David Clohessy Resigned SNAP in Alleged Kickback Scheme

David Clohessy, activist director of the Survivors’ Network of Those Abused by Priests (SNAP), resigned after a SNAP employee sued citing a lawyer kickback scheme.

We do not have many headlines like this one at Beyond These Stone Walls. It has the look and feel of descending into tabloid journalism, but when the headline is true, there is just no higher road to take. This is a story that must be told.

And I am not the first to tell it. David F. Pierre, Jr., author of several books including Sins of the Press and host of TheMediaReport.com published a report entitled, “Lawsuit by Ex-SNAP Insider Exposes Lawyer Kickback Schemes.” And to the surprise of many, the left-leaning, usually SNAP-friendly National Catholic Reporter broke the story first in an by NCR Editor Dennis Coday, “Sex Abuse Advocacy Group SNAP Sued by Former Employee.”

One day later, The National Catholic Register carried the story by Catholic News Agency writer, Kevin Jones entitled, “Did SNAP Receive Kickbacks for Suing the Church?” All three versions of the story have been sent to me by multiple BTSW  readers who asked me to write about it. A week after these accounts emerged, SNAP’s longtime Executive Director, David Clohessy, has mysteriously resigned. This is a development of immense importance in the arena of Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, one of David F. Pierre, Jr.’s most revealing books.

I have an angle on this story that none of the other accounts have, and I’ll get back to that, but first the story itself. In a lawsuit filed in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois, Gretchen Rachel Hammond, SNAP’s former Director of Development, charged that she was terminated from her position after discovering what many have long suspected. The lawsuit alleges…

“… that SNAP routinely accepts financial kickbacks from attorneys, and in exchange for the kickbacks, SNAP refers survivors as potential clients to [these] attorneys, who then file lawsuits … against the Catholic Church. These cases often settle, to the financial benefit of the attorneys and, at times, to the benefit of SNAP, which has received direct payments from survivors’ settlements.”

The named defendants in the lawsuit are [the now-resigned] SNAP President Barbara Blaine, the now-resigned Executive Director David Clohessy, and “Outreach Director” Barbara Dorris who declined to comment for the NCR article. The lawsuit alleges that SNAP claims non-profit federal tax exempt status as an organization with the purpose of providing “support for men and women who have been sexually victimized by members of the clergy [with] moral support, information and advocacy,” while in reality it is a commercial operation “motivated by its directors’ and officers’ personal and ideological animus against the Catholic Church.”

Follow the Money

The lawsuit alleges that SNAP and its directors received substantial ‘contributions’ from the same attorneys to whom they refer clients, as much as 81 percent of SNAP’s annual budget in some years. In 2007, a full 38 percent of SNAP’s income for that year came from one “prominent Minnesota attorney who represents clergy abuse survivors.” That attorney is alleged to have provided $169,716 in kickbacks to SNAP in 2007, and $415,000 in 2008. The lawsuit claims that lawyers in California, Chicago, Seattle and Delaware also made major “donations,” some of them in six figures.

Former SNAP official Gretchen Rachel Hammond concludes in her lawsuit that “SNAP does not focus on protecting or helping survivors — it exploits them.” She alleges that SNAP leaders ordered her “not to reveal to anybody that SNAP received donations from attorneys.” She also alleges that in 2011 and 2012, SNAP leaders “concocted a scheme to have attorneys make donations to a front foundation” to conceal “attorneys’ kickbacks” to the organization.

The lawsuit alleges a pattern of collusion between plaintiff lawyers and SNAP officials to maximize publicity for the purpose of fueling bigger payouts while SNAP “callously disregards the real interests of survivors.” It claims that attorneys gave SNAP the drafts of plaintiff claims and other privileged information to generate sensational press releases.

In 2009, at the invitation of Bill Donohue, I wrote a feature article for Catalyst, the Journal of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights entitled “Due Process for Accused Priests.” The article researched and exposed the practice of mediated settlements and SNAP’s demands to eliminate statutes of limitations for suing Catholic institutions — and only Catholic institutions — decades after civil laws allowed.

Up until that time, I had been spared SNAP’s pattern of public attack and character assassination, but my Catalyst article put me squarely on SNAP’s radar screen. Catholic writer Ryan A MacDonald — in “Why Do SNAP and VOTF Fear the Father Gordon MacRae Case” — quoted a comment by SNAP Director David Clohessy describing me as “a dangerous and demented man.”

On August 6, 2009, RenewAmerica.com writer Matt C. Abbott gave David Clohessy a soapbox for a rebuttal to my article which Mr. Abbott titled, “Imprisoned Priest, Clergy Abuse Survivor Clash.” Seeming to be in fear of the very exposure that the present lawsuit against SNAP now brings, Mr. Clohessy laid out a wildly false set of defensive statements and accusations: “The burden is on the victims, not the accused priests to prove these cases,” he wrote.

At the same time, Clohessy was well aware, and went on to describe, that the vast majority of the claims brought against priests are settled out of court with no findings of fact at all. Clohessy blamed this practice on the bishops who, he wrote, “insist on group settlements” because “they are scared to defend themselves in court.”

