“There are few authentic prophetic voices among us, guiding truth-seekers along the right path. Among them is Fr. Gordon MacRae, a mighty voice in the prison tradition of John the Baptist, Maximilian Kolbe, Alfred Delp, SJ, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer.”
— Deacon David Jones
The New Hampshire YDC Scandal and the Trial of Father MacRae
A victim of abuse is one among 1,300 plaintiffs in a New Hampshire Youth Detention scandal covered up by State officials even as they investigated Catholic priests.
A victim of abuse is one among 1,300 plaintiffs in a New Hampshire Youth Detention scandal covered up by State officials even as they investigated Catholic priests.
October 4, 2023 by Ryan A. MacDonald and Claire Best
On September 23, 2023, Father Gordon MacRae began a thirtieth year in the New Hampshire State Prison for crimes that never took place. He was sentenced by Judge Arthur Brennan to 67 years in prison after refusing a plea deal offer to serve one to two years. He was sentenced solely for the claims of Thomas Grover, claims that have since been undermined by members of his family and an investigation by former FBI Special Agent Supervisor James Abbott. His post-trial affidavit is now posted on this site along with several witness statements that NH judges have declined to hear.
More recently, Claire Best, a Los Angeles-based documentary researcher and astute investigator, took up this matter with a stunning article entitled “New Hampshire Corruption Drove the Fr. Gordon MacRae Case.”
That corruption runs deeper than any of us thought. Claire Best has also recently published on another scandalous abuse and cover-up unfolding in New Hampshire just as the eyes of the nation are on its upcoming celebrated First-in-the-Nation Presidential Primary. Her latest on that story has a tentacle that reaches into the MacRae trial. Published at other venues, it is “New Hampshire’s Youth Detention Center Scandal.”
When the spotlight was on the Roman Catholic Diocese of Manchester in 2002, the Office of the New Hampshire Attorney General convened a grand jury to investigate. Despite no indictments or charges filed, the State published a report profiling every lurid claim bolstering multi-million dollar settlements with little to no evidence. When the spotlight fell upon the prestigious St. Paul’s School in Concord, NH another grand jury investigation commenced. In the case of the State Youth Detention Center, with its 1,300 open cases and the State’s procurement of a $100 million settlement fund, no grand jury investigation is taking place. This is curious, and is seen by many as an extension of the past cover-up.
Claire Best’s account laying out her case for corruption behind all this should be required reading for New Hampshire politicians and officials of the State’s Department of Justice as well as the US DOJ. One revelation in her most recent account seriously impacts the credibility of Thomas Grover’s accusations against Father MacRae that have kept him in prison for three decades since his 1994 trial.
Claire Best on New Hampshire’s Youth Detention Center Scandal
The Youth Detention Center Scandal Gets Bigger: NH Supreme Court Chief Justice Gordon MacDonald and US Attorney Jane Young should be under investigation.
On August 25, 2023, a group of approximately 100 gathered in Concord, New Hampshire to demand a federal investigation into the cover-ups of abuse at the Youth Detention Center. They blamed Attorneys General and others for the cover-ups. They are right. The State of New Hampshire has ignored thousands of complaints over the years about corruption, ignored reports from the Office of Inspector General and carried on with a complete lack of accountability.
Former residents of New Hampshire youth center demand federal investigation into abuse claims
The Sununu Youth Services Center in Manchester, previously called the Youth Development Center, has been under criminal …
www.nhpr.org
YDC abuse is decades old, as is state cover-up, master lawsuit alleges
Lawmakers, juvenile advocates have long wanted to close the center
www.nhbr.com
The current messaging requesting a much needed federal investigation involves someone with a connection to the case against Father Gordon MacRae. Charles Glenn is one of the plaintiffs alleging abuse and criminal assault by State employees at the New Hampshire Youth Development Center.
Charles Glenn is also the former stepson of Thomas Grover. Thomas Grover was adopted by Patricia Grover of NH-DCYF. He was a drug addict who was offered money (substantiated in statements) to accuse Father Gordon MacRae who was framed by Police Detective James F McLaughlin whose name was hidden on the Laurie List. The Laurie List is a once secret list of New Hampshire police officers whose credibility has been compromised by official misconduct. Keene Detective James F McLaughlin was on that list and likely one of the principal reasons why Attorney General Gordon MacDonald argued to keep the list secret.
Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest - Beyond These Stone Walls
Keene New Hampshire sex crimes detective James McLaughlin developed claims against a Catholic priest while suppressing …
beyondthesestonewalls.com
Reportedly, (and I understand that the AG’s office has been aware of this since 2012) Charles Glenn once approached Father Gordon MacRae in Concord men’s prison library where MacRae was clerk (around 2008 or so). He allegedly said to MacRae “You know the case against you was bogus, right?”. MacRae allegedly told him that he did know this but wanted to know how Charles Glenn knew it. Charles Glenn told him that his mother, Trina Ghedoni, was married to Thomas Grover during the years that Charles Glenn was in the Youth Detention Center. Later, Charles Glenn allegedly approached a friend of Father Gordon MacRae’s — Edward Silva (deceased). Silva relayed that Charles Glenn had information that could undo the case against Father Gordon MacRae but that he wanted money to provide that information. To clarify, the overture of an expectation of money for the information came only from Edward Silva and not Charles Glenn. MacRae told Silva that this would render the information useless and so it went no further.
Jim Abbott — a former FBI special agent — who was investigating the case against Gordon MacRae interviewed Trina Ghedoni (Charles’ mother) five times. She told him that she and Thomas Grover were visiting Charles Glenn at the YDC. The case against Father Gordon MacRae had exploded in the local media by then so Charles Glenn was well aware that Thomas Grover was his primary accuser. During a later visit with Thomas Grover alone at YDC, Grover allegedly told Charles Glenn that Father Gordon MacRae had never actually touched him but that he was about to “get a lot of money for this story”.
Trina Ghedoni told former FBI investigator Jim Abbott that she learned of those conversations between Thomas Grover and her son only after she divorced Thomas Grover. She also told Jim Abbott that Police Detective James F McLaughlin and therapist Pauline Goupil (who motioned for Thomas Grover to cry during his testimony from the back of the court room — observed by witnesses who wrote to the judge about it but were ignored) were Thomas Grover’s primary coaches as he developed this scam.
Trina Ghedoni told Jim Abbott that she would ask her son, Charles Glenn, to cooperate. By that time her son was in the NH State Prison. Apparently Charles Glenn was in constant trouble at the prison and not long after his first conversations with Father Gordon MacRae ended up in punitive segregation. Jim Abbott visited him at least three times and was able to elicit a signed statement that Thomas Grover — his former stepfather — admitted on numerous occasions that his charges against MacRae were “a total fraud for money”.
This became the basis for the “new evidence” that put Father Gordon MacRae’s habeas corpus petition into state and federal courts in 2012. But both New Hampshire State and Federal judges declined any hearing. Charles Glenn’s and Trina Ghedoni’s statements, among others, were attached to the habeas corpus. The documents are here:
https://ncrj.org/cases/father-gordon-macrae/
While Charles Glenn languished in and out of punitive segregation, he allegedly tried to talk to Father Gordon MacRae but the latter stopped him advising him that it could be seen as witness tampering. When he ended up in segregation again he was reportedly angry with his mother for some unknown reason. He wrote a letter to the NH AG (Michael Delaney or Joseph Foster at the time) in which he accused Jim Abbott of having an affair with his mother (baseless, I understand). He wanted to get out of segregation and start over somewhere else. He was later moved to a Connecticut prison after revoking his exculpatory statement in support of Father Gordon MacRae. Charles Glenn is now back in New Hampshire’s state prison and told Father Gordon MacRae recently that he was cooperating in the effort to get a federal investigation of the New Hampshire YDC.
On August 30, 2018, AG Gordon MacDonald was noted in the Concord Monitor to have argued against the release of the Laurie List which had James F McLaughlin’s name added to it in June 2018 for crimes dating back to 1985. These most likely were known of by AG Gordon MacDonald due to his work representing the Diocese of Manchester along with his partner at Nixon Peabody and their partner, disgraced “monsignor” Edward Arsenault.
N.H. AG: List of officers with credibility issues should stay private
The New Hampshire attorney general's office says a list of police officers with potential credibility problems…
www.concordmonitor.com
The investigation into James F McLaughlin is being dragged out. He is currently working in DA Chris McLaughlin’s (no relation) office which raises questions as to why a DA would hire a dishonest police officer at all unless it is to be complicit in going through and deleting more files.
Grafton County Investigation into Laurie List Ex-Cop McLaughlin Ongoing
The investigation into former Keene Police Lt. James McLaughlin's testimony that put a Vermont man in prison for the…
indepthnh.org
Please see the entire article by Claire Best:
New Hampshire’s Youth Detention Center Scandal: Gordon MacDonald & Jane Young should be under investigation.
