Thursday, April 26, 2012

Monsignor Lynn Takes The Witness Stand

For more than two hours Thursday, the jury in Courtroom 304 got to hear the defendant, Monsignor William J. Lynn, testify candidly about his bumbling pursuit of a sexually abusive priest on the loose from the archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Only it wasn't the real monsignor up on the witness stand, just a man who gets paid to play him in court. As he has done several times previously, Assistant District Attorney Anthony Pomeranz took the witness stand Thursday to read another volume of Lynn's 2002 grand jury testimony to the jury in the archdiocese of Philadelphia sex abuse trial.

Assistant District Attorney Patrick Blessington once again reprised his role as the grand jury prosecutor, asking the questions, while Pomeranz read Lynn's answers into the record. In the past, this prosecutorial play-acting could be dull, as the monsignor pontificated about Catholic tradition and archdiocese protocol, tossing around words like canonical, laicization and Catholocity.

But the play acting turned serious Thursday as the grand jury testimony focused on what Lynn did and, far more damaging, what he failed to do while pursuing sex abusers in collars. Sadly for the monsignor, the testimony that Pomeranz read into the record did not follow the defense script in this trial, which has been to paint the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua as the man with the ultimate power in the archdiocese, and thus, the real villain of the story.

Nope, the Bill Lynn that the jury got to hear Thursday sounded like the man down at archdiocese headquarters who was firmly in charge of pervert priests, even though the record showed the opposite. that the abusers were still at large and being allowed to menace the general population.

Lynn's grand jury testimony was a vivid contrast from his boss, the late cardinal, who, whenever he got near a witness stand,  developed a sudden case of senility compounded by amnesia. No, in his grand jury testimony, the monsignor didn't duck many questions, and he admitted in retrospect that he may have dropped a few balls.

 It was a performance that left courtroom observers wondering what Lynn's attorney, C. Clark Hodgson, who accompanied Lynn to the grand jury, was thinking while he watched his client being hung out to dry.

Or maybe it was a deliberate strategy; let the wily Cardinal Tony play rope-a-dope with the grand jury, while serving up the unwitting monsignor as a plump and tasty scapegoat. Meanwhile, while all of this was going on in Courtroom 304, the real Monsignor Lynn could only watch silently from the defense table, along with his current team of four frustrated defense lawyers, as the prosecutors put on a show for the jury.

The grand jury testimony focused on Father Stanley M. Gana, a wild man when it came to bedding at least three teenage boys and five adult females. There were allegations of countless more victims, but the three teenage boys and five women where the victims that Gana had confessed to abusing.

Gana was also the guy, who, when the monsignor finally talked him into entering a treatment facility, gave a blubbering confession, and then busted out of the joint. Father Gana went AWOL for nearly a year, hiding out at his condo in Florida, while he partied with young male house guests, and flying off to Slovakia. Meanwhile, Msgr. Lynn sat home back at archdiocese headquarters in Philadelphia, and wondered what to do about it.

The grand jury prosecutor read into the record what Gana's therapists had told the monsignor back on Feb. 23, 1996, two weeks after he entered Southdown, a facility for abuser priests in Canada. After years of stonewalling, "He [Gana] broke down and he was completely honest," Sister Donna Markham, Southdown's executive director told Lynn. "All the allegations against him are true. He admitted everything."

The grand jury prosecutor pointed out to Lynn how he could have followed up on reports that there were other victims of Father Gana out there, victims who had been named by two young men who had been sexually abused by Gana. Lynn could have also questioned the therapist's line that they had Gana under control, that he was not a pedophile, but a substance abuser, who only "acted out" on adolescent boys and women after he got loaded.

"Sure, I could have asked," Lynn told the grand jury. "I just trusted that she [Markham] knew what she was talking about."

Then, Father Gana decided he had had enough treatment, so on March 4, 1996, he called a taxi, and left Southdown, headed for the airport. His team of therapists was upset; the patient was disobeying orders.

Two months later, nobody could find Father Gana. Not Lynn, nor his canonical lawyer, who picked up the phone and told the monsignor, he "has no idea where he [Gana] is, or what he is doing."

The grand jury prosecutor laid out the facts for Lynn. You've got a known abuser priest who's already admitted that he had sex with three teenage boys, two of whom have already contacted you. You've got the name of the third victim, but you're not doing anything to find him. You've got an abuser priest who's AWOL from the archdiocese, and his treatment center, and not even his lawyer knows where he is. The next thing you find out is that a nun from Orlando, Fla., called your office to say that parishioners in her diocese were talking about Father Gana, who has a house there, and he's got a number of young men from Slovakia staying with him.

Sister Lucy Vazquez called on March 13, 1996 to say that parishioners in Orlando had expressed concerns "about what might be happening at the house,"with the young men staying there, some of whom appeared to be teenagers."

Aren't you suspicious of what Father Gana is up to? the grand jury prosecutor asked Lynn. Isn't it time to crack down on Father Gana, tell him either he goes back into treatment at Southdown, or you begin the process of involuntary laicization, busting him down to layman?

"I don't know if you could force that on somebody," Lynn said. Instead, what you do is you "try to get them to cooperate."

And then, the grand jury prosecutor said, you get a call from one of the abuse victims that Gana has already admitted to molesting and he wants to know what's up with Gana. Why don't you tell him the truth, that Gana just confessed to abusing you and another minor? But instead, Lynn told the victim that Father Gana was still denying the allegations.

"I didn't think I was free to do that," Lynn told the grand jury. He didn't think he was "free to share that with anybody else," because he thought the Southdown report on the priest's admissions in therapy was confidential.

He now knows it was not confidential, Lynn told the grand jury. He agreed that what he told the victim, about Gana was still denying the abuse, was "not accurate."

Did you think about the victim in this case, the grand jury prosecutor asked. Wouldn't it have been of some "therapeutic value" for the victim to know, after all these years, that Lynn finally believed him, and that Gana had confessed.

"I just thought he wanted money," Lynn told the grand jury.

