Catholic League: Due Process for Accused Priests
The Catholic League just recently released Fr. Gordon MacRae’s latest article:
Due Process for Accused Priests
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Father Gordon MacRae’s New Blog
I thought you’d like to know that Father Gordon MacRae launched his new blog this morning:
These Stone Walls
http://www.thesestonewalls.com/
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Fr. Gordon MacRae on the Year for Priests
Fr. Gordon MacRae on the Year for Priests
Several hours ago or this evening, depending upon where in the world you are, the Holy Father will commence the Year of the Priest following First Vespers of the Solemnity of the Sacred Heart in the Basilica of St. Peter in Rome.
We priests are all encouraged to join ourselves spiritually to our Holy Father and to the Sacred Heart of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, in whose image we are ordained and in whose Heart we serve. The faithful are also encouraged to join our Holy Father as we begin this new year in the life of the Church, a year dedicated to the wounded and suffering Priesthood of Christ.
As we begin this year I want to thank the readers of Priests in Crisis, and those who read numerous other sites and have posted messages directed to me, a priest in prison. After 15 years in prison your messages may be saving my faith. Two weeks ago I was aware that the Year of the Priest was beginning on this date.
I read the news of our Holy Father’s announcement as though I was seeing it through a very dense cloud. It is inevitable that prisoners feel separated from the world. In the life of our Church I very often feel a deeply felt separation. In just a few short weeks since Pentecost, your messages and prayers have built for me a bridge to Rome upon which I can partake of the life of the Church again in a spirit of unity with all of you who are, in fact, the Church.
Your faithfulness to the teachings of the Church, to the Corporal Works of Mercy, and to the alienated among us have been an inspiration for me and I feel deeply touched by your prayers. On this Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus I will also pray for you.
With love and blessings,
Fr. Gordon MacRae
See Fr. John Zuhlsdorf’s commentary on:
Leave Year for Priests greetings for Father Gordon MacRae in the comments section below!
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Rev Gordon MacRae Thanks Priests in Crisis Readers on his Ordination Anniversary
Rev Gordon MacRae Thanks Priests in Crisis Readers on his Ordination Anniversary
Dear Suzanne and Readers of Priests in Crisis:
May grace and peace be with you. Over the course of the last week since Pentecost Sunday, many of your messages were read to me and printed copies have been mailed to me.
I have not yet received them as mail to prisoners is quite slow. Once I have read your comments I plan to write again more personally.
For now, I wish to tell you how overwhelmed I am with the knowledge that so many have taken the time to read the truth and to offer prayers and Masses for me.
Today, June 5th, is the 27th anniversary of my ordination to the priesthood. I offer this day in prison and tomorrow, the anniversary of my first Mass, as a share in the suffering of Christ for the readers and supporters of “Priests in Crisis.”
A significant part of the ongoing tragedy of priests being accused from decades past is that many have attempted to use the scandal to further an agenda.
What sets “Priests in Crisis” and its readers and contributors apart is the heroic spirit of fidelity to the Church and Magisterium inherent in your words and work.
As the late Fr. Neuhaus wisely wrote,
“There are three solutions to the current crisis: fidelity, fidelity and fidelity.”
On this day in prison, on the occasion of my 27th anniversary of priesthood, I honor your fidelity to the Church and to the priesthood of suffering and sacrifice.
As a wrongly imprisoned priest, I honor your exemplary faithfulness to the corporal works of mercy.
With Thanks and Blessings,
Fr. Gordon MacRae
Rev Gordon MacRae Writes to Priests in Crisis Readers on Pentecost
Please send Father 27th Anniversary well wishes in the comments section below!
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Catholic League Releases Statement on Margaret Markey’s Sexual Abuse Bill
Catholic League Releases Statement on Margaret Markey’s Sexual Abuse Bill
June 4, 2009
Paul Vitello has a news story in today’s New York Times reporting on the decision by New York State Assemblywoman Margaret Markey to amend her bill on the sexual abuse of children. Her previous bill only covered private institutions like the Catholic Church, leaving in place protections afforded public institutions.
This led many Catholics to oppose her bill and support the one sponsored by Assemblyman Vito Lopez which treats public and private institutions equally. There is still one major difference between the two bills: Markey’s allows for a one year suspension of the statute of limitations, thus permitting anyone to file a claim regardless of when the abuse occurred.
Catholic League president Bill Donohue outlined a new campaign:
The statute of limitations is an integral provision of justice, and that is why the Lopez bill is still preferable to Markey’s new one.
But if Markey’s bill prevails, the Catholic League will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a massive public education campaign to alert those who have been sexually abused by a public school employee that they now have one year to sue the schools, even if the abuse took place when JFK was president. We will use every media outlet available.
Our campaign will be limited to those victimized in public schools. Why? Because up until now, in New York and many other states, lawyers and professional victims’ abuse advocates have waged a relentless campaign to exclusively stick it to Catholic institutions, all the while doing positively nothing to help those victimized by public school teachers.
To even the scales of justice, we will now copy-cat their tactics, only the target audience this time will be those molested in the public schools.
Markey is nothing if not dishonest. All along she insisted that her initial bill applied equally to private and public institutions. But if this were true, then there would have been no need to amend it.
