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Musings of a Priest Falsely Accused

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Posted by Fr. Gordon J. MacRae on March 22, 2017 20 Comments

How SNAP Brought McCarthyism to American Catholics

Generating fears, shameful to our ears, ruining careers; personal attacks, alternative facts, financial kickbacks: the rap of SNAP for a modern American witch hunt.

Ever so slowly awakening across America is a long-suppressed awareness of an ugly part of history that keeps repeating itself. There are prophets arising among us who are finding the courage to speak truth to power – in this case the power of mob justice. One of them is columnist Michelle Malkin whose recent article, “Fighting for the Falsely Accused” was sent to me last month.

Michelle Malkin tells the gruesomely familiar tale of former Fort Worth, Texas police officer, Brian Franklin. Convicted of the sexual assault of a 13-year-old girl in 1995, he spent the last twenty-one years in prison for a crime he had nothing to do with. As Ms. Malkin describes, “There were no witnesses. There was no DNA.” There was just one person’s word against another’s, and the jury – after lots of media hype – was conditioned to bring no skepticism to the heavily coached testimony of a distraught teen.

The sole evidence was a medical report of a physical examination concluding that the girl had in fact been sexually assaulted. That, and a claim that the assault occurred in the backyard of her biological father who was a friend of the police officer-suspect, was enough to satisfy prosecutors and a jury.

It was a prosecutorial perfect storm, and the fact that there was no other evidence, no DNA to test, no witnesses to the peripheral circumstances of the crime, left the defendant-turned-prisoner with nothing to satisfy the court’s demand for proof of actual innocence. So with no one having to “prove” Brian Franklin’s actual guilt, his imprisonment went on and on, passing two decades in the long, slow parade of lost time that struck home hard for me. “It’s the easiest crime to be falsely accused of,” Mr. Franklin says today.

Before reading any further, try to place yourself in Brian Franklin’s shoes for a moment. It’s easy to feel immune from the gravity of such injustice because we have no frame of reference for it happening to ourselves – or to a brother, a father, a son, a close friend,” – until it does. How would you defend yourself against such a charge when no evidence at all is needed to convict you?

After 21 years in prison – what Michelle Malkin described as “a harrowing 7,700 days of a life sentence” – Mr. Franklin had to fight for freedom even after newly discovered’ evidence emerged showing that the girl’s stepfather was the actual assailant. In a new trial 21 years after the first, Mr. Franklin was acquitted. He now has to fight again, this time for a declaration of actual innocence from a Texas court that would make him eligible for reparations for the 21 years of life stolen from him.

Over time, laws have been passed that make such exonerations very difficult to obtain. Judges in my own appeals have declined to even review newly discovered evidence because of laws that don’t require them to. Under current New Hampshire law, a convicted defendant has one year from the date of conviction to find and bring forward new evidence that might challenge it, an impossible task from prison.

In a majority opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court, Chief Justice William Rehnquist ruled that “actual innocence is not, in itself, a constitutional claim,” that would support a federal habeas corpus petition for a new trial. Rehnquist wrote for the majority court that innocent defendants in such cases can seek a political solution by asking for a pardon or sentence commutation from their governors. In the entire history of the State of New Hampshire, not a single such petition has ever been granted for a claimed sexual offense. As Brian Franklin said, “it’s the easiest crime to be falsely accused of,” and the most difficult from which to obtain justice once accused.

And as for reparations for the wrongly convicted, a decade ago, the New Hampshire Legislature, passed a law limiting reparations for wrongful imprisonment to a $20,000 cap regardless of how many years or decades a wrongfully convicted person spent in prison. It would cost more than that just to hire a lawyer to pursue such a claim for reparations.

THE CATHOLIC RISE OF McCARTHYISM

In the case of Brian Franklin, he reports that he was sustained throughout those 21 lost years by the fact that, as Michelle Malkin wrote, “his family and church stood by him.” On the day this is posted, I awaken to my 8,216th “harrowing day of a life sentence” in prison. The things that sustained Brian Franklin have been largely absent from my experience and that of any other American Catholic priest so accused.