After he partied in Florida, Father Gana got on a plane and flew to Slovakia. He had been AWOL from the archdiocese and his treatment facility for six months. Meanwhile, "we were giving him a stipend" of about $550 a month, Lynn testified.

"I will be in Slovakia till Sept. 16," Gana informed the archdiocese. "At some point, haven't you had enough with Stanley Gana," the grand jury prosecutor wanted to know. Isn't it time to tell him off? Threaten him with involuntary laicization, or call in the authorities?

"I don't know if I went that far," Lynn told the grand jury. "I really don't remember what I thought at the time. I was walking a fine line between a reprimand and trying to get him to cooperate."

In December 1996, Father Gana was back in Forida. Didn't you wonder whether he still had young people staying at his house, the prosecutor asked. Didn't you worry that he might sexually abuse more young people?

"I didn't think so at the time," Lynn told the grand jury. And what evidence did you have to go on that Gana wasn't abusing anybody, the grand jury prosecutor wanted to know.

"Only his word," the monsignor said about Father Gana.

Did you pick up the phone, the grand jury prosecutor asked. Did you call the authorities down in Orlando? Did you call the nun from the Orlando diocese who had been the first person to tell you about Father Gana allowing young people to stay at his house?

"Not that I recall," Lynn told the grand jury.

The prosecutor asked Lynn what he did when Father Gana told him not to worry about that third adolescent boy that he admitted to molesting, because he and Father Gana had just reconciled. Did you look into that, the prosecutor wanted to know. No, Lynn said.

And when you wrote a memo to the cardinal about Father Gana, why didn't you mention what that nun from Orlando told you, about Father Gana having young people staying at his house?

"I didn't feel he [Gana] was acting out at the time," Lynn told the grand jury.

The archdiocese paid to fly Lynn to Canada, so he could visit Southdown and see how Gana was doing, the grand jury prosecutor said. Surely the archdiocese would have paid for a trip to Orlando, so Lynn could have gone to Gana's house, and see what he was up to, and whether any young people were still staying there.

"I guess if I wanted to go down, I could have," the monsignor admitted to the grand jury. "It didn't occur to me ... It wasn't that big of a deal at the time."

In the ten years that you have served as secretary for clergy, the grand jury prosecutor wanted to know, have you ever sought involuntary laicization of any priest in the archdiocese?

"Not that I'm aware of," Lynn told the grand jury.

The prosecutors were done with their play acting. Assistant District Attorney Pomeranz seemed pleased with his latest performance as he left the witness stand. And over at the defense table, you could almost hear the sounds of lawyers screaming.

65 comments

  1. Wow. A very compelling read. Excellent job, Ralph.

    A couple observations (without personal attack replies, if I may):

    1. Not to defend Cardinal Bevilacqua of any wrongdoing, but I think the line that said "whenever he got near a witness stand, [he] developed a sudden case of senility compounded by amnesia" is unfair.

    It is well documented that the late cardinal suffered from cancer and dementia in the last years of his life. The coroner's report revealed that Bevilacqua passed with "fairly advanced" dementia, among other diseases. After Bevilacqua appeared at his deposition in November, his attorneys said, "There were times during the deposition he appeared to struggle, to the point of tears, at his inability to recall and effectively answer the questions. For the most part, his memory bank was an empty room."

    2. In the 10th paragraph, I think you mean, "GANA went AWOL" (not "Lynn").

    Thanks.

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    Replies
    1. Cardinal Bevilaqua was certainly competent when he shuffled Gana around and was well informed of the problem priests throughout his reign of incompetence and neglect of the most vulnerable of the flock. There is no defense of the late Cardinal. He appointed known pedophiles as pastors and assistant pastors. Read Ralph's story of the PR junket Bevilaqua staged a few posts back. He wasn't addled or suffering from dementia back then. He liked impaired priests because he could control them and they generally did what they were told. Lynn was not pulling the Cardinals strings or keeping him in the dark.

      Delete
    2. kopride wrote, "Cardinal Bevilaqua was certainly competent when he shuffled Gana around ..."

      I never said he wasn't! I explicitly was referring to his deposition back in November. The guy left his position nine ears ago, in 2003.

      I also wrote, "Not to defend Bevilacqua of any wrongdoing ..."

      Delete
    3. Right, "not to defend Bevilacqua of any wrongdoing," but let me explain why Bevilacqua didn't just admit in his sworn testimony what the trial has brought out exhaustively at the trial, which is that he utilized known pedophiles like Gana, Dunne and Sicoli to promote himself as being the Cardinal among his flock; and transferred them around.

      And you are absolutely a filthy liar with an agenda to deceive folks about the extent of this problem. On your one sided propaganda blog, you have a big entry questioning the credibility of Brennan's accuser and the bias of the Philadelphia media reporting on the trial, but not a single update that:

      1) Avery admitted his guilt and his abuse of several children over many years;
      2) Cardinal Bevilacqua was fully aware of several pedophiles and child abusers for years, including Gana, Sicoli, Smith, DePaoli, Shea, Trauger, Murtha, Cannon, and Dunne; appointed them to parishes and areas where they could continue to abuse children, but did nothing to ever reach out or reassure the victims--and he frequently lied to parishoners about the circumstances of their transfers and removals.
      3)Lynn's entire defense in the case has been that he was acting at the direction and control of the Cardinal and had no power to exercise his own discretion;
      4)Brennan was a known abuser even before Mark and had been removed from his position at a local high school due to inappropriate relationships with boys; and was living with a teen at a local convent which prompted another complaint to the Archdiocese.

      Nobody cares about your silly spite fight with SNAP. If you are going to blog about issues relevant to the Philly trial, which is what is going on. Then, having a web site that questions the credibility of the church's critics about the handling of this crisis, but failing to acknowledge in your blog that the Cardinal of one of the largest Archdiocese in the country was aiding and abetting pedophiles and child abusers for years, is tantamount to being a delusional revisionist, akin to Holocaust Deniers and Confederacy Revisionists who talk about how great blacks had it under slavery.