Contact Markey at MarkeyM@assembly.state.ny.us
For more information by Francis X. Maier on the public school protections, read Crisis Magazine on Clerical Abuse Scams
The parishioners of the Diocese of Manchester have been scammed of their Mass donations and The Rev Gordon MacRae stripped of his reputation and liberty.
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Crisis Magazine on Clerical Abuse Scams
Crisis Magazine on Clerical Abuse Scams
This article first appeared in the May 2006 issue of Crisis Magazine
Shakedown: How Catholics are Getting Ripped Off in the Name of Justice
by Francis X. Maier
We got a new law passed in California that opens up the statute of limitations for all victims of sexual abuse. It’s something we’ve been trying to do in several states for years. And I’m not waiting for it to click in. I’m suing the shit out of [the Catholic Church] everywhere: in Sacramento, in Santa Clara, in Santa Rosa, in San Francisco, in Oakland, in L.A., and everyplace else.
Jeffrey Anderson, plaintiffs’ attorney
April 2003 interview
My wife and I were watching the news one evening when the camera cut away to an attorney on the steps of Colorado’s state capitol. He announced to a cluster of reporters that he was suing the Archdiocese of Denver for $10 million for each of the various sexual abuse victims he now represented.
The attorney was Florida’s Jeff Herman. Herman is one of several high-profile litigators — along with Minnesota’s Jeffrey Anderson — who has made a business of suing the Catholic Church over the past decade. Under Colorado law, plaintiffs’ attorneys may not name the damages they seek to recover in civil suits. That’s a matter reserved for courts and juries.
Herman may or may not have known this. In either case, he couldn’t resist a photo op and sound bite. Ten million dollars has a nice ring to it. In Colorado, as elsewhere, the guerrilla theater of sex-abuse litigation has some very practical goals: shocking the public, frightening Catholics, polluting jury pools, and influencing judges and lawmakers.
In this case, though, as we sat in front of the TV, my wife — a teacher for 30 years — asked a simple question: “$10 million? I wonder how much we’d get if Danny were abused.”
In our house, the suffering of sexual abuse victims carries a special force. Our 15-year-old son, Dan, has Down syndrome. Two of our granddaughters also have serious genetic problems. Because of their disabilities, all three of them are up to ten times more likely to be sexually abused as a minor than the general population.
For our family, worrying about the sexual abuse of children is not a theoretical problem. We’re alert to it every day, in every one of our son’s relationships — especially when he climbs on the bus to his school.
Dan attends a public high school. We don’t actually want him there; we’d prefer to have him in a Catholic school, where he’d be safer. But the law makes this option cost-prohibitive by denying us the opportunity to apply his educational financing in a manner we judge best for our son.
We can live with that. But what we won’t live with is the hypocrisy of the news media and lawmakers blaming the Catholic Church for a culture of secrecy and sexual abuse when the same problems — and worse — pervade our public schools.
In fact, if Dan ever does experience sexual abuse as a minor, the data suggest that he’s more likely to face it in a public school than anywhere else outside the home.
The evidence is alarming: Dan is safer serving Mass at our local parish than he’ll ever be in America’s public schools. And yet the Church has been the sole focus of attack since the clerical sex-abuse scandal came to light four years ago. And now, thanks to new legislation cropping up in states around the country, she may pay a heavy price for our nation’s selective blindness.
Dirty Secrets
A 2005 Associated Press report noted that in some states, sexual abuse is now the main reason public school teachers lose their licenses. A 1999 probe by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, appropriately titled “Dirty Secrets,” found that during the 1990s, “by far the most common reason for teacher discipline” in Pennsylvania “was sex-related offenses, according to state documents.”
In January 2006, New York City’s special-schools investigator Richard Condon reported that 250 public school teacher misconduct cases had been substantiated in his jurisdiction alone during 2005.
Of these, 92 confirmed cases involved sexual misconduct complaints against public school educators, ranging from rape and educator-student relationships to sexual harassment and public exposure.
And this isn’t a new development. More than a decade ago, Dr. Sherry Bithell, author of Educator Sexual Abuse, estimated that one in 20 teachers engages in sexual misconduct with students, from obscene comments to outright sexual abuse.
Professor Charol Shakeshaft of Hofstra University, the leading national expert on sexual abuse by public school educators and staff, effectively confirmed this in her February 2006 testimony to the Colorado General Assembly, noting that 6.7 percent of all students in the United States report being sexually abused in a physical manner by an educator in public schools.
In Shakeshaft’s words, “Of the approximately 45 million students attending public and private K-12 schools, more than 3 million will have been the target of physical sexual exploitation by an employee of the school by eleventh grade.”
Shakeshaft went on to stress: “These 3 million [victims] include only students who have been the target of sexual abuse that includes touching. This number does not include adults who show students pornography, who expose themselves, or who direct other forms of visual and verbal sexual abuse at children.
I’m only talking about sexual abuse actions that include forced touch. If those [other abusive] actions are added, the number of students nationwide is 4.5 million.”
Even on the wild chance that these data are off by half, the scope of public school sexual abuse involves many hundreds of thousands of students and eclipses anything in the Catholic clergy.
The evidence also suggests that from 1 percent to 5 percent of the teaching profession and up to 25 percent of all public school districts have problems of sexual abuse.
All of this should sound familiar — from stories about sex abuse in decades past, right down to an alleged pattern of what one angry public school parent called “passing the trash” (moving abusive public school teachers from job to job).