When a Catholic priest is accused, the first line of defense for a bishop and diocese is driven by lawyers and insurance companies and it has one goal: to get as much distance as possible from the accused. When I was accused, my bishop and diocese issued a press release that pronounced me guilty before jury selection in my trial. My diocese added to the published pre-trial statement that I also victimized the entire Catholic Church.

I don’t think anyone in the Diocese of Manchester would stand by that today, but they don’t stand against it either. I think that today they have a hard time explaining it so they just don’t even try, but I know exactly what happened, and it’s time to say it out in the open. In the current climate, few accused Catholic priests could have a fair trial in America. No convicted Catholic priest could be heard justly by an American appellate court or judge. No one in the Church or judicial system wants to admit this, but it is true, and we can learn why from a 1950s moral panic called “McCarthyism”.

Church officials, after getting their distance from the accused, leave it to the civil courts to sort out guilt or innocence. Maintaining a pretense about the integrity of the outcome, they remain blind or silent, or both, about the role played by money and the practice of mediated settlements in generating accusations. I described how this played out in my own diocese in my recent post, “David Clohessy Resigns SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme.”

From 1990 to the present, activists from SNAP – the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests – carried out a highly effective campaign modeled after the community activism of Saul Alinsky and the tactics of ACORN, the radical Association for Community Organization for Reform Now. The activist campaign used public demonstrations and the news media to shame anyone who challenged or dissented in any way from the moral panic they promoted. The nature of the forces at work in this were described recently by The Wall Street Journal’s Daniel Henninger in “McCarthyism at Middlebury” (March 9, 2017):

“American campuses have been in the grip of a creeping McCarthyism for years. McCarthyism, the word, stands for the extreme repression of ideas and the silencing of speech. In the 1950s, Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy turned his name into a word of generalized disrepute by using the threat of communism, which was real, to ruin innocent individuals’ careers and reputations.”

Just substitute “campuses” with “Catholics,” “Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy” with “SNAP’s David Clohessy,” and “the threat of communism” with “sexual abuse,” and the McCarthyist aura around the abuse narrative in the American Catholic church is clear.

That aura was created by SNAP, and maintained by its director, David Clohessy. Like Communism in the 1950s, sexual abuse is real, a fact harnessed by David Clohessy and SNAP to fuel moral panic they created as a weapon for an open assault on the Catholic Church. In every media venue that would have them, SNAP stood ready to pounce on any bishop or Church official who called for even the most basic due process and civil liberties for Catholic priests so accused.

In “SNAP Implodes” in the March 2017 issue of the Catholic League Journal, Catalyst, Bill Donahue described how SNAP manipulated the media with picket signs and feigned “Holy Childhood” photos, and harmed the Church through what he called “the conspiratorial savaging of innocent priests.” I am one of them, and I thank Bill Donohue for this truth, and for having the courage to write it. Now it’s on you, dear reader. Please share this post. Shout it from the rooftops in the public square of your social media.

SNAP obliterated the civil rights and civil liberties of merely accused priests by publicly shaming them as “predators” and “pedophiles.” They knew well that these terms carried the same force of shock and moral panic as the political panic that ensued when a charge of “communist” or “communist sympathizer” was leveled in the 1950s. The manipulation of those terms, and of a news media hungry for scandal, characterized and empowered the shaming, blackballing, and ruined lives of the McCarthy Era, the widely accepted model for the modern American witch hunt.

SNAP BENT WITH THE WINDS OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

In the later 1980s and 1990s, SNAP had the terminology right. The scandal in the priesthood was first and foremost a story of homosexual predation and blackmail. But to maintain the moral panic, the language had to change to suit political correctness. The terminology did not sit well with the gay rights movement, so SNAP had to change its tactics and its language. Even the bishops went along with the new script, and to this day many Catholic commentators still stick to the “pedophile priest” story. I wrote about this in a 2011 post, “Be Wary of Crusaders The Devil Sigmund Freud Knew Only Too Well.” One sentence has often been quoted from it:

“It is a testament to the power of reaction formation [a classic Freudian defense mechanism] that an entire institution would now prefer the term ‘pedophile scandal’ to ‘homosexual scandal’ even when the facts say otherwise.”