      Any reasonable thinking person would have taken down his disgusting blog in response to the evidence presented at this trial. How many more priests and victims have to be tallied before you can acknowledge that the AOP aided and abetted criminal child abusers? There was one Sandusky at Penn State. Bevilacqua covered for at least 9 in the AOP. It's a shame that Ralph hasn't reposted the pictures of Bevilacqua posing with his good buddy Gana. A few months ago, the priests in total stood up in front of the Cardinal and gave this POS Lynn a standing ovation. I am sure that if you were there, you would have stood up with them all.

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    4. It is well documented Cardinal Bevilacqua shredded proof of 35 known pedophile priest and then let them roam freely among children for 17 years.

      It is well documented the Cardinal Bevilacqua perjured himself in the grand jury testimony, claiming among other things that his first concern was the welfare the children, when in fact he was letting pedophiles have free access to those children. Bevilacqua would lie whenever it was convenient, and it was certainly convenient to lie and say he had dementia and amnesia when he didn't feel like testifying.

      Delete
    5. Kopride,

      Awesome write up.

      However, themediareport (Dave Pierre) has an agenda, which is exactly the same agenda as the Catholic church - make money, defend your money, defend your pedophiles and fight and discredit the victims.

      The truth gets in the way.

      Therefore, Dave will distort the truth in any way possible, and one of the best ways to do that is to avoid it completely in his blog and hope that is audience doesn't “seek the truth”. Since most of them are Catholic old ladies and they don't spend much time searching the Internet, they believe whatever they are told by bishops, priests and Pierre. That also includes a massive PR team that similarly distorts the truth, like the Cardinals, the Catholic League, Fr Z, et cetera.

      Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the light”, and Pierre is on the opposite side of this fight.

      Delete
    6. kopride - Your dishonesty is truly astounding.

      You accuse me of 'distorting the truth' and fail to provide a single example.
      Then you accuse me of standing for something I don't.
      You lie repeatedly and shamelessly.

      You are truly a profilgate liar.
      You are exactly the kind of person that Paul warns about and says to stay away from in 2 Timothy 3:1-5,8-9.

      -

      Delete
    7. "You accuse me of 'distorting the truth' and fail to provide a single example."

      I actually provided you with four examples above so clearly arithmetic is not your strong suit. How come your blog is not reporting the balanced information about this trial. You have blogged about Brennan's abuser being a liar; the trial judge being unfair, the DA's office unfair, and a PI reporter you feel is slanted against the AOP. You haven't blogged about the media accurately reporting that Bevilacqua harbored and enabled over 9 pedophiles or abusers as the evidence at trial has established. That's not journalism, your blog is propaganda.

      "Then you accuse me of standing for something I don't."

      Actually, the opposite. I accuse you of standing for nothing. You have no morality and are a disgusting example of a one sided blockhead who refuses to take a stand for the good catholics who are the real victims of these dirtbags who ran the AOP.

      "You lie repeatedly and shamelessly."

      Really, you found my blog where I claim that almost half of the victims of clergy abuse are liars. Really, name one victim of Gana who is a liar; one victim of Avery who is a liar, one victim of Sicoli who is a liar; Is the nun who testified in this case a liar? Is the nun who complained about Brennan living with a teen at the convent a liar? Is the priest who was investigated when he complained about Gana at the seminary a liar.

      "You are exactly the kind of person that Paul warns about and says to stay away from in 2 Timothy 3:1-5,8-9."

      Oh wow, not that, please not that. Don't cite christian scripture. Next you will cite the Koran or the Book of Mormon and I will really be in trouble. What are you the church lady?

      Delete
    8. LOL! You listed four things you said YOURSELF, not that I said! Ha!

      I never said a victim of Gana, Avery, or Scioli was lying. I've never visited any blog of yours. So there you go, lying again.

      And you show the height of idiocy by criticizing me for not reporting on my blog what's ALREADY been reported in the newspapers!

      My blog does not defend any wrongdoing whatsoever, and I have REPEATEDLY demanded justice and compassion for clergy abuse victims on my site, yet you continue to LIE about this by branding me disgusting names.

      Yes, I criticize THE MEDIA COVERAGE and try to provide a perspective that I believe is not being reported by PI, the AP, C4Change, and others.

      Don't like it? Well, too bad.

      Meanwhile, you personally attack people and cast people in a false light while hiding behind anonymity.

      -

      Delete
  2. Did anybody give Lynn a standing ovation. Was Cardinal Ringali or Chaput there to provide moral support for their loyal comrade?

    What do you have to do to get fired from that job. Checking out of pedophile rehab after admitting to abusing kids usually is enough in most jobs.

    I knew altar boys who were tossed off the servers for missing a 6:30 am mass. And they would be serious as hell telling you that you embarrassed the church.

    How is the jury reacting to this?

    Great post Ralph.

    ReplyDelete
  3. "It didn't occur to me ... It wasn't that big of a deal at the time."

    UGH... the victims who are testifying in this court are to be commended for their courage, they are amazing.

    The truth is being exposed because brave victims are not staying silent anymore. They may have no idea yet, how many kids lives they are saving.

    Thank you,
    Judy Jones, SNAP Midwest Associate Director, USA, 636-433-2511

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    Replies
    1. You're welcome, Judy.

      http://www.themediareport.com/hot-topics/snap-survivors-network-of-those-abused-by-priests/

      Delete
    2. New readers should realize that themediareport and Dave "Pedophile Priest Protecting" Pierre is the only person trying to profit from this scandal, distorting the truth and pushing his books on his website. Among other things, Dave Pierre is pals with one of the 220 known Boston pedophile priests, Fr Macrae, who admitted to having sex with 3 of the 10 children that accused him.

      His big issue about SNAP is that one of the founders, Dave Clohessy, didn't turn in his brother fast eanough for "Pedophilia For Profit" Pierre, even though Clohessy had no proof whatsoever. For this reason, Dave completely discredits SNAP, which helps Dave sell books.

