote just the opposite of what the former director of the center for priests said above:
“It is extremely rare for a priest guilty of sexual abuse to maintain plausible deniability for an extended period of time. Those who maintain their innocence should thus be believed, absent solid evidence to the contrary, especially when there is a demonstrated financial incentive for false claims.”
It horrifies me to realize that the dominant treatment center for accused priests in the U.S. operates with a stated bias that denies priests one of the foundational civil rights of American citizens: a presumption of innocence when accused. How does someone win when denial of the crime is used as evidence against the innocent, and often, the ONLY evidence?
I faced this same roadblock years ago. Ryan A. MacDonald wrote about it in “Should the Case Against Father Gordon MacRae Be Reviewed?” It was a response to a piece of sheer propaganda offered up by a member of Voice of the Faithful who condemned me, sight unseen, in terms a lot like those once used against Padre Pio.
Ryan A. MacDonald’s rebuttal article describes an evaluation of me that took place after I was first accused. The clinician, who had an M.A. in something unknown, warned me repeatedly during interviews that my insistence that the claim never took place is called “denial” and it is evidence of guilt. He then, after only three forty-minute interviews, declared me a sexual predator and paved the path to monetary settlements against my will. Perhaps the wrong people are being thrown into prison.
The staff at the Servants of the Paraclete Center was deeply supportive of me when I was accused. They believed my stated innocence, and still do. While not a single priest of my diocese has visited me, and only two have written to me (once each) in over 29 years in prison, several priests from the Servants of the Paraclete order have traveled across the country to visit me on numerous occasions.
When I was accused, our staff advised me to seek out the counsel of a Catholic therapist to help me deal with the stress of being so accused. I was advised to find counsel outside of our own staff. It is a shocking and shameful reality that, even in 1994, I was unable to find a Church sponsored treatment professional who did not automatically assume that every accused priest was guilty.
You may have read about my 1994 trial in The Wall Street Journal. Throughout that trial, the Honorable Arthur Brennan referred to my accuser before the jury as “the victim.” And he was clearly not a child. He was a 220-pound, almost 30-year-old man posing as a victim.
“I should get an Academy Award for that performance!” he was overheard saying after my trial.
I’m told that “The truth will set you free.” Well, that’s true, but first someone has to tell it. I struggle terribly with this. Taking positions contrary to those of my own bishop and diocese is the most painful part of my existence, and not something I do lightly. Cardinal Avery Dulles, and Bill Donohue at The Catholic League, both convinced me that the truth is always what is in the best interests of the Church. So tell it I must.
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Editor’s Note: Fr. Gordon MacRae rejected a pre-trial plea deal to serve one year in prison. He maintains his innocence as he approaches his 30th year in prison having been sentenced to a term of 67 years. Visit The Wall Street Journal’s reports on this story.
✴︎ EXCLUSIVE REPORT ✴︎ Alarming New Evidence May Exonerate Imprisoned Priest
Detective James McLaughlin celebrating his 350th sex abuse arrest in little Keene, New Hampshire.
Fr. Gordon MacRae was sentenced to prison on false charges on September 23, 1994. The facade of the dishonest detective who put him there is beginning to crumble.
By David F. Pierre, Jr | THEMEDIAREPORT.COM
February 20, 2012
Rev. Gordon J. MacRae, sentenced to 33½ to 67 years, has been in the New Hampshire State Prison For Men since 1994 on abuse charges.
Newly released signed statements in a recent court motion contend that the primary accuser, Thomas Grover, made up the accusations to extract money from the Church.
Grover’s former stepson: “On several occasions, Grover told me that he had never been molested by MacRae.”
Grover’s former wife: Grover is a “compulsive liar” and a “manipulator” who “can tell a lie and stick to it ‘til its end.” Most notably, Grover “never stated one word of abuse by [MacRae].”
Former friend of Grover and accuser who recanted: I knew “full well that it was [all] bogus … I did not want to lie or make up stories.”
Former drug and alcohol counselor for Grover: Accuser Grover claimed abuse "by so many disparate people that his credibility in the [counseling] program was seriously in doubt"; Grover seemed like “he was going for some kind of sexual abuse victim world record.” Plus, aggressive New Hampshire detectives applied “coercion, intimidation, veiled and more forward threats” and “threats of arrest” upon the counselor to try to extract a false incrimination of MacRae from her.
Courtroom spectators during Fr. MacRae’s 1994 trial: A therapist hired by Grover’s contingency lawyer used hand signals from the back of the courtroom to coach Grover on the witness stand.
Veteran FBI detective, after three-year private investigation: “I discovered no evidence of MacRae having committed the crimes charged, or any other crimes.”
Plus: A lengthy criminal rap sheet of accuser Grover reveals numerous arrests, before and after trial: multiple forgeries, multiple thefts, multiple burglaries, and assault on a police officer (after breaking his future ex-wife’s nose). The jury at the trial never heard any of this.
Eye-popping new evidence is shining a new light on one of the most disputed cases of the entire Catholic Church abuse narrative.
Rev. Gordon J. MacRae and his attorneys have filed a motion for a new trial in New Hampshire based on astonishing new declarations.
The motion for a new trial contains multiple, uncollaborated signed statements from a number of people who were close to accuser Thomas Grover at the time Fr. MacRae's 1994 criminal trial, and these statements indicate that Grover perpetrated a massive fraud in falsely accusing the cleric of abuse.