David Clohessy was masterful at abusing the term and using its force of shock to manipulate the news media. SNAP activists labeled as “pedophile enablers” any person of conscience who called for the application of less outrage and more due process when a priest was accused.

Like an accusation of witchcraft in 1692 Massachusetts, or of being a Communist in 1955 Washington, “The P-Word” – pedophile – was fired like a bullet from an automatic weapon by SNAP activists with rancor and an intent to demean and disarm any skeptic asking for due process. The extent to which this one word was misused and manipulated was a key factor behind what writer, Ryan A. MacDonald wrote was “A Grievous Error in Judge Joseph Laplante’s Court,” another post that screams for justice and for both Church and State to take notice.

An example of the tactics of SNAP came from an activist writing under the name, “Neal Allen.” He seemed to stalk cyberspace for any positive comments or articles that called my own case into question, or presented a review of the facts. “Neal Allen” posted the same toxic comment everywhere, fired like a bullet calling me a “convicted pedophile,” and anyone writing in favor of my innocence a “pedophile enabler.”

Then it was discovered – I believe by the heroic David F Pierre, of TheMediaReport.com – that “Neal Allen” does not even exist. It was a fake screen name used by a member of SNAP to give the impression that a mob was building to gang up on any dissenter from the attacks on me, on other priests, and the Church. Once “Neal Allen” was exposed as a fraud, he simply disappeared, but not before bullying lots of people into silent submission.

Now, from the recent lawsuits, resignations, and a kickback scandal within SNAP itself, it seems that none of this was ever about helping survivors or protecting children. It was just about money. In the name of nothing more redemptive than money, great, great harm has been brought upon the Church and priesthood.

The United States bishops going into their meeting in Dallas in 2002 were utterly terrified of Clohessy and SNAP, and the mesmerized news media that seemed to hang on their every word. When the USCCB invited David Clohessy and Barbara Blane to address the 2002 U.S. Bishops Conference in Dallas in full view of the news media, the bishops had settled on a harsh reality that the best way to avoid being targeted by a witch hunt was to join it.

When it was over, and the “Zero Tolerance” language of the Dallas Charter was set in place, the late Father Richard John Neuhaus wrote in his masterful analysis, “Scandal Time,” that the bishops scrambled to the newspapers “to check their score.” Fr. Neuhaus was one of the few Catholic voices to speak out in conscience against this disaster for the American priesthood, and in this he gets the posthumous last word from his essay, “Scandal Time”:

“Zero tolerance. One strike and you’re out. Boot them out of ministry. Of course, the victim activists are not satisfied, and, sadly, may never be satisfied. The bishops have succeeded in scandalizing the faithful anew by adopting a thoroughly unbiblical, untraditional, and unCatholic approach to sin and grace. They ended up adopting a policy that was sans repentance, sans conversion, sans forbearance, sans prudential judgment, sans forgiveness, sans almost everything one might have hoped for from the bishops of the Church of Jesus Christ.” (Father Richard John Neuhaus, “Scandal Time.”)

Editor’s Note: Please share this important post for the cause of justice for the wrongfully imprisoned. For more on this story, please see these other posts by Father Gordon MacRae:

  • Walking Tall: The Justice Behind the Eighth Commandment
  • Thy Brother’s Keeper: Wrongful Convictions Should Matter to You
  • Stay of Execution: Catholic Conscience and the Death Penalty
  • Our Catholic Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests
  • The Year of the Priest Are Civil Liberties for Priests Intact?
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About Fr. Gordon J. MacRae

The late Cardinal Avery Dulles and The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus encouraged Father MacRae to write. Cardinal Dulles wrote in 2005: “Someday your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and will be instrumental in a reform. Your writing, which is clear, eloquent, and spiritually sound will be a monument to your trials.” READ MORE