      Dave doesn't mind that the Catholic church hid at least 4,392 child sex abusers, and of course, they knew for sure that all of them (and many more) were definitely child sex abusers (since they heard it in Catholic confessions, and hid destroyed evidence about them like Cardinal Bevilacqua did).

      You're welcome, "PFP" Pierre.

      Delete
    3. New readers should know that Neil Allen continues to repeat falsehoods even after they have been debunked repeatedly.

      In EACH paragraph above, Neil Allen has written at LEAST ONE LIE that he already knows to be false!

      1. I do not defend any wrongdoing whatsoever.
      From my site: "One can hardly imagine the unquenchable pain and intense suffering which so many victims must endure today and throughout their lives as a result of the betrayal of trust by the very adults charged with their care. Justice demands first and foremost that those who misuse the trust placed in them and use innocent children for their own gratification BE INCARCERATED AND SEVERELY PUNISHED. The protection of children is paramount."
      http://www.themediareport.com/about/

      Accusers of Fr. MacRae have ADMITTED to making up the charges against him to extort $$ from the Church.
      http://www.themediareport.com/2012/02/20/new-evidence-may-exonerate-priest-gordon-j-macrae/

      2. David Clohessy of SNAP just didn't not act "fast enough" with his brother. He did NOTHING. Clohessy admitted that he knew "FOR YEARS about the allegations" against his brother, but he KNOWINGLY allowed this dangerous molester to roam freely.
      http://www.themediareport.com/2011/01/10/special-report-facts-about-snap-that-will-shock-you/

      But apparently Neil Allen is OK with this as long as it's a member of SNAP doing it.

      3. There's not a shred of evidence that the Church "hid" 4,392 molesters. The John Jay Report, from which Allen got his number, does not say that at all!

      Allen is making that up! LOL!

      And as far as me "pushing books." So what? As any author will tell you, most writers do not make much money off book sales at all, and I would certainly fall into that category. My main purpose in putting my books out is to tell a side to this entire narrative that has not been told, a side that haters like Neil Allen refuse to acknowledge. If Allen thinks I'm getting rich selling books of my web site, he's even more delusional than I thought.

      Readers should know that Neil Allen has been repeatedly debunked and cannot be trusted. He is a mean-spirited and dishonest individual.

      -

      Delete
    4. Thank God for this blog. Judy that line just floored me. What is a big deal to these guys, if it's not one of them abusing kids? Oh, I know, those LCWR women.

      Delete
    5. DPierre, you should post your comments on Pertinax's Sense Offenses blogs since it is directed to the SO, or sex offender community. Since Pertinax is already a member and tied in with the sex offender community, your comments may get a better reception.

      Because I am sure that SNAP forced the Cardinal to have a PR/ photo op campaign promoting two known child abusers Gana and Sicoli as Ralph reported. And I am sure that SNAP encouraged the Cardinal to protect and enable the 9 confirmed abusers that have come out in this trial. It's not that the Cardinal's actions were a disgrace and embarrassment to the good Catholics he supposedly led for more than a decade; it's that SNAP and the DA's office just want to make the AOP look bad.

      Again, aside from our sex offender friend and you, nobody else who is reading what Ralph is reporting are seeing any conspiracy other than the conspiracy that subsequent Cardinals in the AOP have led. We haven't even gotten to Rigali yet, the Cardinal that publicly stated that there were no known abusers in active ministry and then suspended 7% of the active priests in the AOP for credible allegations of abuse about a month later. Really, at this point, you are like Bagdad Bob, Hussein's press agent, denying that the Americans were in the City while tanks were rolling in. Or maybe, you're like Pope Rat who ordered an investigation into the good deeds of the US nuns who were spending too much time teaching kids, administering to the sick, and taking care of the poor; and not enough time parroting the party line. Because the nuns are the real problem with the church, not the red dress wearing preening men who are more interested in ingratiating themselves with US GOP politics than doing what Jesus did which was teaching kids, administering to the sick, and taking care of the poor.

      Delete
    6. Themediareport,

      1) No one is stupid enough to say they defend pedophilia (except for some Catholic priests like Fr Shanley, Fr Van B, and Bishop Vangheluwe, of course). However, you always defend the pedophile priests, and never, never defend the victims. Please show us the main pages on your site that focus on support for the victims.

      Macrae’s victims NEVER admitted making up charges in court. They did it outside court, where they are not obligated to brag about being raped by your pedophile pal.

      Macrae ADMITTED to having sex with 3 children. That’s what “plead guilty” means. Another 10 accused him, but didn’t have proof. He probably had sex with another 10 or 20 beyond that.

      2) Clohessy had no proof whatsoever about his own brother. In contrast, tens of thousands of child-raping Catholic priests all confessed it in confession to another priest, and those priests did NOTHING – WITH PROOF. Any of them could have said, “your sins aren’t forgiven until you admit it”.

      3) Not a shred of evidence that the church hid 4,392 child rapists? They admitted that number in their own John Jay report, and none of those priests were turned in by the Catholic church. Google "Catholic sex abuse cases" to verify the number.

      In every case, a victim had to come forward, and the Catholic church fought them until they proved it, even when the Catholic church had written proof.

      For example, Cardinal Bevilacqua shredded a list of 35 known pedophile priests (13 of which admitted it outside of the confessional) in 1994 and let them roam freely among children.

      Good authors make plenty of money. J.K. Rowling is worth close to a billion dollars, and she writes fiction, just like you do. The difference is that she doesn’t write fiction defending child rapists. You are in a niche market, defending child rapists, which is only appreciated by Catholics.

      The David Clohessy example is a great one. Clohessy didn’t turn his brother in fast enough for you, even though he had no proof, but you will trash an organization of 5,000 victims at SNAP because of it, using the title, “facts that will shock you”.

      The Catholic church got complete, full confessions from 10,000+ known child rapists, and didn’t turn in any of them or tell any of them to turn themselves in, but you don’t mention that anywhere.

      Fortunately, people can read your side and mine and decide for themselves.

      So can God.