Clohessy knew very well that the machinery of making decades-old claims followed by financial compensation depended on asking few questions before writing lucrative checks. Still, he claimed that “many victims desperately want and could benefit from having their ‘day in court’ to expose not just their predator, but those who shielded and protected him.”

Now, according to Ms. Hammond’s lawsuit, it seems that David Clohessy’s annual salary and SNAP’s annual bottom line depended on keeping the machinery of blanket settlements going. In his landmark book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused  David F. Pierre, Jr. described the quality of due process and distinguishing true from false claims in my own diocese:

“In 2002, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, faced allegations from 62 individuals. Rather than spending the time and resources looking into the merits of the accusations ‘Diocesan officials did not even ask for specifics such as the dates and specific allegations for the claims,’ New Hampshire’s Union Leader reported. ‘Some victims made claims in the past month, and because of the timing of the negotiations, gained closure in just a matter of days.’ ‘I’ve never seen anything like it,’ a pleased and much richer plaintiff attorney admitted.”

— Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, p. 80

Two of the reporters covering this story — Dennis Coday for the National Catholic Reporter  and Kevin Jones for Catholic News Agency — do a disservice to the cause of truth and justice in their reporting of it. They both refer repeatedly to SNAP’s (and the lawyers’) clients as “sex abuse victims” or “sex abuse survivors.”

It is true in some cases, of course, but it is true in most cases only if one accepts SNAP’s and the lawyers’ mythology that the claims against priests for which clients received blanket settlements were demonstrably true, and were measured and tested in some form of investigation. Most were not. Simply throwing money at an accuser does not constitute due process or a determination of truth. Some have been victims of little more than their own greed.

Pope Benedict’s ‘Crimes against Humanity’

SNAP successfully generated and manipulated a climate of outrage to fuel accusations and keep the money flowing. It was a climate few Catholic leaders had the courage to challenge, but one did. In his series of columns entitled “Scandal Time” in First Things magazine, Father Richard John Neuhaus tried to call upon American Catholics to put the brakes on the outrage fueled by SNAP:

“Priests, too, are to be deemed innocent until proven guilty. In the current climate of outrage, we need to be reminded of that truth again. … News reports claiming that a certain number of priests have been charged with abuse and that the claims were settled out of court must not be interpreted to mean that the priests are guilty. Some of them insisted and insist that they are innocent, but bishops were advised by lawyers and insurance companies that a legal defense against the charges would cost much more than settlement out of court.”

Scandal Time, by Richard John Neuhaus, April 2002

After Father Richard John Neuhaus published this cautionary statement, the bishops of the United States met in Dallas in 2002. Under the watchful eyes of a scandal hungry media, the bishops invited two “victim-activists” to address the conference that resulted in the Dallas Charter and the undoing of any priest accused. They were David Clohessy and SNAP president, Barbara Blaine.

SNAP’s national director, David Clohessy previously worked for over a decade for ACORN (Association of Community Organization for Reform Now), a group with aggressive, manipulative, and confrontational activism modeled after the tactics of 1960’s radical Saul Alinsky. Keeping the money flowing depended on creating and maintaining sufficient moral panic.

In August, 2011, the Catholic League published what should have been an explosive document if it had been given fair treatment in the news media. “SNAP Exposed” described in detail the ways David Clohessy and SNAP coached accusers in framing claims in order to maximize and manipulate media coverage.

One of the many egregious examples was SNAP’S recommendation for accusers and their lawyers to “display holy childhood photos” before news cameras adding, “If you don’t have holy childhood photos, we can provide you with photos of other kids that can be held up for the cameras.”

A month later, seemingly in retaliation for exposing the truth, SNAP co-opted a radically left legal activist group, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, to file a “Crimes Against Humanity” charge against Pope Benedict XVI with the International Criminal Court at The Hague.

And in seeming retaliation for my 2009 article, “Due Process for Accused Priests,” I became an unwitting pawn in the attack on the Pope. David Clohessy and the Center for Constitutional Rights used an untrue and thoroughly debunked claim against me to bolster the charge against Pope Benedict. In her courageous article “Oscar Hangover Special: Why ‘Spotlight’ Is a Terrible Film,” journalist JoAnn Wypijewski unmasked the shame of this tactic in her in-depth coverage of the film, “Spotlight”:

“The film’s advertisement for SNAP, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, … elides SNAP’s belief that wrongful prosecutions are a minor price to pay in pursuit of its larger mission, something the newspaper didn’t much concern itself with either as it collected its Pulitzer for service in the public interest; something even the Center for Constitutional Rights disregarded in 2011 when it joined with SNAP to file a grotesque brief to the International Criminal Court demanding “investigation and prosecution” of the Vatican for crimes against humanity.

“The CCR brief failed, but its unchallenged acceptance of accusations, anonymous complaints, prosecution arguments, grand jury reports, commission findings with no benefit of cross examination and no recognized rights of the accused is breathtaking, especially when one considers that CCR was simultaneously and courageously arguing on behalf of Guantanamo detainees …

“To CCR’s shame, Father MacRae is specifically mentioned in that brief, with respect to allegations of videotape (that is, child porn), which prosecutors threw in at sentencing but for which there is no evidence, according to the lead detective in the case cited by [The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy] Rabinowitz.”