In fact, Craig Emmanuel, an investigator with the Arizona Department of Education, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that, on average, teachers who molest children work in at least two to three school districts before they’re stopped.
But don’t expect to read about it in your local newspaper. According to Shakeshaft, most incidents of public school educator sexual misconduct with children “are not entered into criminal justice information systems, and abusers are generally subject only to informal personnel actions within the relative privacy of the [public school] administration.”
As just one example, she cited “a study of 225 cases of educator sexual abuse” in a major metropolitan area where “only 1 percent [of offending teachers] lost their teaching credentials.”
Terri Miller, a single mother and president of SESAME — Stop Educator Sexual Abuse, Misconduct and Exploitation, a national, public school equivalent of the clergy-abuse victims’ group SNAP — offered similar testimony to the Colorado General Assembly this spring.
Quoting data that suggest a much higher incidence of sexual abuse in public schools when compared with the Catholic priesthood, Miller pointed to one of the teachers in her daughter’s public school in Nevada who had been dismissed only when authorities belatedly discovered his long history of sexual misconduct at schools in Minnesota, Colorado, and elsewhere in Nevada. The teacher was never reported or punished, but rather allowed to move freely from one job to the next.
“This last point is not an isolated case,” Miller told Colorado lawmakers. “There are many [public school] teachers like this one in classrooms across the country, paid by our tax dollars, who are changing the lives of our children forever.”
Protecting Their Own
But in most states — including Colorado — there’s one big difference between sexual abuse in public and private institutions, with huge consequences for public school parents like my wife and me. The fact is, it’s much easier — and much more lucrative — to sue the Catholic Church, or any church or private organization, than it is to sue the local public school district.
The reason is simple: Public school districts enjoy governmental immunity unless state law- makers say otherwise. And so far, the legislators in most states have kept that immunity in place. As a result, public school districts have a drastically reduced financial exposure with incidents of sexual abuse.
Under March 2006 Colorado law, and in many other states, my wife and I can recover a great deal more money, with much less effort, if our son Dan is abused by a priest at our local church than if he’s raped by a teacher or coach at his school.
Parents in states like ours have much less time to identify, report, and legally pursue sexual abuse committed by a public school employee than if the same abuse is committed by the employee of a religious or private organization. The amount of money they can recover in damages is also sharply limited — in Colorado, $150,000.
And yet, according to the data, children are more likely to be sexually abused in a public school setting than at their local parish. Most state lawmakers either don’t seem to know this or simply don’t care.
The message sent to parents of public school students is clear: Sexual abuse at the hands of a public school employee is less grievous and less expensive than exactly the same abuse at the hands of a pastor or Sunday school teacher. Something is grotesquely wrong with that kind of lawmaking.
My wife and I have heard the usual cynical arguments in favor of governmental immunity. Our favorite is the excuse that opening public schools to litigation might “bankrupt” them — as if bankrupting Catholic schools, charities, and parishes were okay.
We’ve even heard the bizarre claim that churches and other nonprofits should be held to a “higher standard” because of their tax-exempt status.
But this ignores the fact that governments grant tax exemptions precisely for the benefit of the communities they govern and to reduce their own expenses.
It implies that the abuse of a minor by a priest is somehow more loathsome simply because his parish gets a tax break, and that public school districts should be held less accountable because we pay taxes to support them.
Of course, governmental immunity does ensure one thing — that superstar plaintiffs’ attorneys won’t care a whit about public school sexual abuse, no matter how deep the pain or how vast the pool of victims. There’s just no money in it.
Shakedown
The sexual abuse of minors is a grave crime and sin, no matter who commits it. Catholics are right to be outraged at any priest who abused a child and at any bishop who callously refused to deal with the evil behavior.
Many Catholics are parents themselves, with a deep sympathy for abuse victims and an eagerness to help them heal. This is a good and necessary thing. No one can listen to their suffering and remain unmoved.
Unfortunately, some attorneys have built an industry on twisting the goodwill of today’s Catholic community into a hammer for smashing American Catholic life.
What many Catholics don’t realize is that big-league sex-abuse attorneys often sue the Catholic Church with the same money they took from other Catholics. The money your grandparents poured into building the Church, lawyers now use to rip it back down.
In sex-abuse settlements against Catholic dioceses, plaintiffs’ attorneys often take 40 percent of the action. Aside from providing the attorney a hefty take, it also fills a firm’s coffers to file claims in other dioceses.
For the past 20 years, this has been a great way for some lawyers to make a living. But plaintiffs’ attorneys now face a decline of new cases. Contrary to media innuendo, most Catholic dioceses and institutions did learn the lesson of the 1980s.
As a result, over the past decade, the flow of current clergy sex-abuse cases has slowed to a trickle. Most clergy sexual abuse allegations coming to light now are decades old — 25, 35, even 50 years. That means that in many cases, these claims have expired. They’re time-barred by statutes of limitations.
And statutes of limitations exist for good reasons; that’s why law-enforcement officials almost always support them. Beyond a certain point, memories fade, people die, evidence gets lost or grows stale, and fraudulent claims increase.
But these statutes put a major cramp on potential profits in the litigation industry. So what’s a hungry plaintiffs’ attorney to do? It’s easy. Get the rules changed — retroactively.