      Delete
    7. kopride,

      A masterpiece of truth, which will undoubtedly make themediareport and Pertinax turn to dust.

      Delete
    8. Wow, even more lies from kopride!

      1. I do have a degree. (Boston College)
      2. I am regularly paid as a journalist. (It's called Google. Maybe you should try it some time.)
      3. I HAVE interviewed law enforcement and victims for the work I have done.
      4. I have not YET attended the Philly trial, but I hope to shortly. But so what? I am NOT defending wrongdoing, no matter how much you scream that perpetual lie. (NEVER ONCE has anyone provided me with a single example of me defending wrongdoing.)
      My criticism is with the MEDIA COVERAGE.

      THE ... MEDIA ... REPORT

      Got it?
      Can you even comprehend that?

      5. I obviously know the rules of evidence MUCH more than you do.
      6. I already provided the link about MacRae's guilty plea, which was a "negotiated lie."
      You are probably not smart enough to even understand this, but according to the Innocence Project, 25% of completely innocent people who were later exonerated pleaded guilty, falsely confessed, or made incriminating statements.

      You literally do not know what you are talking about.

      And while you hide in cowardice and anonymity behind the screen name of 'kopride,' how about telling us a little about yourself? Who are YOU?

      You are an anonymous coward who repeatedly airs falsehoods.

      Delete
    9. And here's another one. I HAVE seen several documents about the case.

      When Harvard's Neil Allen misrepresented the 1994 memo, I actually showed him what was in it! LOL!

      Delete
    10. "1. I do have a degree. (Boston College)"
      Safety School for the kids who could not get into Georgetown or Holy Cross.Only kidding, I went to Villanova for undergrad.And when to a Jesuit High School so lots of my old classmates went to BC, the ones that didn't get into Georgetown.
      "2. I am regularly paid as a journalist. (It's called Google. Maybe you should try it some time.)"
      Then post some links to some real periodicals or newspapers you have actually published articles in. I have googled you, All I see are your blogs and a couple interviews were some catholic blogs have interviewed you. Nothing looks paid.
      "3. I HAVE interviewed law enforcement and victims for the work I have done."
      Well, its not like the Philly law enforcement has not been active in this case. And most of the assigned officers are catholic. Do you know where the Mayor graduated High School? Do you know how many ADAs work at the DAs office and went to catholic school? And again, how about a link journalist to something other than your blog which reads more like "Enemies of North Korea are Liars."
      "4. I have not YET attended the Philly trial, but I hope to shortly. "
      I am sure that the court will be free to honor your press credentials from where?

      "But so what? I am NOT defending wrongdoing, no matter how much you scream that perpetual lie. (NEVER ONCE has anyone provided me with a single example of me defending wrongdoing.)
      My criticism is with the MEDIA COVERAGE. "

      So you criticize the media coverage by failing to disclose the true and accurate news of this trial, which so far has been Bevilacqua's concerted cover up of over 9 admitted and confirmed abusers. There has been no evidence of false allegations of abuse or a biased media. And your thin skinned when somebody questions your agenda.

      Delete
    11. "5. I obviously know the rules of evidence MUCH more than you do."
      Where did you get your law degree from? Where are you licensed to practice law?

      "6. I already provided the link about MacRae's guilty plea, which was a "negotiated lie." "
      You provided a link to your own blog. MacRae confessed to multiple therapists and the bishops long before he pleaded. He pleaded. Under oath. There is far more evidence of MacCrae's Admission of Guilt than anything related to the victim's.

      "You are probably not smart enough to even understand this, but according to the Innocence Project, 25% of completely innocent people who were later exonerated pleaded guilty, falsely confessed, or made incriminating statements."

      Actually you are wrong. I have represented prisoners in prisoner's rights cases, Have you? Most of the people who are wrongfully convicted are poor indigent usually borderline mentally retarded people who were represented by Public Defenders with no resources. They were not college educated folks who confessed to their therapists that they abused children long before they pleaded guilty. MacRae was represented by nationally renowned private defense attorney Ron Koch who was specially admitted from New Mexico; and assisted by an able local NH attorney. MacCrae had been placed on inactive status by the Diocese for inappropriate conduct even before the later victims. The only injustice in the MacRae case is that he got hammered more than most in sentencing. But I am not going to second guess a trial judge who probably had to watch this dirtbag in action. Really, in Philly, we have the free Mumia people. And there are lots of folks who have come out and claimed Mumia is innocent and published lots of half baked articles like the ones that appear on your blog. But MacRae has been in for a long time, exhausted all reasonable appeals and habeas applications. He pleaded for crisake. That's a guilty man. His newest application for a new trial is a joke. It cites newspaper articles alleged publicity, and simply slams the witnesses. it is one of the weakest applications for a new trial I have ever read. (I read it on line). It is not even as good as ones I have seen done by like jailhouse lawyers. Declarations of scum bags claiming his accuser was a bigger scum bag. MacRae criticizes his own highly paid private lawyer, the NH Diocese, and just about every one else involved in the case. Really, the Mumia applications were much better--no kidding--his sentence was remitted by the Third Circuit and the papers were excellent. MacRae's brief looks like something done by a law clerk with a journalism minor.

      Delete
    12. HA! Just what I figured. You won't give your name. And you know very well you can go to my site, and email me your name, but you won't. You are indeed a coward, taking potshots at people hiding behind the cloak of anonymity.

      Yeah, you sure have "guts" all right. Ha.

      And nowhere on my site did I call Bukowski a "liar," so there you go spreading falsehoods again.

      "You call out a trial judge who you don't even know and claim she is unfair." Yes, it's called the First Amendment. Meanwhile, you criticize people YOU don't even know in the very same way. Except I simply criticize. I don't lie and personally attack people. You do both - while remaining anonymous. Lame.

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    13. And you simply lied by saying MacRae confessed to "multiple therapists." False, false, false. And there you are, lying again.

      "Most of the people who are wrongfully convicted are poor indigent ..."
      "Most" does not mean "all," does it?