+ + +
Statement of Charles Glenn
Introduction:
Charles Glenn’s mother, Trina Ghedoni, was married to Thomas Grover in the time period leading up to, during, and after the 1994 trial of Fr. Gordon MacRae. During some of this time period, from ages 13 to 16, Charles Glenn, was a resident of YDC, the State of New Hampshire’s “Youth Development Center,” a State run juvenile detention facility in Manchester, NH. Charles Glenn signed the forgoing Statement for former FBI investigator James Abbott in 2008, but later withdrew it. Mr. Glenn is one of 1,300 plaintiffs in a civil case alleging sexual and physical abuse by State employees at YDC. He explains that after this experience he was no longer motivated to speak in defense of someone accused of abuse and this caused him to withdraw his statement in 2008. In 2023, after reading reports of fraud in the trial of Father MacRae, Mr. Glenn reinstated his 2008 Statement and asked that it be published.
My name is Charles Glenn and my birth date is July 15, 1981. I am the son of Trina Ghedoni who married Thomas Grover in 1994 in the State of New Hampshire.
I am giving this signed Statement to James Abbott who is a private investigator working on behalf of Gordon MacRae, an ex-priest who was convicted of the sexual abuse of Tom Grover at a 1994 trial. Mr. Abbott has previously interviewed me on April 22, 2008 and this Statement is based on that interview as well as this interview.
From 1993 to 1997 I was assigned to the Youth Development Center in Manchester, New Hampshire. During this period, my mother Trina Ghedoni was dating and later married to Thomas Grover. Almost every week my mother would visit me with Thomas Grover and on numerous weekends I would receive a furlough and be allowed to go to my home at 410 Prescott St. in Manchester where my mother and Thomas Grover lived.
During these visits, and over a number of months and years, Thomas Grover discussed the sex abuse allegations against 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 and after the criminal trial and civil cash award he would again state how he had succeeded in this plot to get cash from the church.
On several occasions Thomas Grover told me that he had never been molested by MacRae. Grover stated to me that there were other allegations made by other people against MacRae and Grover jumped on and piggybacked onto these allegations for the money.
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. The attorneys would give cash advances to Grover when he asked for them. Grover stated the counseling would help convince the jury that his problems were the result of his molestation by MacRae. Grover told me his attorneys directed him to go to the Manchester Mental Health Unit and act crazy as this would be helpful in the trial.
After the civil award was settled, Grover and my family visited me [at YDC] and showed me $30,000 in cash, and pictures were taken by my family at this time. Grover again was bragging of his putting it over on the church. He then went out and bought a couple of cars.
Grover was never embarrassed about the publicity, but would laugh at it.
Grover’s statements to me were made before, during, and after the criminal trial and never once did he say over this four year period that he was abused by MacRae. Grover never changed his statements that he set up Gordon MacRae and the church.
I have read and understood the above Statement and it is a true and accurate account of statements made to me by Thomas Grover over the period of 1993 to 1997.
Signed: Charles Glenn May 21, 2008
+ + +
Excerpts of Investigator Interview with Trina Ghedoni
Introduction:
Trina Ghedoni is the former wife of Thomas Grover. The following are excerpts of statements to former FBI investigator James Abbott collected during his 2008 to 2011 investigation of the case against Fr. Gordon MacRae:
Trina Ghedoni met Thomas Grover a few years before the 1994 trial of Gordon MacRae. They married in 1994. During her marriage to Grover, and as a result of the 1994 trial, she became increasingly aware of issues and problems with his trial testimony and perjury. This became a factor in her ultimate decision to divorce Thomas Grover.
During her four-year marriage to Grover while living in Prescott, Arizona, Ghedoni thought Grover “made up” the whole thing. His attitude and demeanor after the trial and his sexual obsession with pre-teen and teenage girls led Ghedoni to question Grover’s truthfulness. Grover would leave home sometimes for days at a time and go to a motel to view pornography all day. He was caught by Ghedoni on two occasions having sex with his biological sisters on the Arizona Indian reservation where they relocated after Grover received his settlement. She stated that Grover had a hole in a sheetrock wall where he hid pornography. Ghedoni relates that Grover was a sexual addict.
Trina Ghedoni advised that her son, Charles Glenn, moved to Arizona with Trina and Tom in August of 1997. Charles would “pump” Tom about his life. Ghedoni stated that Charles at age 15-16 would not give her specifics but after the trial told her that Tom had “Bs’d” the whole thing “and everyone would be surprised to know what other things Tom did.”
Ghedoni stated that around 1988 Grover was interviewed by Detective McLaughlin but made no allegation that resulted in a charge. In 1989 or 1990, when Grover was 22 or 23 and living in Manchester before accusing MacRae, he met a Dominic Martin and they became close friends and drinking buddies. Martin had a girlfriend whose name Ghedoni could not recall. Martin talked with Grover about setting up priests for money. Of note, Dominic Martin was later convicted for extortion against a priest in neighboring Massachusetts in 2002.