When I learned of this grave injustice, I tried to write to the Center for Constitutional Rights — It seemed a prophetic sign that its headquarters is located at 666 Broadway in Manhattan — but there was never a response. I wrote of the final outcome of CCR’s shameful complicity with SNAP in a BTSW  post, “The International Criminal Court has Dismissed SNAP’s Last Gasp.”

Perhaps I was premature. SNAP’S last gasp now seems to be the current lawsuit by one of its own directors. David Clohessy has claimed that his resignation has nothing to do with the current lawsuit exposing SNAP’s alleged financial kickbacks from clients’ lawyers.

It now remains to be seen whether David Clohessy and SNAP will follow their own advice about out-of-court settlements, and allow this lawsuit to go to a full and open trial before a civil jury.

And perhaps a RICO investigation — the government’s acronym for Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations — might also now be in order.

As I come to the end of this post, it has just been announced that SNAP founder, Barbara Blaine, has also tendered her resignation. In her brief statement she insists that it has nothing to do with the lawsuit which she says has no merit “like all the other lawsuits” against SNAP. [See the report on David F. Pierre, Jr.’s TheMediaReport.com: SNAP Founder and President Barbara Blaine Now Resigns As Pressure Mounts From Multiple Lawsuits.]

Editor’s Note: David Clohessy and Barbara Blaine ultimately settled the lawsuit by Gretchen Rachel Hammond for an undisclosed amount after demanding and receiving a signed nondisclosure agreement.

The Post-Trial Extortion of Father Gordon MacRae

Detective James McLaughlin preparing to test a lie.

Some who today cite a coerced post-trial plea deal to evidence Fr Gordon MacRae’s guilt actually had a hand in bringing it about. Plea deals can destroy justice.

My first installment in this series on the story of Father Gordon MacRae was “The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud” posted here in February. I have since learned that after it was published, this blog received a couple of unposted comments that could be construed as death threats. Both were from the same person using fake identities, and contained the same overtly threatening language, “Kill the priest, kill the priest, kill the priest!” They were posted by a man with an IP address in Eastern Massachusetts.

The man who posted them happens to be known to me, but he has been unaware of that fact until now. This man has tried to post other comments using fake names both at Beyond These Stone Walls and other venues when commenters mention this case. He seems to take very personally these efforts to uncover and publish the truth of this matter though he has no direct involvement in this story, and he has never even met Father MacRae. He appears to be highly motivated, however, to bury the truth of this case under the usual toxic rhetoric and hysteria that plague the subject of Catholic priests accused of sexual abuse, and prevent constructive, rational investigation.

Like many members of SNAP, that writer does not post a lot of comments so much as he posts the same comment over and over again in any venue that will accept it. In the case of Father Gordon MacRae, this Toxic Avenger’s favorite comment is that MacRae “has publicly admitted to molesting children!” The claim is by no means new, but like so much of this case it has become part of a public mantra, a snowball that grew ever bigger as it rolled downhill. It is but the latest chapter in this perversion of justice. I want to thank our Massachusetts friend for raising it again and spreading it around until finally I was moved to take it up.

Former Judge Arthur Brennan arrested after accusing Congress of “stealing our freedoms.”

Plea Deals and a Compromised Judge

In her third major article on this story in The Wall Street Journal, “The Trials of Father MacRae,” (May 10, 2013), Dorothy Rabinowitz devoted a few lines to the subject of plea deals offered to the accused priest before and during his trial:

“In mid-trial, the state was moved to offer Father MacRae an enticing plea deal: one to three years for an admission of guilt. The priest refused it, as he had turned down two previous offers, insisting on his innocence.”

— The Trials of Father MacRae by Dorothy Rabinowitz

The previous offers were put into writing in the prosecutor’s pre-trial letters to MacRae’s attorney. In the pre-trial media coverage, state prosecutors trumpeted the multiple accusers — there were four, three of them brothers in the same family — and multiple indictments against this priest, all claims that arose at the same time from over a decade earlier. I described these claims in a post aptly titled, “In Fr Gordon MacRae Case, Whack-A-Mole Justice Holds Court.”

While publicly presenting the priest as a monster in the local New Hampshire news media, state prosecutors moved quietly behind the scenes to offer MacRae a deal to plead guilty and then get on with his life in just one year. Defense lawyers talked up the deal. It would save lots of time and money, and might even save Father MacRae who, it seemed to them, did not actually do any of this. The priest refused it twice before trial and again in the middle of trial just after Thomas Grover’s incredible testimony.

In my article that began this series, “The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud,” I described Thomas Grover’s testimony at trial — testimony that was heavily coached to the point of witness tampering. Pauline Goupil, a psychotherapist retained at the behest of Grover’s contingency lawyer, was observed coaching Grover’s testimony with what appeared to be prearranged signals to cry when tough questions were asked. Her scant “treatment” file contained a copy of a pre-trial letter from Ms. Goupil to Grover never seen by the jury:

“Jim [that’s Keene, NH detective James McLaughlin] told me MacRae is being offered a deal his lawyers will want him to take. So there won’t be a trial. We can just move on to the settlement.”