      "And I haven't said anything false about you." Nice try. I have cited lie after lie from you.

      -

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    14. From the NH AG Report:
      Following MacRae’s conviction for endangering the welfare of a minor in 1988 with Doe XX, he was sent for psychological evaluation. MacRae was first evaluated by the House of Affirmation in Massachusetts in December 1988. (B3063). Despite Dr. Guertin-Ouellette’s earlier assurances that MacRae’s behavior had been adequately treated, the House of Affirmation issued a blunt report about MacRae’s inability to control his sexual behavior:
      Father MacRae reported several inappropriate sexual encounters with adolescents. Although he experiences intense shame and guilt for the behavior, he indicated that he does not feel in control of such behavior. Father MacRae is in the early stages of understanding and arresting the inappropriate sexual encounters with minors. Although alarmed by it and very frightened of legal and personal consequences, he has little awareness of the impact of the behavior upon the adolescents, and he has little confidence that he can cease such involvements. He still tends to transfer some responsibility for the behavior to the adolescents and has difficulty acknowledging the sexually addictive nature of the behavior. These factors indicate that Father MacRae is a sexual offender who currently is not able to curtail such behavior without professional support. We recommend that he receive professional support immediately.(B3068).
      MacRae received further psychological evaluation from Strafford Guidance Center in January 1989. Despite Dr. Guertin-Ouellette’s earlier assurances, Strafford Guidance issued a scathing report about MacRae’s sexual problems:
      The above data are indicative of severe and deep-seated psychopathology that has had many ramifications in his recent past and in his present psychological condition. The data indicate a severe personality disorder with related serious psychosexual and substance abuse problems. He has tremendous difficulty in intimate relationships, sexual or otherwise, and in fact tends to sexualize most relationships in one form or another. While he longs for sexual and emotional intimacy with others, he appears to be almost completely incapable of establishing and maintaining such intimacy in any real way. As a result, he has an extremely active and involved fantasy life, which I suspect is driven by only semi-repressed sado-masochistic drives. . . .
      I strongly recommend long-term intensive psychotherapy. He fits the profile of what is known in the literature as a “fixated” sexual offender. For this reason, he may not be appropriate for the SATP of the Strafford Guidance Center, which is not geared specifically to deal with sexual offenders of this type. He is in clear need for insight-oriented psychotherapy to address the psychodynamics as outlined above, as well as a program specifically geared to deal with fixated sexual offenders. . . .
      (B6746-47).

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    15. A second therapist at Strafford Guidance reached similar conclusions in February 1989:

      Mr. MacRae appears to fit the description of a fixated sexual offender, a man who has a primary sexual interest in children, usually males, though with the possibility of attraction to and sexual activity with adults; who identifies with his child victims and who relates to children as peers, scaling his behavior to the child's level or acting in a "pseudo-parental role." Other characteristics of fixated offenders which apply to Mr. MacRae are the lack of a precipitating stressor, the compulsive quality of the behavior, and a pervading characterological immaturity.

      As fixated offenders do not respond to outpatient treatment and have the best record of recovery when treated in an inpatient setting, initially in a program specifically tailored to sexual offenders, it is important that Mr. MacRae undergo [page 149 begins] treatment in such a modality. It is important that Mr. MacRae not be deferred to as special in treatment because he is a priest.

      It is of great importance that Mr. MacRae not be allowed to place himself in a position of authority over minors in the future, and that he continue to take responsibility for this and for other potentially dangerous behaviors.

      (B6738-39).

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    16. Here is the link to the PDF of the Manchester report concerning MacRae: http://www.bishop-accountability.org/resources/resource-files/reports/ManchesterReport10MacRae.pdf.

      So, in reality, MacRae pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor in 1988 for an incident that involved MacRae bringing a 14 year old minor to his apartment to take pictures of him. In 1983, MacRae was involved in another admitted incident that resulted him being placed on restricted ministry. He was accepted into the seminary for Diocesan priests with real reservations because his 1978 psychological profiles revealed deep seated psychological sexual problems. The first psychologist recommended that he be accepted with reservations; the second initially recommended that he be rejected, but was persuaded to change his opinion to "cautious acceptance." He was in therapy where he admitted to multiple issues of abuse of minors well before he pleaded guilty to three additional counts in 1994. The reason that he did not testify at his criminal trial in 1994 was most likely related to the fact that it would open the door to his prior sexual offense involving a minor and the reports of the various therapists that he was a pedophile.

      So, in MacRae's case, is someone who admitted misconduct to multiple therapists, pleaded guilty to a sex offense with a minor in 1988; and pleaded guilty to three additional sexual offenses in 1994. He is an admitted sexual offender and pedophile. If the RCC had any standards and listened to his pre-seminary evaluations, he should have never been admitted. He was always a problem priest and spent most of his ministry on various leaves for sex offenses, alcoholism, and other psychological problems. It's all in the NH report.

      And yes, concurrent with the fact that MacRae is a dirt bag with tons of baggage is the fact that some of his minor victims may have developed baggage or been dirtbags themselves. It doesn't change the fact that MacRae was a convicted admitted sex offender long before he pleaded guilty three additional times in 1994. His prior history is probably why the judge's sentence was so harsh and why he keeps getting denied parole for not admitting his problem.

      Now I am sure that DPierre will explain that MacRae's long tortured history well before the guilty pleas are all part of a conspiracy that involved the psychologists that first evaluated him for the seminary in 1978, the prosecutors who coerced a confession and guilty plea from him in 1988, the psychologists who diagnosed him as a pedophile and serial sex offender long before his 2, 3, and 4th guilty pleas for misconduct with a minor.

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    17. Your EXACT citations about Strafford Guidance have long ago been addressed and debunked.

      http://www.thesestonewalls.com/Files/Should%20the%20Case%20Against%20Father%20Gordon%20MacRae%20be%20Reviewed.pdf

      Believe me, there are people who have looked at Rev. MacRae's case a LOT more than you, including Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Dorothy Rabinowitz from the Wall Street Journal. She studied his case extensively, and in a two-part series for the WSJ in 2005, she concluded that Fr. MacRae was falsely accused. And that was YEARS BEFORE the various individuals came forward to affirm that the accuser ADMITTED he was lying.