Two different law codes govern the disposition of sexual abuse cases: criminal and civil. The Supreme Court has ruled that criminal liability cannot be applied retroactively. It’s unconstitutional. But some lower courts have held that civil liability can be extended retroactively.
And the threshold for proof in civil cases is much lower than in criminal cases. As a result, plaintiffs’ attorneys — usually backed by victims’ groups — have launched a national effort to lobby state lawmakers to change civil liability rules after the fact.
It works like this: Plaintiffs’ attorneys troll a new territory for possible cases. Each new claimant then identifies other potential claimants. Victims’ groups may assist in the process, or act as contacts with potentially sympathetic state lawmakers.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys may then provide help in drafting the proposed new legislation that they themselves hope to profit from. This happened in California, where Jeffrey Anderson helped develop the text for the state’s catastrophic law SB 1779, retroactively revising the statute of limitations for sex-abuse cases in that state.
By the time the media enter the project, the plaintiffs’ storyline is firmly in place, and the press almost invariably follows it without deviation. One study found that during the first six months of 2002, the 61 largest California newspapers ran more than 1,700 stories about sexual abuse incidents in the Catholic Church but only four about the same problem in public schools.
And, as happened in California, once the public has been suitably barraged with shock reports, the lobbying begins to secure “justice” for those victims whose claims have expired due to statutes of limitations.
Some victims claim they were too afraid to come forward in the past. Others say they were so traumatized that they didn’t remember their abuse until recently. But all of them agree that the only way they can get closure and peace is by litigating their expired cases.
Whatever the merit of these claims — and many scientific sources reject the credibility of “recovered” or “repressed” memories — the goal is always the same: to overturn existing statutes of limitations for private (but not public) institutions. Once these safeguards go, the “legalized looting” — to quote one angry Catholic parent — can begin.
How can a church community defend itself, for example, when an alleged perpetrating priest is dead, and so is every other witness except the accuser? But this has happened again and again.
More than 1,000 new plaintiffs came forward in California during a 2003 suspension of the statute of limitations. So far, California Catholic dioceses and religious orders have paid out roughly $250 million to plaintiffs, and the bleeding continues.
The attack on statutes of limitations by plaintiffs’ attorneys has now touched 14 or more states. It’s a classic display of entrepreneurial skill — the fruit of years of carefully cultivating victims’ anger, media gloating, the hostility of some lawmakers toward the Church, confusion and guilt by Church leaders, and resentment among the faithful.
The effect on American Catholic life is catastrophic. There’s no “Catholic Superfund” to pay for these massive, retroactive sex-abuse settlements, no secret pile of ecclesial wealth; and insurance, even in the best circumstances, covers only a modest portion of the total damages. In some dioceses, insurance companies are suing the Church to avoid payment.
In the end, the people who will pay the most for this crippling attorneys’ scam are our families — and our children. “Retroactive liability” has nothing to do with real healing for sexual abuse victims; it has everything to do with greed.
It involves the financial and legal mugging of innocent Catholic families today, for alleged events that happened decades ago and in which they played no part.
It amounts to punishing the innocent in the name of lost innocence. But no matter how piously an attorney frames the scam, two wrongs simply don’t make a right.
Waking the Sleepwalkers
The priests I knew growing up were good men — men I wanted to emulate without exception. But I also have two friends, and probably a third, whose sons were sexually abused by priests in decades past.
They’ve struggled with that traumatic experience ever since. Like all Catholic parents in the last four years, my wife and I have listened to stories of clergy sexual abuse with a mixture of pain, disgust, and frustration. We look at our own four children, especially Dan, and we try to imagine what our attitude toward God, or the Church, might be today if they’d been hurt.
More importantly, we’ve tried to pray ourselves into a deeper understanding of the wounds in the lives of young people damaged by sexual abuse.
Of course, we’ll never fully understand that pain, any more than an outsider can fully understand the experience of raising a disabled child. But as a parent, I also know that real justice is not served by creating a new class of victims — innocent Catholic families and communities today — in the name of helping other victims.
Changing the civil liability rules after the fact is not justice; nor is bankrupting Catholic parishes and dioceses. It’s a form of financial and legal violence that will continue until the money’s gone — or we force it to stop.
As a Catholic, I believe I have a duty to help sexual abuse victims heal. And I have an equal obligation to the Catholics who came before me, and the ones who will come after me, to pass along the Faith and the resources with which I was entrusted. They’re not mine to throw away.
It’s revealing that, in Colorado and elsewhere, some of the biggest supporters of “retroactive liability” are disaffected, angry, self-described Catholics who resent the Church for her teaching on abortion, “emergency” contraception, embryonic stem-cell research, the death penalty, immigration, Iraq — the list of complaints is endless.
Too often, Catholics of my generation seem to be diving headlong into an assimilation gone perverse, moved by a spirit of revenge against the Church for simply daring to be herself and not a theater prop for their own egos. And nothing serves her enemies — including the sex-abuse litigation machine — better than when the Church’s own children join in tearing her down.
American Catholics today are like sleepwalkers who dream they’re awake — who think they’re engaged with and accepted by their surrounding secular culture. In reality, we’re getting robbed of our identity and resources while we slumber.
It’s time to wake up.
Francis X. Maier, the father of four, writes from Colorado. This article originally appeared in the May 2006 issue of Crisis Magazine.