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Comments

  1. Pierre Matthews says

    March 28, 2017 at 6:19 PM

    Dear Father Gordon,
    Your appeal having been rejected by Chief Judge Laplante I excerpt a few comments of my letter to the judge Laplante last Dec. 16, 2016:
    _______________
    The guiding philosophy of any judge is in litigation to uncover the truth and to sanction either plaintiff or defendant.
    _______________
    I need not be a law trained mind to find your decision (to deny hearings) dealing with evidence of innocence deontologically unjustified. It concerns, indeed, freedom and honorability of a man, a citizen, already having spent 23 years in prison.

    Why is an attempt to clear one’s name ignored and discarded, contrary to, what I feel, is THE professional obligation to search for the truth.

    Are certain types of crimes and citizens unworthy of human rights when claim of innocence is presented for consideration?

    Reply
  2. john lyons says

    March 27, 2017 at 9:50 PM

    Many good priest were put under the bus by their bishops. Some priest are guilty of horrendous crimes against the innocent but sadly all the priest that were accused were immediately taken out of parishes and put under the same umbrella without due process often with no evidence just innuendo. We are all affected with weakness but where is the advocacy and the desire for truth. So often for the church it was about money how the church would look. Let’s pray and work for justice for all.

    Reply
  3. Marie Colliton says

    March 27, 2017 at 3:31 PM

    As a survivor of sexual abuse, I am alarmed and appalled by the behavior of SNAP
    and it’s representatives. Two wrongs do not make a right. SNAP has taken a painful and ugly subject and managed to turn it into something even uglier. I distance myself from them for they do not now, nor have they ever, represented the cause of real survivors of abuse. Please keep writing the truth, as painful as it is we need to hear it.

    Marie

    Reply
  4. Gerry Zeller says

    March 26, 2017 at 10:26 PM

    Dear Fr. MacRae,
    1n 2002, Sunday after Sunday, I stood in front of the Cathedral of the Holy Cross pleading with those entering to support the Cardinal with our prayers. I could not believe the news reporting led by the Boston Globe, a paper with a long ongoing history of publishing attacks on the church. The paper orchestrated a media assault around a false narrative of pedophile priests designed to takedown the Catholic Church. It deeply saddens me that good priests were, and continue to be, offered up in an effort to deflect the indefensible.
    I pray you will be exonerated, and ask God to bless and support you in the faith filled writing and spreading His Word while in prison.

    Reply
  5. Gabrielle Azzaro says

    March 23, 2017 at 5:08 PM

    I am truly sorry for what happened to you, but most Catholics just go blindly on with life not even able to admit that priests – and religious – sexually abuse innocent children and vulnerable adults. It is NOT McCarthyism, but ignorance that abounds. Most of the time we survivors are spat upon, jeered at and just not believed. Sorry, but the effect on OUR lives is lifelong and indelible.

    Reply
    • Father Gordon J MacRae says

      March 24, 2017 at 7:06 AM

      Thank you Gabrielle for this comment. You and I have made the same point, at least in part. Like Communism, sexual abuse is real. But then the moral panic constructed around it was used by people who committed grave fraud and injustice to make enormous profit. It is those people whom SNAP promoted and enabled. I have always said that the people most harmed by snap and its moral panic are the real victims of abuse. I am surrounded by such victims on a daily basis and it makes my heart truly ache to now know that you have been one of them. I will pray for healing and peace. With Divine Mercy blessings, Father Gordon J. MacRae

      Reply
  6. David Norman says

    March 23, 2017 at 4:06 PM

    Fr. Gordon,
    Terrific post. I’m working on the best way I know of to share this with the “powers” at the USCCB. I’ll let you know how I do with it.
    You are in our hearts and prayers daily…We’ve started the 33 Days to Merciful Love on the feast of St. Joseph. Pray for us.
    Dave & Terry

    Reply
  7. Mark Taylor says

    March 23, 2017 at 6:18 AM

    I am one of those people who was attacked by “Neil Allen”. I like so many others was accused by him of “protecting pedophiles and fighting victims” which I certainly was not doing. No matter how much I argued with him, he just went on sounding like a broken record. So I just started to ignore him.
    To this day, I can’t believe that people like Thomas Doyle and other otherwise intelligent souls would have any time for “Neil Allen”.
    Until I read your post, I have to say I did not know he was a member of SNAP. No wonder he won’t hear anything said against them.