      And your line, "[MacRae] was always a problem priest and spent most of his ministry on various leaves for sex offenses," is simply false, and it again shows that you have a blatant disregard for the truth.


      Do yourself a favor. Stay away from cases you don't know anything about. Anybody can go on BishopAccountability and look at a bunch of documents and say, "Here!" But that site is determined to tell only one side of the story.

      You really don't know what you're talking about.

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    18. LOL. Even in the WSJ article, MacRae admitted having sex with a 16 year old boy "Tony" "who was a dependent of sort;" and like all predators suggested that the minor initiated sex with the good priest. The link you cited acknowledges that the two psychological opinions from NH concluded that he was a fixated sexual predator, but says that doctors at the notorious catholic priest sex offender Catholic hospital in New Mexico reached different opinions. That's not "debunking" anything. This man pleaded guilty 4 times to sexual abuse of minors and admitted doing it with a 5th to the reporter.

      Dorothy Rabinowitz is a RIght WIng conservative columnist and not a lawyer. It would not surprise me if Sean Hannity, G. Gordon, Liddy, or Rush Limbaugh supported MacRae as well. There is a list of liberal columnists and reporters who think Mumia is innocent as well, some of them award winning. Nobody with a law license and a reasonable reputation thinks MacRae is innocent.

      But if someone is going to write an article exonerating a pedophile, an admission that he had sex with his 16 year old "dependent" kind of destroys any credibility. Ok, he abused a vulnerable kid, just not the other 4 kids he pleaded guilty to abusing.It would be funny if people like you didn't obviously believe such nonsense.

      And again, in your world, a catholic detective, judge, diocese, and psychologists are trying to railroad the good padre. You'd rather impugn the names of people who have no blemishes against their integrity rather than accept that there was a reason to plead guilty 4 times

      He was a problem priest. The records from pre-seminary in 1978 indicated reservations. In 83, he was the subject of an admitted fondling with a minor and was placed in a restricted ministry, he received treatment for substance abuse, he admits to two additional indiscretions to the reporter, one with a minor boy who he considered a dependent. He pleaded guilty to a sex offense and then went to the church's designated NM facility at the time for problem priests and spent more than a year down there in treatment and restricted ministry while he was also on probation.

      Like every intelligent manipulative convict, he has found some gullible people who want to feel like they have special knowledge of an inside conspiracy. But the documents related to his case have not been "debunked." Debunked would be saying that the documents were a forgery; not that a catholic hospital disagreed with the NH psychologists. People coming forward later to say people lied are common in every criminal case because dirtbags attract dirtbags.

      If this is your cause, I just pity you.

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    19. "Based on the evaluation from Strafford Guidance, MacRae attended in-patient therapy with the Servants of the Paraclete in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. (B6739). MacRae began treatment with the Servants of the Paraclete on March 14, 1989, and was a resident with the facility for slightly more than one year. (B3090; B3347). On April 15, 1989, Bishop Gendron wrote to Dr. Peter Lechner, Director of Villa Louis Martin (“VLM”), the residential treatment center run by the Servants of the Paraclete. "

      As anybody following the priest abuse scandal knows, MacRae was sent by the church to the Paraclete Retreat in NM; or as it is known "Club Ped." He actually worked as a director of Club Ped.

      The Paracletes who challenged the opinion of the NH psychologists eventually disbanded all their US problem priest facilities because of recidivism.They also routinely destroyed records of priests in treatment. Given a challenge between the NH psychologists and the church's own special Club Ped, excuse me if I go with the doctors who have no long track record of covering up for problem priests.

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    20. kopride, amazing research.

      I knew just from reading beyond the surface that Macrae was a dirtbag pedophile, and that themediareport and Dave Pierre would defend their pedophile pal even if he had sex with their own child in their own living room.

      However, I never did the research to find out how much of a dirtbag he was, and you know that they only found 20-40% of Macrae's offenses.

      It makes it even more cultish that he has a handfull of dirtbags that follow his pitiful stonewalls blog, which, by the way, is what themediareport and Dave Pierre use as the authoritative sourse above for one of his examples.

      Macrae, the self-absorbed, self-admitted child rapist, has a recent blog where he compares himself to the victimization of Jesus Christ. However, in the same blog, he tells the story of redemption, when he entered prison and the inmates yelled "Kill the priest" in the days before they gave him his first vicious beating.

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    21. Thanks. The Paraclete fiasco could be a whole other blog on itself. The Paracletes "cured" many serial pedophiles. The main church Club Peds were the Paracletes in NM, St. Luke's in MD, Institute of Living in Hartford, and one in Canada. In particular, the Paracletes created a separate ground zero for abuse cases in NM because they would send their patients out as guest priests at the Parish. They also took the view that it was pastoral and spiritual so they did not keep detailed notes of the counseling sessions or record the priests admissions in a clinical fashion. They would send reports to the bishops with instructions to destroy them Many of the patients, like MacRae became counselors to other troubled priests. Since some of the Paracletes were "professional" they would generate reports like the one referenced by Pierre that allegedly debunks his therapy sessions in NH.

      Interestingly, their main historical leader in the 50s-60s was trying to buy an island to house pedophile priests permanently because he did not believe they cold be treated or cured. It is a very strange story, but a Paraclete report doesn't exonerate anybody. Instead, the fact he was there for over a year speaks volumes.

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    22. Of course, the Catholic church sought out anyone that would say they could return their child rapists to places where there were innocent children. They paid them money, got documents saying that the pedophile priests were cured, and never, ever told the parents or the children that these were confirmed child rapists.

      They were doing live experiments about child rapists with live children.

      Every pedophile priest and every bishop or priest that was involved should be sent to prison and beaten like some of the pedophile priests already have been. Prisoners know more about child safety than the Catholic church.