1. The motion contains an astonishing 2008 signed statement from the former stepson of accuser Grover, who was in the company of Grover for a period of years before, during, and after Fr. MacRae’s 1994 criminal trial:
“[O]ver a number of months and years, Thomas Grover discussed the sex abuse allegations of [Father] Gordon MacRae with me. Grover often stated to me that he was going to set MacRae and the church up to gain money for sexual abuse. Grover would laugh and joke about this scheme …
“On several occasions Grover told me that he had never been molested by MacRae.
“Grover, on several occasions, called his civil case attorneys for money or cash advances on his expected cash award and Grover told me that his attorneys directed him to go for psychiatric and drug therapy to gain jury appeal in his court case.”
2. The motion also contains statements from the former wife of accuser Grover. According to this woman, Grover is a “compulsive liar” and a “manipulator,” “who can tell a lie and stick to it ‘til its end.”
She also has claimed:
Grover asked her to marry him in 1994 “because it would look better and, more importantly, he needed the security of a wife for a trial.”
In the entire time the pair were together, “never once did [Grover] say he was abused by MacRae.”
Grover claimed that his monetary civil suit was to pay for his needed therapy, but once he received his sizable settlement ($195,000 in 1997), he never returned to therapy again.
[Click here to see relevant court documents related to Grover's former wife.]
3. Also included in the file is a 2008 signed statement from a former friend of Grover who recanted his bogus claims of abuse by MacRae. The statement shockingly suggests that the lead detective in Fr. Gordon’s New Hampshire case, James McLaughlin, attempted to manipulate the young man into making a false accusation:
“I was aware at the time of [Father] Gordon’s trial knowing full well that it was bogus and having heard of the lawsuits and money involved, also the reputations of those who were making accusations.
“I agreed to meet with the [detectives] after being told I would be reimbursed for my time/gas money … [Detective] McLaughlin had me believing that all I had to do is make up a story about Gordon 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 be easier for us with a large amount of money.
“I knew of the Grovers’ reputation as well as others involved, many of whom I went to school with. It seemed as though it would be easy money if I would also accuse Gordon of wrongdoing. I left that meeting after being given I believe $50, easy money, like what would come from lawsuits against MacRae.”
Fortunately, after being subpoenaed, the man had a change of feelings. “I did not want to lie or make up stories … Gordon had never done anything wrong towards me,” the man has written.
4. Then there are the recent declarations from Debra Collett, who is Thomas Grover’s former drug and alcohol counselor.
After spending much time with Grover, Ms. Collett found Grover to be sorely lacking in integrity.
According to Collett, Grover claimed to be molested “by so many disparate people that his credibility in the [counseling] program was seriously in doubt.” It seemed “he was going for some kind of sexual abuse victim world record.”
Most notably, Ms. Collett indicates that she was a victim of intimidating and corrupt detective work.
In the course of trying to nab Fr. MacRae, Detective James McLaughlin and another detective interviewed Collett. They desperately wanted Collett to corroborate Grover’s claims, but she could not give them what they wanted. Collet has said:
“Neither [detective] presented as an investigator looking for what information I had to contribute, but rather presented as each having made up their mind and sought to substantiate their belief in Gordon MacRae’s guilt … I was uncomfortable with [the other detective’s] repeated stopping and starting of his tape recorder when he did not agree with my answer to his questions and his repeated statements that he wanted to put [MacRae] where he belonged behind bars … I confronted [the other detective] about his statements and his stopping and starting the recording of my statement, his attitude and his treatment of me which seemed to me to include coercion, intimidation, veiled and more forward threats as well as being disrespectful. At that point and in later dealings, I was overtly threatened concerning my reluctance to continue to subject myself to their tactics, with threats of arrest …
“My overall experience personally in interacting with the detectives was one of being bullied, there being an attitude of verbalized animosity, anger and preconception of guilt regarding Gordon MacRae. They presented as argumentative, manipulative and threatening via use of police power in an attempt to get me to say what they wanted to hear.”
Collett’s statements are indeed disturbing.
[Click here to see relevant court documents about the statements by Debra Collett.]
5. Courtroom spectators who were present at Fr. MacRae’s 1994 trial have reported that Grover’s therapist, hired by Grover’s contingency lawyer, used hand signals from the back of the courtroom to coach Grover during his testimony.
“[The therapist] would have direct eye contact with Grover and place her finger on her right cheek just at the eye level and slowly move her finger down her cheek with a distinct sorrowful frown on her face. Grover observed this and began to cry on the stand and wept for a good part of his testimony. This was in stark contrast to Grover’s behavior after his testimony and in the hall outside the court where he was jumping up and down and laughing and joking with some of his supporters.”
[Click here to read the exhibit about what these courtroom spectators witnessed.]
6. Unknown to the criminal jury during Fr. Gordon’s trial was that Thomas Grover had a lengthy criminal rap sheet, which included arrests for forgery, thefts, and burglaries.
[Click here to read about accuser Thomas Grover’s lengthy rap sheet.]
7. These startling new discoveries are largely the result of the thorough work conducted over three years by veteran investigator James M. Abbott. Abbott served in the FBI for over a quarter of a century in numerous capacities. He also worked for years for Suffolk County, New York, and the New York City Police Department.
Mr. Abbott has soberly concluded:
“During the entirety of my three-year investigation of this matter, I discovered no evidence of MacRae having committed the crimes charged, or any other crimes. Indeed, the only thing pointing to any improper behavior by MacRae were Grover's stories – that were undermined by the people who surrounded him at the time he made his accusations and the trial.”
[Click here to read the complete signed affidavit of James Abbott.]
This alarming body of new evidence should certainly give pause to anyone who may have thought that Fr. MacRae’s guilt was certain.
The National Center for Reason and Justice is sponsoring Fr. MacRae’s case, and TheMediaReport.com continues to gather more compelling information about this important episode. Stay tuned for future articles.