Ghedoni advised that a therapist named Pauline Goupil consulted with Tom Grover every day of MacRae’s 1994 trial. All Tom’s testimony or proposed testimony passed through Pauline Goupil who also tracked Tom’s medications during the trial. Ghedoni advised that, pre-trial, Detective James McLaughlin would converse with Pauline Goupil who in turn would talk to Tom. Ghedoni felt that Ms. Goupil was preparing and directing Tom at all times.
Trina Ghedoni described Thomas Grover as a “compulsive liar,” a “manipulator,” and a “drama queen,” who “molded stories to fit his needs [and] lied to get what he wanted.” He is someone who can also “tell a lie and stick to it ’til its end.”
In 1994, Grover asked Ghedoni to marry him “because it would look better and, more importantly, he needed the security of a wife for the trial.” During the entire time he and Ghedoni were together before this trial, “never once did Grover say he was abused by MacRae.”
Ghedoni stated that Thomas Grover was never abused, and that he stated several times that he was going to “get the church” for money. She stated that Grover lied at trial about the presence of a chess set in MacRae’s office during abuse. Grover reportedly admitted that this was perjury, but said “it was what they wanted.” “They,” according to Ms. Ghedoni, referred to Detective James McLaughlin and Pauline Goupil.
Detective McLaughlin referred Tom Grover to his civil attorney, Robert Upton who provided Grover with multiple cash advances. Grover claimed his lawsuit was necessary to get money for therapy, but once he received his cash in 1996, he never sought therapy again. Ms. Ghedoni described Det. McLaughlin as “gung ho,” “very aggressive,” and compared him to the TV personality John Walsh.
Ghedoni reported that Pauline Goupil’s son had been convicted in 1989 as the notorious “West Side Rapist,” and went to prison but she learned this only after Grover had been in therapy with Ms. Goupil.
Ms. Ghedoni added that Grover could never give a consistent account of his claimed abuse. Before the trial Grover befriended Dean Clay and they smoked “weed” together for long periods. Dean Clay later attempted to testify for the defense but was denied by the judge.
+ + +
Related Notes
After Thomas Grover’s initial testimony at MacRae’s 1994 trial, Dean Clay read of it in a local newspaper. The next day, Dean Clay showed up in the courtroom. Before the trial resumed, he told MacRae’s defense counsel that he knew Tom Grover and had been told by Mr. Grover that he was involved in an insurance scheme or scam for which he will get a lot of money. Mr. Clay believed that the scam Grover referred to was this trial. After strenuous objection by prosecutors, Judge Brennan declined to allow the jury to hear testimony from Dean Clay.
Dominic Martin and his wife, Brianna Martin, were arrested in Boston in 2003. They pled guilty and were convicted of the extortion of a priest with false claims of sexual misconduct. Dominic Martin had changed his name. He was formerly Todd Biltcliff, a Keene, New Hampshire resident who in 1992 received an undisclosed settlement after accusing a New Hampshire priest, Fr. Stephen Scruton, of molesting him in a hot tub at the YMCA. Ryan A. MacDonald wrote of that account in “Police Investigative Misconduct Railroaded an Innocent Catholic Priest.”
During Former FBI Agent James Abbott’s investigation, Thomas Grover and his brothers refused to be interviewed or answer any questions pertaining to this matter. They received combined settlements in excess of $600,000.
Ms. Pauline Goupil also declined to be interviewed or answer any questions. Pauline Goupil is the subject of a recent article by Ryan A. MacDonald, “Psychotherapists Helped Send an Innocent Priest to Prison.”
In a post-trial Writ of Habeas Corpus petition, New Hampshire State and Federal judges declined to hear or consider any testimony from any of the witnesses who offered the Statements and evidence contained herein.
+ + +
The following links have been added to “Investigator Affidavit and Witness Statements” :
Sworn Affidavit of Investigator James Abbott
Excerpts of Investigator Interview with Trina Ghedoni
Statement of Steven Wollschlager
“The truth will set you free,” but to date no State or Federal judge in New Hampshire has allowed any of the above witnesses to testify under oath.
The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.
Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.
The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”
For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”
The Post-Trial Extortion of Father Gordon MacRae
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.
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.
+ + +
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
Behold the Man, as Pilate Washes His Hands
“Ecce Homo!” An 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri depicts a moment woven into the fabric of salvation history, and into our very souls.
“Ecce Homo!” An 1871 painting of Christ before Pilate by Antonio Ciseri depicts a moment woven into the fabric of salvation history, and into our very souls.
“So when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd saying, ‘I am innocent of this righteous man’s blood.’”