    Reply
    • Father Gordon J. MacRae says

      March 23, 2017 at 3:14 PM

      Thank you Mark for this very good comment. I am sorry that you endured such harassment for the cause of justice. I hope it is at least a consolation to you to know that Neal Allen does not even exist. He is some nameless person without the courage or integrity that you are blessed with. Let him drift into the gutter of cyberspace. I thank you for having a heart of justice and mercy. With blessings, Father Gordon J. MacRae.

      Reply
      • Mark Taylor says

        March 28, 2017 at 4:10 AM

        Well it certainly is a consolation to me that Patrick O’Malley (the real name of “Neil Allen”) subjects all Catholics to the same abuse. And worse, he has the nerve to call us bullies! Pot calling kettle black? Seems that way to me.

        Reply
        • Dorothy R. Stein says

          March 30, 2017 at 6:20 PM

          It was an exercise in unmasking the newest scandal – this one about SNAP and the agenda of its leaders – to take my cue from this post and do a Google search for “Neil Allen, pedophile.” The results brought me to any number of lurid and libelous comments left throughout both Catholic and secular media by this one man who we now know does not even exist. That Patrick O’Malley lacked the courage and personal integrity to spread such slander without using his real name speaks volumes about the nature of this witch hunt and those using the resultant moral panic for their own agendas. There are those who should now give serious thought to a libel and slander lawsuit against Patrick O’Malley for defamation. It is not, as they say, the Christian way, but before you are all devoured by the lions, such as Patrick O’Malley, you should at least secure for yourselves the revelation of truth. Sometimes a lawsuit has that effect.

          Reply
  8. Fr. Stuart MacDonald says

    March 23, 2017 at 6:06 AM

    Fr Gordon

    Bravo!

    Fr. Stuart

    Reply
  9. Clare says

    March 23, 2017 at 1:36 AM

    Father Gordon, your treatment by the press, the courts and the Diocese is quite outrageous – people like me who are not in positions of power are left wondering “how can this be?”. It makes no sense of all. How can justice have failed you so badly and the “justice” system not permit you to adduce any new evidence of your innocence? For things to be like this, the system is well and truly broken.
    Judges and juries do make mistakes – and it is an indisputable fact that there are people who are serving – and who have served prison terms, who have eventually been found innocent of the crimes for which they were imprisoned. If the ideal of the justice system is to punish those who are guilty – if there is any chance that they are not guilty, then the justice system should be flexible enough to permit fresh evidence to be assessed by the court – and time limits should not have any bearing.
    As for the Diocese and your bishop – shame on them. As a Catholic, I feel embarrassed and terribly let down that they have acted as they did and have cast you adrift. How do they justify what they have done? They probably try and forget that you exist or perhaps even pretend that it’s for the greater good.
    You are a priest who went into the priesthood to work for the Church and spread the word of God. As a lay person, I am in awe of priests and the work they do – and I have a right to expect that you will be supported by the Church. For the Diocese to fail in its duty to you and act as it has done is shameful. I would love to know what, if any support the Diocese has given you since your trial. Perhaps regular visits by the Bishop, perhaps some regular financial help, perhaps some paid legal advice or anything at all? Has there been any meaningful support at all? Perhaps you could tell us in another post…
    God bless you Father Gordon, and I thank you for all the work you do in your cyber ministry – and the good works you do in prison.