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Fr. Gordon MacRae Writes to Priest in Crisis Readers on Pentecost
Fr. Gordon MacRae Writes to Priest in Crisis Readers on Pentecost
Father was kind enough to send me this note written for you. Some of us wanted a closer look into his troubling situation that threatens many priests in this current climate of hysteria.
Thank you Charlene for coordinating Father’s correspondence!
FROM FR. GORDON J. MACRAE
“Kill the priest!” “Kill the priest!” “Kill the priest!” This rousing foot-stomping chant greeted me as I was led down the tier of a prison cell block nearly 15 years ago. It was maddening.
Today the eve of Pentecost 2009, I have been in prison for 5,333 days and nights for a crime that never took place. My fellow prisoners do not organize chants for my demise any longer. I have a pretty good rapport with them, though even after 15 years it’s clear that I don’t quite fit in.
I live daily with the irony that I would not today be in prison if I did not maintain my innocence. Under a deal offered by the state I would have left prison over 13 years ago had I been guilty and willing to say so.
Today I am prisoner number 67546 in the Hancock Unit of the New Hampshire State Prison. I live in a prison block reserved primarily for men serving long, long sentences, most of them for murder. I taught college courses to prisoners for several years and now work in the prison library.
The case against me was a fraud brought for the guarantee of hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement money. I have come to know that there is far more fraud in the claims against American Catholic priests than most people know or want to believe.
Some would have us believe that no one – certainly no young man – would falsely accuse a priest just for money. My fellow prisoners laugh at such naïve beliefs. Some of them have reminded me that they have taken lives for far less money than what was gained by those who took my reputation and freedom 15 yrs. ago.
A few years ago a contingency lawyer representing dozens of claimants seeking five million dollars in new settlements from my diocese was quoted in a local newspaper: “Church officials didn’t even ask for details for the claims, such as location and date and the abuse alleged. I’ve never seen anything like it.” That same lawyer is now in his fifth round of mediated settlements.
The names of the accused priests have been released to the public despite the contingency lawyer’s statement that the church sought no corroboration for the claims whatsoever before handing over millions of dollars. The names of the accusers, many of them now men in their 30s, 40s and 50s, remain shielded from public view.
Fifteen years in prison for a crime that never took place is no small affair. In 2005 the late Cardinal Avery Dulles, in the first of a series of letters between us, salvaged the spiritual life of my priesthood. He placed my unjust imprisonment in a context that in my anger and hurt I had not previously considered. Cardinal Dulles wrote:
God does not intend that your life be futile. Much of the finest Christian literature comes from believers who were Unjustly imprisoned. Do you believe, Fr. MacRae? Someday your story and that of your fellow sufferers will come to light and be instrumental in a reform.
I am sure that in the plan of Divine Providence your ministry of suffering is part of your priestly vocation, filling up for the Church what is wanting in the suffering of Christ. Your writing which is clear, eloquent and spiritually sound will one day be monument to your trials.
I hope and pray that this is so. Cardinal Dulles gave meaning and purpose to something that is otherwise meaningless, as anyone who has ever served an unjust imprisonment will attest. On his suggestion, I now offer each day in prison as a share in the suffering of Christ for the spiritual support of another.
I will always be grateful to Cardinal Dulles. I am also grateful to Suzanne and “Priests in Crisis.” It takes a singular courage to speak against any unjust tide.
Please do not be ready to always believe the worst of any priest who is accused in the current climate.
Be sure to check out Father’s response to your kind comments here: Rev Gordon MacRae Thanks Priests in Crisis Readers on His Ordination Anniversary
Click here for a closer scrutiny of Father MacRae’s case
It would make Father’s day to receive a note of encouragement from you in the comment box below. Comments are moderated, but I get to them promptly. Thanks!
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Catholic League Releases Statement on Fr. Gordon MacRae This Morning
May 29, 2009
Help Fr. MacRae
No priest that we are aware of has been more unfairly tried and convicted than Father Gordon MacRae. Just as those who are guilty of sexual molestation shake the conscience of ordinary Americans, those who are unfairly accused should merit the same response. Sadly, this is not the case, and it is certainly not true in Father MacRae’s case.
For justice to be done, Father MacRae needs to raise additional funds to pay for an investigation that may help enormously. If you agree that he has been treated unfairly, please give what you can to help this man.
For information about his case go to www.GordonMacRae.net See the “Contact” section for where to donate.
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Catholic League on Clerical Sex Abuse Payout Fraud and Larceny
Sex Abuse and Signs of Fraud by the Rev. Gordon J. MacRae
(Catalyst 11/2005)
Three years before the latest wave of clergy sex abuse claims rippled out of Boston across the country, Sean Murphy, age 37, and his mother, Sylvia, demanded $850,000 from the Archdiocese of Boston. Sean claimed that three decades earlier, he and his brother were repeatedly molested by their parish priest.
In support of the claim, Mrs. Murphy produced old school records placing her sons in a community where the priest was once assigned. No other corroboration was needed. Shortly thereafter, Byron Worth, age 41, recounted molestation by the same priest and demanded his own six-figure settlement.
The men were following an established practice of “blanket settlements,” a precedent set in the early 1990s when a multitude of molestation claims from the 1960s and 1970s emerged against Father James Porter and a few other priests. In 1993, the Diocese of Fall River settled some 80 such claims in one fell swoop. Other Church institutions followed that lead on the advice of insurers and attorneys.