— Excerpt of letter from Ms. Goupil to Thomas Grover

There seemed to be a sort of bewilderment among prosecutors as to why the priest would not accept their deal. During a short recess, prosecutors pulled defense Attorney Ron Koch aside, then he in turn pulled his client into a hallway.

“They want to know why we won’t take their deal,” he told Father MacRae. “They want us to make a counter offer. They want this conviction. They don’t necessarily want you,” the lawyer said. MacRae says, today, that he just couldn’t go along, that it was never a matter of “throwing his life away” as his lawyers described his insistence on a trial. It was the fact that avoiding trial by taking a plea deal meant that none of the details of this case would ever come out. He would just be another guilty priest who vaguely assaulted claimants who were then given huge settlements by the Catholic Church. It was the story widely told up to then, and since then, but in this case it was not the truth.

When MacRae refused that third plea deal offer following Thomas Grover’s testimony, however, the tone of this trial changed. On cross examination, Attorney Koch asked Grover a simple question: “Who did you go to first with this story, the police, or a lawyer?” As he did so often in this trial when cornered with a question that might unmask him, 27-year-old Thomas Grover (of whom Judge Brennan referred throughout trial as “the victim”) looked alarmed, rattled on incoherently, meandered down meaningless, unresponsive side roads, then looked to Ms. Pauline Goupil for the signal that it was time to start crying. In a related article, “Psychotherapists Helped Send an Innocent Priest to Prison,” I wrote the story behind Grover’s sobbing performance on the witness stand.

The question of who Thomas Grover went to first with his story — the police or his contingency lawyer — went to the very heart of this case and the motive for bringing it: an expectation of a financial settlement from the Diocese of Manchester. To date, the question of who he went to first has never been answered.

The next morning in that courtroom, Judge Arthur Brennan took it upon himself to remedy the situation. Outside the presence of the jury, he instructed all present that he had given Thomas Grover a limiting order barring him from any testimony about the simultaneous claims of abuse brought by two of his brothers, one two years older and one a year younger. Judge Brennan’s remedy was to summon the jury and instruct them — with no explanation whatsoever — that they are to disregard inconsistencies in Thomas Grover’s testimony. As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote, that jury “had much to disregard.”

Then, when an opportunity approached for the accused priest to take the stand in his own defense, Judge Brennan once again dismissed the jury and addressed the priest directly. He said that if MacRae chooses to testify in his own defense, he will almost certainly open the door to permit the claims of Thomas Grover’s brothers to come before the jury, and thereby become — as bizarre as their stories were — corroborating witnesses for each other. In other words, one lie standing alone has a chance to be undone. Three lies standing together left the defense defenseless. So, in the entirety of this trial and sentencing, Father Gordon MacRae was never permitted to utter a single word.

I covered the story of these additional claims in “Truth in Justice: Was the Wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?”

This is the office at St. Bernard’s Church in Keene, NH. Thomas Grover claims to have been raped there five times at age 15 in 1983. A chess set that he claimed to be in the office was not given to MacRae until three years later.

The Marble Chess Set

On direct and on cross examination, Thomas Grover testified that during the 1983 sexual assaults he endured in Father MacRae’s rectory office, Grover saw a large elaborate marble chess set on a table in that office. I described this office, including a set of exterior photographs, in a post on my own blog entitled “Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester.” I am convinced that there are people from Keene, NH who read that — Father MacRae’s jurors, perhaps, and others who know the truth of this story — but they stay in the shadows.

At the trial, Father “Moe” Rochefort testified that he and MacRae and three other friends purchased that marble chess set during a hiking and camping vacation in Bar Harbor, Maine in 1986. So it was not possible that Grover saw that chess set in 1983. Today, Thomas Grover’s ex-wife, Trina Ghedoni, reports that Grover admitted to her at the time that he committed perjury in his testimony about the chess set, “but it was what they wanted him to say.” When asked who “they” referred to, Ms. Ghedoni replied, “Pauline Goupil and Detective [James] McLaughlin.”

Late in the last full day of the trial, Defense lawyer Ron Koch, now deceased, delivered his closing argument to the jury and then left the court to fly off for a murder trial. He was not present in the courtroom when Prosecutor Bruce Reynolds told the MacRae jury that “some people in this court said MacRae was a nice guy. People said that of Hitler too.”

The trial ended and the jury began deliberations late in the afternoon of Thursday, September 22, 1994. Presumably, that first hour was used to select a jury foreman, then they all went home. The next day, Friday, September 23, 1994, the jury returned at 9:30 AM to ask a question of Judge Brennan. They wanted to see a transcript of Father Rochefort’s testimony about the marble chess set. Judge Brennan denied the jury request, telling them that they must rely solely on their memories of that testimony.