A now well known Wall Street Journal article, “The Trials of Father MacRae” by Dorothy Rabinowitz (May 10, 2013) had a photograph of me — with hair, no less — being led in chains from my 1994 trial. When I saw that photo, I was drawn back to a vivid scene that I wrote about during Holy Week two years ago in “Dismas, Crucified to the Right: Paradise Lost and Found.” My Holy Week post began with the scene depicted in that photo and all that was to follow on the day I was sent to prison. It was the Feast of Saint Padre Pio, September 23, 1994, but as I stood before Judge Arthur Brennan to hear my condemnation, I was oblivious to that fact.
Had that photo a more panoramic view, you would see two men shuffling in chains ahead of me toward a prison-bound van. They had the misfortune of being surrounded by clicking cameras aimed at me, and reporters jockeying for position to capture the moment to feed “Our Catholic Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests.” That short walk to the prison van seemed so very long. Despite his own chains, one of the two convicts ahead of me joined the small crowd in mockery of me. The other chastised him in my defense.
Writing from prison 18 years later, in Holy Week 2012, I could not help but remember some irony in that scene as I contemplated the fact of “Dismas, Crucified to the Right.” That post ended with the brief exchange between Christ and Dismas from their respective crosses, and the promise of Paradise on the horizon in response to the plea of Dismas: “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.” This conversation from the cross has some surprising meaning beneath its surface. That post might be worth a Good Friday visit this year.
But before the declaration to Dismas from the Crucified Christ — “Today, you will be with me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43) — salvation history required a much more ominous declaration. It was that of Pontius Pilate who washed his hands of any responsibility for the Roman execution of the Christ.
Two weeks ago, in “What if the Prodigal Son Had No Father to Return To?”, I wrote of my fascination with etymology, the origins of words and their meanings. There is also a traceable origin for many oft-used phrases such as “I wash my hands of it.” That well-known phrase came down to us through the centuries to renounce responsibility for any number of the injustices incurred by others. The phrase is a direct allusion to the words and actions of Pontius Pilate from the Gospel of Saint Matthew (27: 24).
Before Pilate stood an innocent man, Jesus of Nazareth, about to be whipped and beaten, then crowned with thorns in mockery of his kingship. Pilate had no real fear of the crowd. He had no reason to appease them. No amount of hand washing can cleanse from history the stain that Pilate tried to remove from himself by this symbolic washing of his hands.
This scene became the First Station of the Cross. At the Shrine of Lourdes the scene includes a boy standing behind Pilate with a bowl of water to wash away Pilate’s guilt. My friend, Father George David Byers sent me a photo of it, and a post he once wrote after a pilgrimage to Lourdes:
“Some of you may be familiar with ‘The High Stations’ up on the mountain behind the grotto in Lourdes, France. The larger-than-life bronze statues made vivid the intensity of the injustice that is occurring. In the First Station, Jesus, guarded by Roman soldiers, is depicted as being condemned to death by Pontius Pilate who is about to wash his hands of this unjust judgment. A boy stands at the ready with a bowl and a pitcher of water so as to wash away the guilt from the hands of Pilate . . . Some years ago a terrorist group set off a bomb in front of this scene. The bronze statue of Pontius Pilate was destroyed . . . The water boy is still there, eager to wash our hands of guilt, though such forgiveness is only given from the Cross.”
The Writing on the Wall
As that van left me behind these stone walls that day nearly twenty years ago, the other two prisoners with me were sent off to the usual Receiving Unit, but something more special awaited me. I was taken to begin a three-month stay in solitary confinement. Every surface of the cell I was in bore the madness of previous occupants. Every square inch of its walls was completely covered in penciled graffiti. At first, it repulsed me. Then, after unending days with nothing to contemplate but my plight and those walls, I began to read. I read every scribbled thought, every scrawled expletive, every plea for mercy and deliverance. I read them a hundred times over before I emerged from that tomb three months later, still sane. Or so I thought.
When I read “I Come to the Catholic Church for Healing and Hope,” Pornchai Maximilian Moontri’s guest post last month, I wondered how he endured solitary confinement that stretched for year upon year. “Today as I look back,” he wrote, “I see that even then in the darkness of solitary confinement, Christ was calling me out of the dark.” It’s an ironic image because one of the most maddening things about solitary confinement is that it’s never dark. Intense overhead lights are on 24/7.
The darkness of solitary confinement he described is only on the inside, the inside of a mind and soul, and it’s a pitch blackness that defies description. My psyche was wounded, at best, after three months. I cannot describe how Pornchai endured this for many years. But he did, and no doubt those who brought it about have since washed their hands of it.