Before the Murphys’ $850,000 demand was paid, however, Sean, his mother, and Byron Worth were indicted by a Massachusetts grand jury for conspiracy, attempted larceny, and soliciting others to commit larceny. It turned out that Sean and Byron were once inmates together at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute at Shirley where they concocted their fraudulent plan to score a windfall from their beleaguered Church.
On November 16, 2001, Sean Murphy and Byron Worth pleaded guilty to all charges and were sentenced to less than two years in prison for the scam. The younger Murphy brother was never charged, and Mrs. Murphy died before facing court proceedings.
Local newspapers relegated the Murphy scam to the far back pages while headlines screamed about the emerging multitude of decades-old claims of abuse by priests. When two other inmates at MCI-Shirley accused another priest in 2001, a Boston lawyer wrote that it is no coincidence these men shared the same prison.
“They also shared the same contingency lawyer,” he wrote. “I have some contacts in the prison system, having been an attorney for some time, and it has been made known to me that this is a current and popular scam.”
It is not difficult to understand the roots of such fraud. Prison inmates, like others, read newspapers. Just months before the onslaught of claims against priests, the Archdiocese of Boston landed on the litigation radar screen with the notorious arrest of Mr. Christopher Reardon, a young, married, Catholic layman, model citizen, and youth counselor at a local YMCA who was also employed part-time at a small, remote parish outpost north of Boston.
As Mr. Reardon’s extensive serial child molestation case came to light—with substantial and graphic DNA, videotape, and photographic evidence of assaults that occurred over previous months—the YMCA quickly entered into settlements consistent with the State’s charitable immunity laws.
In a search for deeper pockets, however, a local contingency lawyer pondered for the news media about whether the rural part-time parish worker’s activities were personally known—and covered up—by the Cardinal Archbishop of Boston. It was a ludicrous suggestion, but it was a springboard to announce in the Boston Globe (July 14, 2001) that “the hearsay and speculation” among lawyers and clients, is that “the Catholic Church settled their cases [of suspected abuse by priests] for an average of $500,000 each since the 1990s.”
It was a dangled lure that would soon have many takers, some of whom have been to the Church’s ATM more than once. In January of 2003, at the height of the clergy scandal, a 68-year-old Massachusetts priest had the poor judgment to be drawn into a series of suggestive Internet exchanges with a total stranger, a 32-year-old man named Dominic Martin.
Using a threat of media exposure of the printed exchanges, Mr. Martin demanded that the priest leave an envelope containing $3,000 in a local restaurant lobby. The frightened priest, who never had a prior accusation, compounded his poor judgment by paying the demand. Soon after, another cash demand was made, but the priest finally called the police who set up a sting of their own. On January 24, 2003, Dominic Martin and his wife, Brianna, were arrested at the drop point, and charged with extortion.
The police report revealed that Mr. Martin had changed his name. His birth name was identified as Tod Biltcliffe, a man who, a decade earlier, obtained a lucrative settlement when he accused a New Hampshire priest of molesting him in the 1980s. At the time the priest protested that Mr. Biltcliffe was committing fraud and larceny. The Church settled anyway.
Biltcliffe’s claim was that when he was 15 years old, the priest fondled his genitals while the two were in a hot tub at a local YMCA. Curiously, the investigation file contained a transcript of a 1988 “Geraldo Rivera” show entitled “The Church’s Sexual Watergate.” One of the cases profiled was that of a young man who claimed that a priest fondled his genitals while the two were in a hot tub at a local YMCA.
The 1988 “Geraldo” transcript was a sensationalized account of clergy sex abuse cases from the 1970s and 1980s. The transcript is notable because it contains many of the same claims of exposing secret Church documents, archives, and episcopal cover-ups in 1988 that lawyers and reporters claim to have exposed in 2003.
Writer Jason Berry, and contingency lawyers Jeffrey Anderson and Roland Lewis all appeared live on “Geraldo” on November 14, 1988 to announce the existence of secret Church archives, cover-ups by bishops, and out-of-court settlements of Catholic clergy sex abuse claims across the country.
Jason Berry, who excoriates the Church and priesthood at every opportunity, actually defended, in 1988, the existence of so-called “secret” Church archives: “Canon law says that you have to have a secret archive in every diocese….That’s funny because I’ve been attacking the Church for three years on this…I want to express my own irony of [now] being in a position of defending the Church.”
I have been in prison for eleven years. As a priest, I cringed while the latest wave of abuse claims unfolded in the press in the last few years. Inmates often feel like victims, but some saw the proliferation of abuse claims as a lucrative scam and wondered why they were letting such an opportunity pass.
I have been repeatedly asked whether I would give the name of a priest who might have been present in someone’s childhood neighborhood, or if I thought the Church would quietly settle if a claim was made. When asked if the claim would be true, the answer is always the same: “Of course not!” One inmate reported that he was visited by his lawyer who asked if he is Catholic. The lawyer is alleged to have said: “If you want to accuse a priest of something, I can have $50-grand in your account by the end of the year.”
Another inmate told of his narcotics arrest by a detective who was apparently fielding cases for contingency lawyers. The young man reported that he was asked whether he wanted to accuse a priest who had been accused by others. The young man insisted there was nothing he could accuse the priest of, but the detective reportedly suggested: “That’s sort of beside the point, isn’t it? We’re talking a lot of money here.”