One hour later, MacRae was summoned back into the courtroom. The jury had reached a verdict in spite of their unanswered question. MacRae stood to hear the twelve jurors’ finding of “guilty.” He says, today, that not one would look at him directly. They looked only at Judge Brennan.

The Sentence and the Extortion

Knowing about the proffered and refused plea deals — or at least having no excuse NOT to know of them — Judge Arthur Brennan would eventually sentence Gordon MacRae to more than thirty times the minimum sentence of one year which the State was willing to recommend had MacRae allowed the entire case to be piled into one convenient plea deal. I wrote about the refused deal of one to three years and the imposed term of 67 years in “Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Fr Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison.”

That article raised an important question about justice. How is it that the man who stood before Judge Brennan was more of a monster for maintaining his innocence and preserving his rights than he was had he admitted guilt? If MacRae had in fact been guilty, and therefore willing to say as much, he would have left prison over 25 years ago.

When this trial was over, Father MacRae was taken immediately to a jail cell to await Judge Brennan’s sentence. Defense lawyer Ron Koch resigned from the case telling the priest via telephone that the verdict “did not reflect anything that took place in that courtroom.”

In “The Prison of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Silence,” my second installment in this series, I wrote that MacRae took and passed a set of polygraph examinations in the claims brought by Thomas Grover and his brothers, Jonathan Grover and David Grover. None of the three have ever agreed to submit to polygraphs. I wrote that a defense decision to reveal MacRae’s polygraph results to the Diocese of Manchester before trial was disastrous.

The result was a glaring, highly prejudicial, and explosive pre-trial press release that publicly declared Father MacRae to be guilty before jury selection in his trial. The Bishop of Manchester’s press release so prejudiced this case that it was a major factor in defense attorney Ron Koch’s decision to resign.

Attorney Koch was simply bewildered at the willingness of Church officials to enter into settlement negotiations with accusers regardless of the truth, regardless of the guilt or innocence of the accused. Dorothy Rabinowitz put it somewhat more delicately, “Diocesan officials had evidently found it inconvenient to dally while due process took its course.”

This appears to be what The Rev. Richard John Neuhaus meant in “A Kafkaesque Tale” when he wrote that the MacRae case “reflects a Church and a justice system that seem indifferent to justice.” Exiting the case, Attorney Koch told the convicted and jailed priest that subsequent trials would have to be turned over to a public defender, and that MacRae had no hope of prevailing. None. Zero. He warned the priest that there was hope of overturning the Thomas Grover case on appeal, but that he could not possibly hope to ever leave prison if he is convicted in another trial of claims brought by Thomas Grover’s brothers and then two others who jumped aboard. (That’s a whole other story, and it’s coming!)

The Negotiated Lie

State prosecutors knew all this, but those behind this case also knew that certain facts in the background risked also becoming public in future trials. So a new deal was set forth. The priest, still awaiting Judge Brennan’s sentence in the Thomas Grover trial, was offered a sentence of zero years in prison if he would forego additional trials and plead guilty to only the remaining charges. The details of those remaining charges are laid out in an article of mine entitled, “Truth in Justice: Was the Wrong Catholic Priest Sent to Prison?”

It’s cheap and easy to say today that Father MacRae should not have accepted this deal, but that does not capture the reality of it. Everyone around him at the time told him that he had no choice. The State’s prosecutorial machine and the Diocese of Manchester’s press release combined to utterly destroy this man, his due process rights, and his freedom. Under their combined, unbearable weight — alone, impoverished by the previous trial, abandoned by his legal counsel, vilified by his own bishop and diocese, siting in jail awaiting sentence — Gordon MacRae was undone as this final negotiated lie was thrust upon him. There were many owners of this lie. It was not MacRae’s alone.

Seventeen years later, Joan Frawley Desmond, Senior Editor at the National Catholic Register newspaper, took on a subject anathema to most in the secular and Catholic press: the idea that some accused priests might be innocent. In “Priests in Limbo,” the second of a two-part article in the NC Register (Feb. 17, 2011) Joan Frawley Desmond wrote of the story of Father Gordon MacRae:

“The Diocese of Manchester doesn’t share [Ms.] Rabinowitz’s belief in the priest’s innocence. ‘Father MacRae pleaded guilty to felonious sexual assault,’ stated diocesan spokesman Kevin Donovan.

“Rabinowitz offered an exculpatory back story to Father MacRae’s post-trial plea … . Donovan also would not address Rabinowitz’s charge that the Manchester Diocese issued a pre-trial statement that lent credence to the abuse allegations.”

— Joan Frawley Desmond, NC Register

That officials of the Diocese of Manchester would today cite as evidence of guilt the very scenario that they themselves had a hand in creating is one of the bombshells yet to be fully defused in this case. Those very words, that MacRae “admitted” to some charges, were packaged by Monsignor Edward Arsenault — himself sent to prison after taking a plea deal — and sent to Rome in an effort to have MacRae forcibly dismissed from the priesthood, an effort that, thankfully, has not succeeded.

Such perversions of justice are by no means limited to this one case. The Innocence Project reveals that of the more than 800 proven wrongful convictions in the United States in recent years, a full twenty-five percent had buckled under coerced pre-trial plea deals. Ninety-five percent of criminal cases are resolved through plea bargaining, and it is no measure of justice.