    Reply
    • HELEN says

      March 23, 2017 at 6:39 AM

      Father Gordon… I can only say that I am extremely frustrated with the justice system in this country, ESPECIALLY on YOUR behalf. To a much smaller degree, I’ve been on the suffering end of injustice. Who would have thought that I’d praise God for having to suffer thru my own nightmare, not knowing then, why? NOW, however, I believe that my empathy for you is, in part, based on my own experience. I am all too tempted, AT TIMES, to think that nothing will happen for you. My circumstances seem doomed, too. I still had to go thru it BUT eventually GOD SHOWED HIS FACE. Based on this, Father Gordon, please try to keep in mind: YOU HAVE AN ARMY OF FOLLOWERS WHO ARE HOUNDING HEAVEN FOR YOU………SO DON’T GIVE UP. OUR SAVIOR IS INDEED……………..STILL OUR SAVIOR. He PROMISED to answer when 2 or 3 are gathered. Imagine what He’s gonna do with HUNDREDS!!!!!!!!!!! One thing God can’t do IS LIE!!

      Reply
      • Helen says

        March 23, 2017 at 7:58 AM

        Clare……….thank you for your undying support for our Martyr. Please continue to help us in helping him.

        God bless you

        Reply
    • Father Gordon J. MacRae says

      March 23, 2017 at 3:11 PM

      I want to thank Clare for these astute observations about the state of American but as dismal as her assessment is, it is understated. The problem with justice in America is that it became political. In the early 1990s, the crime bill passed and signed into law by President Bill Clinton inflicted Draconian limits on the ability of innocent defendants to defend themselves, and innocent prisoners to seek redress. It is especially notable that since the 90s, the vast majority of judges, which are political appointments, were prosecutors before they became judges. Judge Joseph Laplante, who ruled in my own appeals, was a federal prosecutor. Judge Arthur Brennan who presided at my trial had been in the Bar for only a few years serving as legal counsel to the sitting governor when he was named to the bench at the end of the governor’s term. Last year in New Hampshire, the governor nominated a criminal defense attorney to be a judge, but the governor’s Executive Council rejected the nomination citing the fact that he had been a defense attorney. Only prosecutors become judges. To really gain a sense of the state of injustice, read “No Crueler Tyrannies” by Dorothy Rabinowitz. It’s the stuff nightmares are made of. Thank you for this great comment. With blessings, Father Gordon MacRae.

      Reply
  10. Ronald June says

    March 22, 2017 at 11:46 PM

    I have shared this post and hope and pray you will one day soon be freed. I have never felt good about this whole “pedophile priest” charge and the Dallas Charter with it’s zero tolerance. Where is the mercy and justice?

    Reply
  11. Barbara Bowman says

    March 22, 2017 at 7:30 PM

    I just shared this post, Father. I am an early riser (4am) and include you in my morning prayers, asking for justice and God’s mercy for you, and that you will remain faithful to your priestly promises. I am just getting ready for my second consecration to Divine Mercy on Friday, March 24. I pray that your retreat and consecration will bear bountiful fruit in your life, Pornchai’s, and those around you.

    Barbara

    Reply
  12. the real dave says

    March 22, 2017 at 5:44 PM

    Confused by the photo under the sub heading, ‘THE CATHOLIC RISE OF McCARTHYISM’ .

    The lady in the center, Kathleen Conti is not even Catholic. The Stockton woman says she was abused by a Jehovah’s Witness leader when she was a teenager. Both Barbara Dorris and David Clohessy are holding pictures of the Governing Body of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

    http://jwsurvey.org/cedars-blog/kathleen-conti-supports-new-bill-for-victims-of-child-abuse

    Reply
  13. MaryJean Diemer says

    March 22, 2017 at 5:01 PM

    Hi Fr. Gordon!
    I will absolutely share this as I do all of your posts. I do have a group of friends from all over that are reading these and sharing. Prayers are ongoing for the conversion of these that are under the devil’s influence. Prayers are ongoing for you and all there that your voice will be heard and that those that been lead to God by you will stay the course. God love and bless you all. Jeannie

    Reply

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