Yet another inmate claims that he indeed was molested by a priest and is awaiting settlement from a distant diocese. The man says little about the abuse beyond a vague and cursory suggestion that he somehow repressed it. He drones on incessantly, however, about plans for his expected windfall, about investment opportunities, and about how non-invasive the settlement process has been.
Another, rather insightful inmate remarked: “Let me get this straight. If I say that some priest touched me funny 20 years ago, I’ll be paid for it, I’ll be a victim, and my life will be HIS fault instead of mine! Do you have any idea how tempting this is?”
In a 2004 article in the Boston Phoenix, “Fleecing the Shepherds,” legal expert and author Harvey Silverglate cautioned against capitulating to significant numbers of questionable claims brought after the Church entered into huge blanket settlements. In some cases, such claims were deemed “credible”—the standard established for permanent removal of accused priests—with no other basis than their having been settled.
As accusations swept over the U.S. Church, few in the media dared write anything contrary to the tidal wave gaining indiscriminate momentum against the Church. A notable exception was the left-leaning Catholic magazine Commonweal, which editorialized: “Admittedly, perspective is hard to come by in the midst of a media barrage that is reminiscent of the day care sex abuse stories, now largely disproved, of the early nineties…All analogies limp, but it is hard not to be reminded of the din of accusation and conspiracy-mongering that characterized the anti-Communist witch hunts of the early 1950s.”
With media coverage of the unprecedented millions invested in blanket settlements, the trolling for claims and litigation continues unabated. Last year, a Boston area high school history teacher and coach of twenty years, a husband and father with no prior record or accusation, was caught up in an Internet sting by a detective posing on-line as a teenage boy cruising Internet chat rooms for sexual encounters.
The practice has netted the detective some 400 arrests, including—by his own estimation—1 priest, 6 police officers, and 18 public school teachers. The ex-teacher, now prison inmate, related that as the handcuffs were set upon him, before he was even led out of the YMCA to which he had been lured and arrested, the detective asked some curious questions: “Are you a Catholic?” “Yes.” “Were you ever an altar boy?” Another “yes.” “Were you ever molested by a priest?”
Father Gordon MacRae is in prison for claims alleged to have occurred in 1983, and for which he maintains innocence. His case was extensively analyzed in a two-part series in The Wall Street Journal (April 27/28,2005) by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Dorothy Rabinowitz.
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A Kafkaesque Tale
May 2008
First Things
Father Gordon MacRae, a priest of the Diocese of Manchester, New Hampshire, has been in prison for more than twelve years, convicted of a sex-abuse crime that he insists he did not commit. He is sentenced to thirty-three years, and his claim of innocence precludes his being considered for parole.
So, you might think, most prisoners claim they are innocent. True enough, but in this case people of unimpeachable integrity and intelligence have closely examined the matter and believe he is telling the truth. MacRae admits to two earlier instances in which he was guilty of sexual misconduct but not to the charges on which he was convicted.
Among those who have critically examined the prosecution is Dorothy Rabinowitz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter of the Wall Street Journal who wrote a two-part expose of the way in which he was railroaded, with the apparent help of the Manchester diocese and its bishop, John McCormack, a former aide to Cardinal Law of Boston.
Now the friends of Father MacRae have created a website, GordonMacRae.net, which provides a comprehensive narrative of the case, along with pertinent documentation. It makes for engrossing reading and will arouse a sense of outrage among all but the morally somnolent. The website also suggests how people can help Father MacRae in his quest for justice, which is a long shot but not hopeless.
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Fr. Jerry Pokorsky: The Damaging Culture of Silence
The Damaging Culture of Silence
by Fr. Jerry Pokorsky
First appeared in The Catholic World Report. Digital edition courtesy of Catholic Culture.
In vino veritas. In wine, truth. In the early 1980s, after I announced to an elderly priest friend my plan to enter the seminary, he took me to a restaurant for dinner. During the meal, he noticed a retired priest and beckoned him to our table to introduce him to me. The retired priest never looked at me. He was angry and inebriated enough to speak his mind. Directing his attention to the priest alone, he asked:
Do you remember when we were seminary professors in the 1960s and the advice we gave the [orthodox] seminarians? We told them to keep their heads down and get ordained. But do you think they were any damn different after ordination? No! We trained them that way.
He meant that good priests kept their heads down. They didn’t speak out when they should have, and they still don’t.
This incident came to mind recently after I received a copy of a questionnaire administered to a class of seminarians during a “sexuality workshop” at a major American seminary in 1978. Here is a sample of the more than 80 questions:
- Who last touched you?
- Where did he or she touch you?
- What is your favorite feeling?
- Who is the person you are most likely to kiss next?
- Is there anyone else you would rather kiss?
- What part of your body first senses a drop in the temperature?
- After feeling chilled what part of your body wants to get warmed up first?
- What part(s) of your body do you almost entirely ignore?
- What is your favorite part of your body?
- When was the last time you can remember being conscious of your ankles?
- When, where, and with whom did you have a really good, loving kiss?
- Write a detailed account of your first sexual experience.