For me, once out of solitary confinement, the writing on the walls took on new meaning. In “Angelic Justice: St Michael the Archangel and the Scales of Hesed” a few years back, I described a section of each cell wall where prisoners are allowed to post the images that give meaning and hope to their lives. One wall in each cell contains two painted rectangles, each barely more than two by four feet, and posted within them are the sole remnant of any individualism in prison. You can learn a lot about a man from that finite space on his wall.
When I was moved into this cell, Pornchai’s wall was empty, and mine remained empty as well. Once These Stone Walls began in 2009, however, readers began to transform our wall without realizing it. Images sent to me made their way onto the wall, and some of the really nice ones somehow mysteriously migrated over to Pornchai’s wall. A very nice Saint Michael icon spread its wings and flew over to his side one day. That now famous photo of Pope Francis with a lamb placed on his shoulders is on Pornchai’s wall, and when I asked him how my Saint Padre Pio icon managed to get over there, he muttered something about bilocation.
Ecce Homo!
One powerful image, however, has never left its designated spot in the very center of my wall. It’s a five-by-seven inch card bearing the 1871 painting, “Ecce Homo!” — “Behold the Man!” — by the Swiss-born Italian artist, Antonio Ciseri. It was sent to me by a TSW reader during Holy Week a few years ago. The haunting image went quickly onto my cell wall where it has remained since. The Ciseri painting depicts a scene that both draws me in and repels me at the same time.
On one dark day in prison, I decided to take it down from my wall because it troubles me. But I could not, and it took some time to figure out why. This scene of Christ before Pilate captures an event described vividly in the Gospel of Saint John (19:1-5). Pilate, unable to reason with the crowd has Jesus taken behind the scenes to be stripped and scourged, a mocking crown of thorns thrust upon his head. The image makes me not want to look, but then once I do look, I have a hard time looking away.
When he is returned to Pilate, as the scene depicts, the hands of Christ are bound behind his back, a scarlet garment in further mockery of his kingship is stripped from him down to his waist. His eyes are cast to the floor as Pilate, in fine white robes, gestures to Christ with his left hand to incite the crowd into a final decision that he has the power to overrule, but won’t. “Behold the Man!” Pilate shouts in a last vain gesture that perhaps this beating and public humiliation might be enough for them. It isn’t.
I don’t want to look, and I can’t look away because I once stood in that spot, half naked before Pilate in a trial-by-mob. On that day when I arrived in prison, before I was thrown into solitary confinement for three months, I was unceremoniously doused with a delousing agent, and then forced to stand naked while surrounded by men in riot gear, Pilate’s guards mocking not so much what they thought was my crime, but my priesthood. They pointed at me and laughed, invited me to give them an excuse for my own scourging, and then finally, when the mob was appeased, they left me in the tomb they prepared, the tomb of solitary confinement. Many would today deny that such a scene ever took place, but it did. It was twenty years ago. Most are gone now, collecting state pensions for their years of public service, having long since washed their hands of all that ever happened in prison.
Behold the Man!
I don’t tell this story because I equate myself with Christ. It’s just the opposite. In each Holy Week post I’ve written, I find that I am some other character in this scene. I’ve been “Simon of Cyrene, Compelled to Carry the Cross.” I’ve been “Dismas, Crucified to the Right.” I tell this story first because it’s the truth, and second because having lived it, I today look upon that scene of Christ before Pilate on my wall, and I see it differently than most of you might. I relate to it perhaps a bit more than I would had I myself never stood before Pilate.
Having stared for three years at this scene fixed upon my cell wall, words cannot describe the sheer force of awe and irony I felt when someone sent me an October 2013 article by Carlos Caso-Rosendi written and published in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the home town of Pope Francis. The article was entitled, “Behold the Man!” and it was about my trial and imprisonment. Having no idea whatsoever of the images upon my cell wall, Carlos Caso-Rosendi’s article began with this very same image: Antonio Ciseri’s 1871 painting, “Ecce Homo!” TSW reader, Bea Pires, printed Carlos’ article and sent it to Pope Francis.
I read the above paragraphs to Pornchai-Maximilian about the power of this scene on my wall. He agrees that he, too, finds this image over on my side of this cell to be vaguely troubling and disconcerting, and for the same reasons I do. He has also lived the humiliation the scene depicts, and because of that he relates to the scene as I do, with both reverence and revulsion. “That’s why it stay on your wall,” he said, “and never found its way over to mine!”
Aha! A confession!
+ + +
The Trial of Father MacRae: A Conspiracy of Fraud
For Catholic priests, merely being accused is now evidence of guilt. A closer look at the prosecution of Fr Gordon MacRae opens a window onto a grave injustice.
Former Judge Arthur Brennan
Arrested at a Washington, DC protest in 2011
For Catholic priests, merely being accused is now evidence of guilt. A closer look at the prosecution of Fr. Gordon MacRae opens a window onto a grave injustice.