I am far more persuaded by the sworn statement of career FBI Special Agent Supervisor, James Abbott, who 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 crimes. Indeed, the only 'evidence' was the claims of Thomas Grover which others today, including members of his family, have discredited.”

— FBI Special Agent Supervisor, James Abbot

If you ever again read somewhere that Father Gordon MacRae “admitted guilt,” please set the record straight and leave a link to this post. He didn’t. Not by any standard of truth and justice I know of.

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Editor’s Note: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. You may also like this related post from Brian Fraga at the National Catholic Register :

New Hampshire Priest Continues the Long Road to Clear His Name

The Prison of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Silence

The Diocese of Manchester demonstrates the difference between the stated rights of accused Catholic priests in Church law and actual observance of those rights.

Editor’s Note: This is Part Two of a guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald. Part One was “The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud.”

“I don’t share your belief in Father MacRae’s innocence. I just don’t believe a judge and jury would sentence a priest to life in prison with anything less than clear and compelling evidence.”

The above quote was the reply of a prominent American Catholic writer when I challenged him to take a closer look at the trial and imprisonment of Father Gordon MacRae. There is nothing to be gained by publishing the writer’s name. I still hope he might accept my challenge to study this matter with more depth than the New Hampshire news media and priests of the Diocese of Manchester have given it. I have asked the writer to show me the evidence he feels so certain must exist. He is wrong about this. There is simply no factual evidence to support this conviction.

But for some, the absence of evidence is evidence of evidence. That Catholic writer’s presumption about evenhanded justice and due process reflects the naiveté of the innocent and just. I once shared such naiveté, but I have since learned that ignorance is not bliss. I know too much about this case to cling to any delusions that everyone in prison must be guilty, or that a Catholic priest, while actually innocent, could not be railroaded into prison based on false witness.

So does The Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz, one of the most just and courageous journalists I know. She has a talent for enabling readers to place themselves in the shoes of the falsely accused, and it’s a terrifying place to be. A recent article, “On Woody Allen and Echoes of the Past” (WSJ.com, February 9, 2014), had that same effect. It isn’t long, but it’s compelling and powerful.

Despite its title, the article’s great power is in its depiction of falsely accused men and women — such as Violet, Cheryl, and Gerald Amirault of Massachusetts and Kelly Michaels of New Jersey — who were ripped from ordinary lives to be tried and sent to prison because of trumped up charges, lots of media hype, and the ambitions of prosecutors.

These same people were profiled in No Crueler Tyrannies (WSJ Books, 2005), a book by Dorothy Rabinowitz that has opened many eyes, including mine. She found a common denominator among those falsely accused and betrayed by the justice system during the “child terror” prosecutions of the 1980s and 1990s, the same era, and the same terror, that convicted Father MacRae. Rabinowitz wrote,

“Those who are falsely accused often naively believe that their innocence is obvious, that the allegations will be dropped.”

In “Judge Arthur Brennan Sentenced Fr Gordon MacRae to Die in Prison,” I wrote that plea deals work well for the guilty but not for the innocent. The guilty come before the justice system prepared to limit punishment by accepting any reasonable plea deal offered. The innocent cannot fathom such twisted justice, and therefore often spend far more time in prison than the guilty.

For preserving his right to a presumption of innocence and a fair trial — though he got neither, as you will see, from either Church or State — Father Gordon MacRae was sentenced by Judge Arthur Brennan to more than 30 times the sentence offered by prosecutors in the plea deal he refused. As I wrote in part one of this article last week, it is a perversion of justice that, had he been actually guilty, this priest would have been released from prison 17 years ago.

The Lie Detector Disaster

In the above article, Dorothy Rabinowitz cited that some of the innocent accused were anxious to take lie detector tests (aka polygraphs). Those who passed them, however, did so to no avail as prosecutors refused to consider, or even hear, the results. Father MacRae also voluntarily submitted to two lie detector tests conducted by an expert who reviewed the claims of Thomas Grover and his brothers, Jonathan and David Grover, who also accused the priest for settlement money from his diocese. I have repeatedly called upon MacRae’s accusers to agree to lie detector tests, a challenge met only with silence.

Had Father MacRae failed the polygraphs administered before his trial, you can be certain that fact would have found its way into court, or at least into the newspapers. He passed them conclusively, but the results were ignored, and not only by state prosecutors. The most difficult act of suppression to comprehend came from his bishop and diocese.

Defense attorney Ron Koch (pronounced “Coke”) often appeared to be as naive and trusting as his client. He seemed to believe that the Diocese of Manchester might be more inclined to defend its priest if clarity about his innocence could be established. However passing pre-trial lie detector tests, and making that fact known, actually proved disastrous for the defense of Father MacRae.