It is not difficult to imagine what would have happened to any seminarian objecting to the questionnaire. All of the cliches of the pop-theology era would be unleashed. He would almost certainly be identified as “uptight” or “rigid and conservative.” It would be said he likely has a good deal of unhealthy sexual “hang-ups” himself. Seminary formation personnel would fear that he would not be a “team player” as a priest. And he would not be long for the seminary.
Of course, it is equally easy to envision the naive trust of all the immature candidates entering the workshop and “spilling their guts” to the other seminarians and facilitators, setting themselves up for future “grooming” by gays—or maybe blackmail. But it is a near certainty that the orthodox seminarians “kept their heads down” and played along, in order to ensure that they would be ordained. Now, years later, have their attitudes and behavior changed since they were ordained? The question is important because, as I will argue, it leads to an explanation of the widespread active and passive complicity in the clerical sexual abuse cover-up scandal.
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My Attempt to Help Priests in Crisis is Thirteen Years Late
Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
In the winter of 1995, I was speaking with a very saintly priest about a story that made the front page of The Washington Post that morning. News broke out that four priests were arrested for abusing their young victims. One of them officiated at my friend’s wedding the year prior.
Back then before the media barrage of similar stories, I was capable of being stunned. This faithful priest then went on to tell me that the biggest scandal in the priesthood is its suicide rate. He didn’t elaborate.
Suicide rate? This did not compute. No doubt, I was clearly influenced by the clericalism then prevalent among the laity of our “we have it good here” diocese. Sure, I’ve heard of priests having a crisis of faith — hey what Hollywood movie or novel hasn’t depicted a priest undergoing a crisis of faith. I figured these guys just needed to step up their devotions, pick up their breviaries more often, and foster a devotion to our Lady — then their suicide rate would go down. So I tucked away the information.
Fast forward 13 years. Now I’m married having just moved to Sydney Australia seven months ago. Previously, the media coverage of anything Catholic came across to me as the usual ongoing pathetic drivel — until recently. The local media’s coverage of the Holy Father’s visit for World Youth Day 08 was nothing short of demonic.
The incessant demonic shrieks of so-called victims advocacy groups paraded around by The Sydney Morning Herald abated just in time for me to learn of the trend of public desecrations of the Blessed Sacrament by Prof. P.Z. Myers and others back home.
One could read headlines clamoring for a papal apology alongside headlines denouncing a papal apology for not having any merit. Words are not enough, the so-called advocacy groups spew.
It’s no wonder a few bishops (I do mean a FEW. Many bishops care deeply for their priests) in North America were spooked into embracing a zero-tolerance policy. Now they had an out. They could deliver something — anything — to appease the mobs. At no other time could “uneasy lies the head that wears the crown” ring more true.
Now under these new conditions, an accusation of misconduct made against a priest = fact until proven otherwise over a period of years. Oh, and no need to bother with due process or basic civil rights for the accused priest. The accused may have hours to vacate the rectory/presbytery. ”Invitations” of voluntary laicizations are offered. There is of course canonical due process for the accused priest. It may not be mentioned to the accused, however, at the diocesan level in many cases.
You can read the accounts and comments submitted by these priests and others under the What It’s Like tab.
Avery Cardinal Dulles, SJ has been very critical of the Dallas Charter drafted by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops because it leaves the accused priest vulnerable without due process. Those removed from ministry without due process are referred to as “chartered” priests in their ranks. The Australian Catholic Bishops Conference anticipated this potential harm and decreed in December 2000:
“All persons are presumed innocent unless and until guilt is either admitted or determined by due process. If church personnel accused of abuse are asked to step aside from the office they hold while the matter is pending, it is to be clearly understood that they are on leave and that no admissions or guilt are implied by this fact. Unless and until guilt has been admitted or proved, those accused should not be referred to as offenders or in any way treated as offenders.”
Didn’t like that Father insisted on the Church’s magisterial teaching during his homily last Sunday? Did that really piss you off? Feeling a repressed memory coming on? Don’t worry. Report it anonymously. Your report will be held in the strictest confidence. Your name will never be revealed.
So now the webmaster of a Catholic clergy sexual offender database collects the names of accused priests and throws them in with the convicted offenders. The names of the accused priests were released by the diocese and subsequently publicized all over the syndicated media worldwide. Now the accused priest has to explain to his Mom why he’s on some international pervert list. Or worse, his mom has to explain why her son is on some international pervert list.
I remember when the Virginia State Police published the names of CONVICTED sexual predators on an online database, and the ACLU went ballistic.
Some accused priests get to keep their stipend, but many do not during this ordeal. The accused priest cannot get a job of course. Work references from his bishop?
I learned of this crisis in the priesthood very recently. Scratch that . . . 13 years ago. Priests and seminarians cannot speak about it publicly for obvious reasons. So members of the laity rose to the occasion to provide emergency assistance to these priests thrown into personal crisis.
Opus Bono Sacerdotii was founded by Joe Maher and other Catholic business men in Detroit in response to this current crisis. They have formed a network of professionals to help priests. These professionals include therapists, canon lawyers, civil and criminal attorneys, financial consultants, career trainers, among others. Oftentimes the priest is despondent contemplating suicide. OBS arranges for a suicide watch in these cases.
Donations allow OBS to pay for these services and emergency funding at no cost to the priest. Guilt or innocence never enters into it. Any priest in trouble gets help.
Please spend time reading these accounts of suffering priests.