Editor’s Note: This is Part 1 of a two-part guest post by Ryan A. MacDonald.
“Those aware of the facts of this case find it hard to imagine that any court today would ignore the perversion of justice it represents.”
The above quote says it all. I wrote for These Stone Walls two weeks ago to announce a new federal appeal filed in the Father Gordon MacRae case. I mentioned my hope to write in more detail about the perversion of justice cited by Dorothy Rabinowitz in “The Trials of Father MacRae,” her third major article on the MacRae case in The Wall Street Journal.
The details of how such injustice is perpetrated are especially important in cases like Father MacRae’s because there was no evidence of guilt — not one scintilla of evidence — presented to the jury in his 1994 trial. I recently wrote “Justice and a Priest’s Right of Defense in the Diocese of Manchester,” an article with photographs of the exact location where the charges against this priest were claimed to have occurred. If you read it, you can judge for yourself whether those charges were even plausible.
The sexual assaults for which Father Gordon MacRae has served two decades in prison were to have taken place five times in as many weeks, all in the light of day in one of the busiest places in downtown Keene, New Hampshire. Yet no one saw anything. No one heard anything. Accuser Thomas Grover — almost age 16 when he says it happened, and age 26 when he first accused the priest — testified that he returned from week to week after each assault because he repressed the memory of it all while having a weekly “out-of-body experience.”
The complete absence of evidence in the case might have posed a challenge for the prosecution if not for a pervasive climate of accusation, suspicion, and greed. It was the climate alone that convicted this priest, that and a press release from the Diocese of Manchester that declared him guilty before his trial commenced. As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote,
“Diocesan officials had evidently found it inconvenient to dally while due process took its course.”
It was 1994, the onset of fear and loathing when many New England priests were accused, when the news media focused its sights on Catholic scandal, when lawyers and insurance companies for bishops and dioceses urged as much distance as possible from the accused while quiet settlements mediated from behind closed doors doled out millions to accusers and their lawyers. Accusation alone became all the evidence needed to convict a priest, and in Keene, New Hampshire — according to some who were in their teens and twenties then — word got out that accusing a priest was like winning the lottery.
The fact that little Keene, NH — a town of about 22,000 in 1994 — had a full time sex crimes detective on its police force of 30 brought an eager ace crusader into the deck stacking against Gordon MacRae. By the time of the 1994 trial, Detective James F. McLaughlin boasted of having found more than 1,000 victims of sexual abuse in 750 cases in Keene. The concept that someone might be falsely accused escaped him completely. He reportedly once told Father MacRae, “I have to believe my victims.” This priest WAS one of his victims.
The only “hard evidence” placed before the MacRae jury was a document proving that he is in fact an ordained Catholic priest. The prosecution was aided much by an outrageous statement from Judge Arthur Brennan instructing jurors to disregard inconsistencies in Thomas Grover’s testimony. This is no exaggeration. As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote, those jurors “had much to disregard.”
It is important to unravel the facts of this prosecution, not all of which could appear in the current appeal briefs. I have done some of this unraveling in an article entitled, “In the Fr Gordon MacRae Case, Whack-A-Mole Justice Holds Court.” I consider it an important article because it addresses head-on many of the distortions put forth by those committed to keeping the momentum against priests and the Church going. This is a lucrative business, after all. Most importantly, that article exposes the “serial victims” behind MacRae’s prosecution.
Seduced and Betrayed
Had I been a member of the jury that convicted Father MacRae, I would no doubt feel betrayed today to learn that Thomas Grover, a sole accuser at trial, accused so many men of sexual abuse “that he appeared to be going for some sort of sexual abuse victim world record” according to Grover’s counselor, Ms. Debbie Collett. That fact was kept from the jury, and if any one was seduced in this case, it was the jurors themselves.
Ms. Collett reports today that Grover accused many — including his adoptive father — during therapy sessions with her in the late 1980s, but never accused MacRae. Ms. Collett also reports today that she was herself “badgered, coerced, and threatened” by Detective McLaughlin and another Keene police officer into altering her testimony and withholding the truth about Thomas Grover’s other past abuse claims from the jury. If the justice system does not take seriously her statement about pre-trial coercion, it undermines the very foundations of due process.
I subscribe to The Wall Street Journal’s weekly “Law Blog” entries in its online edition. A recent posting was by a high-profile corporate lawyer who occasionally undertakes appeals for wrongfully convicted criminal defendants. After winning the freedom of one unjustly imprisoned man who served 15 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, the lawyer wrote that justice has a greater hope of prevailing in such a case when a layman with no training in the law can read the legal briefs in an appeal and conclude beyond a doubt that an injustice has indeed taken place.