Within weeks of the defense lawyer’s effort to have polygraph results reviewed by Church lawyers, the Diocese of Manchester issued a press release that inflicted a mortal wound to MacRae’s civil and canonical rights. Plastered in the news media throughout New England before jury selection in his trial, this press release destroyed his defense in the court of public opinion, and influenced jurors in the court of law:

“The Bishop and the Church are saddened by and grieve with the victims of Gordon MacRae…and he was ultimately removed from his status as one who could ever function as a priest again…The Church is a victim of the actions of Gordon MacRae as well as the individuals… [The Diocese] will defend its officials who have been falsely accused [and] it will continue to cooperate in bringing those who have harmed others to light.”

— Bishop of Manchester Press Release, Sept. 11, 1993

Canonical Advocate, Father David Deibel, J.C.L., J.D., protested this gross violation of Church law and civil liberties. He was reportedly told that the press release “was a carefully crafted statement meant to respond to media concerns” about the MacRae case. When defense attorney Ron Koch called to protest, he was told that Father MacRae was the sole priest to have been so accused in the Diocese of Manchester.

Nine years later, officials for the Manchester Diocese worked out a plea deal of their own to avoid a misdemeanor charge based on a theory of law the state’s Attorney General admitted was “novel.” The published files as a result of that deal revealed that 62 New Hampshire priests had been accused, and some $23 million changed hands in mediated settlements. 

 For his first six years in prison, 17 miles from the Chancery Office of the Diocese of Manchester, Father MacRae was summarily abandoned. The company line was that it was MacRae himself who refused to be visited in prison by any priest. The bitter refusal was reportedly issued through unnamed third parties who have never been identified. However, the prison’s Catholic chaplain during Father MacRae’s first years in prison saw this differently:

“I have been told by priests that Diocesan officials claimed that Father MacRae refused, through unnamed third parties, to be visited by a priest … During my tenure as chaplain, no one representing the diocese ever asked me to arrange a visit with Father MacRae [who] indicated to me he would welcome such contacts … . It remains my belief that Father MacRae is for some reason viewed differently from other priests that are, or have been, incarcerated.”

— Prison Chaplain John R. Sweeney, Sept. 20, 2004

Bishop’s Delegate Monsignor Edward Arsenault

Two years ago, I wrote an article entitled “To Azazel: Father Gordon MacRae and the Gospel of Mercy.” It was about some shockingly uncharitable conduct toward this imprisoned priest, but the offenders were not other prisoners trying to make names for themselves in the brutal prison culture. They were priests of the Diocese of Manchester.

In the year 2000, however, Diocesan interest in Father MacRae was radically altered when it became known that two media giants, Dorothy Rabinowitz at The Wall Street Journal, and PBS Frontline, expressed interest in the facts of this case. You may read for yourselves the manipulation aimed at this imprisoned priest, and the devastation of his rights in an article by Father George David Byers entitled, “Omertà in a Catholic Chancery — Affidavits Expanded.”

Throughout this period, the official Delegate (2000 until 2009) for the Bishop of Manchester was Monsignor Edward Arsenault. His published resume reveals that he personally negotiated mediated settlements in 250 claims against Diocese of Manchester priests. At the same time, Monsignor Arsenault was wearing another hat — some might say a highly conflicting one.

While negotiating settlements in the MacRae case and hundreds of others on behalf of the Diocese of Manchester, Arsenault was also Chairman of the Board of the National Catholic Risk Retention Group, an organization underwriting insurers of Catholic institutions and dioceses across the U.S. It is unclear which of these hats Monsignor Arsenault was wearing when he negotiated this typical round of mediated settlements described in David F. Pierre’s 2012 book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused:

“In 2002, the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, faced accusations of abuse from 62 individuals. Rather than spending the time and resources looking into the merits of the accusations, ‘Diocesan officials did not even ask for specifics such as the dates and specific allegations for the claims,’ New Hampshire’s Union Leader Reported. ‘Some victims made claims in just the past month and because of the timing of negotiations, gained closure in just a matter of days,’ reported the Nashua Telegraph. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it!’ a pleased and much richer plaintiff attorney admitted.”

— Catholic Priests Falsely Accused, p. 80

In 2001, Monsignor Edward Arsenault developed a policy statement for the Diocese of Manchester. As Bishop John McCormack’s Delegate, Monsignor Arsenault published the “Diocese of Manchester Statement of Rights and Obligations of Persons Accused of Sexual Misconduct.” The document was straightforward, and listed, in accord with Canon law and Diocesan policy, the rights of the accused and the obligations of the Diocese:

• The Delegate (Monsignor Edward Arsenault) will:

  • Inform the person being interviewed of the process to be used;

  • Inform the person being interviewed what information will be shared with whom;

  • Inform the person being interviewed that he [the Delegate] is acting in the external forum on
 behalf of the Bishop of Manchester;

  • Inform the person being interviewed that any and all information disclosed will be treated with discretion, but not subject to confidentiality…

• Rights of the Person Accused: The accused cleric or religious has:

  • The right not to implicate oneself;

  • The right to counsel, civil and canonical;

  • The right to review the results of one’s own psychological evaluations;

  • The right to know what has been alleged and to offer a defense against the allegations;

  • The right to know and understand the review process;

  • The right to discretion in the conduct of the investigation and to have his/her good name protected.

Over the next three years as the Diocese of Manchester submitted individual cases to the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, every tenet of the above statement of rights was silently ignored or outright violated by Monsignor Arsenault and officials of the Diocese of Manchester in regard to the case of Father MacRae.

No investigations took place. No interviews took place. The imprisoned priest’s repeated requests for details of what has been represented in Rome in regard to this case have been ignored, and no right of defense has been honored. The promised assistance of legal counsel was never acted upon. Repeated and documented requests from Father MacRae that Bishop John McCormack and Monsignor Arsenault agree to confer with his Canonical Advocate to assure his rights under Church law were refused.

In the ultimate insult, when Monsignor Arsenault finally did agree to consult Father Deibel, the canonical advocate, he reportedly told the priest that, should Father MacRae be involuntarily laicized, “I’m sure Bishop McCormack will still send him $100 a month” to survive in prison. The suggestion that this was MacRae’s sole concern for the future of his priesthood left him feeling humiliated and violated.

A promise by Bishop McCormack to set aside $40,000 for Father MacRae’s appellate defense — on the condition that he set aside contacts with Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal — was instead used to hire counsel to bypass MacRae’s lawyers and investigators, and to conduct a secret review of his trial and any chance of overturning the convictions. To this day, Monsignor Arsenault and the Bishop of Manchester have ignored requests to share that review with the wrongly imprisoned priest’s defense team struggling to afford his day in court.

Remember Those in Prison as Though in Prison with Them (Heb. 13:3)

In 2009, Monsignor Edward Arsenault was appointed Executive Director of Saint Luke Institute, a nationally known facility in Maryland for the psychological treatment of priests. Bishop John McCormack was the sole U.S. bishop on the Saint Luke Institute Board of Directors at the time. Monsignor Arsenault took leave from the diocese to assume the post with an annual salary of $170,000.

Earlier this month, on February 4, 2014, the news media announced that Monsignor Edward Arsenault has accepted a plea deal to plead guilty to three felony charges. He was indicted on multiple counts, and has agreed to plead guilty to the theft of thousands of dollars from the Diocese of Manchester while serving as Chancellor and Bishop’s Delegate, from Catholic Medical Center Hospital where he served on its Board of Directors, and from the estate of a deceased priest of the Manchester Diocese for which he served as Executor. According to news reports, the theft of funds from the Diocese of Manchester continued until 2013, four years after Monsignor Arsenault began his $170,000 a year post at Saint Luke Institute.

The plea deal Monsignor Arsenault has entered into forgoes trial and any testimony under oath. The exact number of felony charges and the exact amounts of stolen funds involved have not been made public, and possibly never will be. The New Hampshire Attorney General stated that the plea deal, and the minimum four year prison sentence Monsignor Arsenault has agreed to, are in “recognition of the extensive cooperation of the defendant,” and in anticipation of his continued cooperation in the ongoing investigation of “improper financial transactions.”

The investigation into financial wrongdoing was launched, according to news sources, when the Diocese began investigating a “potentially inappropriate adult relationship.”

For at least the next four years, Monsignor Edward Arsenault will share the same prison as Father Gordon MacRae, a priest who — armed only with the truth and his faith — refused plea bargains to face the cruelest of tyrannies, wrongful imprisonment. This is the priest against whom Monsignor Edward Arsenault and his prosecutorial friends have worked so arduously, and in secret, to undo and discard.

UPDATE:

Monsignor Arsenault served only a few weeks of his sentence in the New Hampshire State Prison. He was moved early one morning to serve out his sentence in the Cheshire County House of Corrections. This, we are told, was highly unusual. A State Senator who asked not to be named said that Monsignor Arsenault received “very special treatment” in the judicial and corrections systems. Special treatment did not end here. After serving only two years of the four-to-twenty year sentence, Arsenault’s sentence was commuted to house arrest. While serving that sentence his $300,000 restitution was paid by unnamed third parties. His entire twenty year sentence was then commuted by Judge Diane Nicolosi. Subsequently, Arsenault was dismissed from the clerical state by Pope Francis. In April of 2021 he legally changed his name to Edward J. Bolognini.

Under this new name, with his $300,000 restitution paid by unnamed third parties and his sentence for multiple financial felonies suddenly commuted Edward J. Bolognini was awarded with management of a multimillion dollar contract with the City of New York.

In 2018, sixteen years after Fr. MacRae and his advocates were told that MacRae was the only of the Manchester Diocese ever to be accused, current Bishop Peter A. Libasci proactively published a list of 73 priests of the Diocese of Manchester accused of sexual abuse. He cited “transparency” as his motive for publishing the list. Subsequently, Bishop Peter A. Libasci was himself accused of sexual abuse dating from his years as a priest in the Diocese of Rockville Center, New York. The charges were alleged to have occurred in 1983, the same year as the charges against Fr. MacRae.

Bishop Libasci maintains his innocence and remains Bishop of Manchester, and all transparency ceased.

In October 2022, The Wall Street Journal published its fourth article on this matter entitled, “Justice Delayed for Father MacRae.”

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