This was exactly my reaction after reading Attorney Robert Rosenthal’s federal appeal brief filed on behalf of Father MacRae. I have heard of similar reactions from others. One reader recently wrote, “I just read the appeal brief and I’m stunned! How was this man ever convicted in a US court of law?” Another reader wrote, “Taken as a whole, the MacRae trial was a serious breach of American justice and decency. Had I been a juror, I would today feel betrayed and angry by what I have just learned.”
A few weeks ago in his post on These Stone Walls, Father MacRae wrote of how justice itself was a victim in the prosecution of Monsignor William Lynn in a Philadelphia courtroom. That conviction was recently reversed by an appeals court in a ruling that described that trial and conviction as “fundamentally flawed.” In his appeal of Father MacRae’s trial, Attorney Robert Rosenthal has masterfully demonstrated the fundamental flaws that brought about the prosecution of MacRae and the verdict that sent him to prison. Taken as a whole, no competent person could conclude from those pleadings that the conviction against this priest should stand.
Psychotherapist for the Prosecution
I would like to seize upon a few of the details, and magnify them to demonstrate just how very flawed this trial was. I’ll begin with some excerpts from a document I recently obtained in this case. It is a letter written by an observer at Father MacRae’s 1994 trial.
The letter, dated October 30, 2013, was addressed to retired judge Arthur Brennan who presided over the trial of Father MacRae and who sentenced him to a prison term of 67 years. The letter was written by a man whose career was in the news media, a fact that very much influenced his attention to detail throughout the trial of Father MacRae. The letter writer expressed to the retired judge that he held his pen for so many years, but now that state courts are no longer involved in this appeal, he felt more free to write. Here is a portion of that letter:
“We saw something in your courtroom during the MacRae trial that I don’t think you ever saw. My wife nudged me and pointed to a woman, Ms. Pauline Goupil, who was engaged in what appeared to be clear witness tampering. During questioning by the defense attorney, Thomas Grover seemed to feel trapped a few times. On some of those occasions, we witnessed Pauline Goupil make a distinct sad expression with a downturned mouth and gesturing her finger from the corner of her eye down her cheek at which point Mr. Grover would begin to cry and sob.”
Pauline Goupil was called under oath to the witness stand in the 1994 trial where she produced a bare bones treatment file of Thomas Grover that contained little, if any, information about claims against Father MacRae. She stated under oath that this was her entire file.
Two years later, Ms. Goupil testified in an evidentiary hearing about the lawsuits brought by Thomas Grover and three of his brothers against Father MacRae and the Diocese of Manchester. Under oath in that hearing, Pauline Goupil referenced an extensive file with many notations about claims against Father MacRae and about how she helped Thomas Grover to “remember” the details of his claims. In one of these two testimonies under oath — or perhaps in both — Pauline Goupil appears to have committed perjury.
In a brief, defensive hand-written reply to the above letter from the unnamed trial observer, retired Judge Brennan referred to the testimony of “young Thomas Grover” at the MacRae trial. This spoke volumes about that judge’s view of this case. The “young Thomas Grover” on the witness stand in Judge Brennan’s court was a 5’ 11” 220-lb., 27-year-old man with a criminal record of assault, forgery, drug, burglary, and theft charges. Prior to the trial, he was charged with beating his ex-wife. “He broke my nose,” she says today. The charge was dropped after MacRae’s trial. Once again, from the observer’s letter to the retired judge:
“Secondly, I was struck by the difference in Thomas Grover’s demeanor on the witness stand in your court and his demeanor just moments before and after outside the courtroom. On the stand he wept and appeared to be a vulnerable victim. Moments later, during court recess, in the parking lot he was loud, boisterous and aggressive. One time he even confronted me in a threatening attempt to alter my own testimony during sentencing.”
And lest we forget, the sentence of 67 years was imposed by Judge Arthur Brennan after Father MacRae three times refused a prosecution plea deal to serve only one to three years in exchange for an admission of guilt. It is one of the ironic challenges to justice in this case that had Father MacRae been actually guilty, he would have been released from prison 17 years ago.
Like others involved in this trial, Ms. Pauline Goupil was contacted by retired FBI Special Agent James Abbott who conducted an investigation of the case over the last few years. Ms. Goupil refused to be interviewed or to answer any questions.
Thomas Grover, today taking refuge on a Native American reservation in Arizona, also refused to answer questions when found by Investigator James Abbott. He reportedly did not present as someone victimized by a parish priest, but rather as someone caught in a monumental lie. “I want a lawyer!” was all he would say. We all watch TV’s “Law and Order.” We all know what “I want a lawyer” means.