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    23. To give you an example of what a Micky Mouse effort MacRae's Motion for New Trial based upon "new evidence," here is the brief:

      "The new witnesses are, or were, Grover’s [the accuser] relatives and friends. He confided in them, shared his plans and admitted his lies and perjury – statements against his penal interest – precisely because they were with him then."

      Ok, so MacRae's lawyers have come forward with people years later who say that one accuser Grover was lying. This is not grounds for a new trial in any jurisdiction. This is multi-level hearsay. Basically, the declarant, Grover, allegedly said something out of court to a friend or relative; and this friend or relative is allegedly willing to come forward and testify about this out of court conversation. And the original conversation was not recorded in any reliable fashion, and was not taken under oath. And the telling thing about the brief is that he lawyer does not cite any NH case where a NH court has accepted this type of evidence as grounds for a new trial. (Now if Grover, signed an affidavit saying "I lied," that might set up grounds for a hearing but that is also not uncommon in Habeas cases.)

      Here is what the lawyer claims is the basis that the evidence is admissible:

      "Second, the evidence is admissible. Much of the evidence goes to Grover’s reputation for
      dishonesty, as reported by his friends and family. N.H. R. Ev. 608(a). The evidence also contains
      Grover’s statements against interest – admissions of numerous acts of perjury and fraud. N.H. R. Ev.
      804(b)(3)."

      As an initial matter, do you see how the lawyer does not cite a single NH case that says that this type of evidence is admissible? Do you know why, because its not. At best, the witnesses under 608 could have testified about their opinion of Grover's evidence of dishonesty at the time of the testimony--not years later, which would have opened the door to the prosecutor introducing reputation or opinion testimony that he was truthful. But the rule specifically bars evidence of extrinsic acts, i.e. the witnesses would not have been able to testify about all the acts that formed their opinion. See Rule 608(b).
      Rule 804 b(3) is even more of a stretch to claim that the evidence is admissible as a statement against penal interest. First of all, Grover was available at trial and testified so the requirements of 804 are not even met because the rule only applies if the declarant is unavailable. If Grover is available then, the alleged "statement" to friends is simply something that he could be cross examined with. If he denies it, then there is little authority suggesting that you can call the friend to offer the alleged statement to impeach him on the issue of whether he ever made the statement to the friend. Moreover, even if Grover was unavailable, the alleged statement would have to be corroborated in some additional way. In most cases, these statements that come in under the rule are basically police statements or affidavits taken under oath or adopted by the now unavailable declarant. In other words, a confession to law enforcement. But something the declarant said out of court to random friends and relatives and unsworn would not come in as a statement against interest because those friends and relatives are not really in a position to punish him criminally--unlike making the statement to a cop or judge It's just rank hearsay. Really, this type of statement is usually proffered under 801(d)2(E) as an admission of a co-conspirator--because the lawyer claims that the friends and relatives were conspiring with Grover for financial gain; and it does not meet the elements of admissibility under that exception either. And if there was a single NH case that suggested that it was anything but hearsay, then the lawyer would have cited it.

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    24. Awesome analysis, kopride, but you are making it very hard for DPierre to mislead the public so he can sell his books and profit off this pedophile scandal.

      Delete
  4. I have been making the point in comments that there seemed to be extraneous hydraulic pressures working beneath the surfaces of this trial. A link between SNAP and the DA’s office – indicated by the link commenter PIERRE provided – certainly gives grounds for further thought about it.

    These matters in the case at bar go back 17 years or more, and none of them reflect the past decade of intensive activity that has resulted in the fact that – with the now greatly monitored and self-monitored Church – there were less than ten accusations of recent or ‘current’ abuse of any sort deemed to be credible in 2011.

    Why then the DA has chosen to bring these cases (although it perfectly within the DA’s authority to do so) is still a mystery. No DA’s office prosecutes every crime, so why focus on an old case, especially after the patterns that were conceivably operative in those past instances have now been – by all extant indications – reformed?

    Back in the 1950s there were over 50,000 deaths from motor-vehicle accidents per year (recall that in the entire Vietnam War we suffered 53,000 or so KIA). Although it was a crime then to drive-drunk, not only did many drivers do so, but many others did not become involved to the point of keeping-back keys or calling the police, even if they themselves would never think of driving-drunk. As a result, many victims of drunk drivers died who might otherwise have lived.

    Yet it was simply not in the spirit of those times, the sensibility of the times, that people should take great notice. Efforts were made by individuals and within families, by judges here and there and by police departments ditto, but nothing too much more.

    Do we judge that there was a conspiracy to keep drunk-drivers on the road? Was the majority of the legal and law enforcement organizations, and even of the citizenry, somehow conspiring to enable drunk drivers? Were police chiefs who did not, in the 1950s, set up roadblocks and run sobriety tests in the field (even with the simpler technology of the day) somehow premeditatedly and criminally conspiratorial?

    I don’t say this in any way to ‘explain’ the events of almost 20 years ago in this case, much less to explain-away.

    But there is this element of cultural asymmetry active here in this case and it continues to be of interest, especially insofar as the DA’s substantial investment in the case continues to invite thought.

    I remain convinced that such pressures – as they so often have historically in such cases – can have a deranging effect, to which we should remain alert

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    1. They're bringing up old cases to prove that this is indeed a conspiracy. Its organized crime by the world's largest organized crime syndicate of child rape.

      Catholics like Pertinax and themediareport will claim “we don't rape as many children as we used to, so leave us alone”. That's not the way the law works. The Catholic church is been hiding the world's largest pedophile protection program, and every guilty party should be brought down.

      These victims were subjected to unimaginable psychological damage by the world's most gutless, despicable cowards, all claiming they were doing God's work, just like every “false Idol” does.

      Thankfully God is bringing this forward so that the whole world can see that the Catholic Church isn't God's church.

      Godspeed, prosecution.

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  5. In a meta-narrative mode – if I may for a moment – I will note, for readers who don’t follow all comments every day, that this is my first comment since it was ‘revealed’ two days ago, that I have a blog site on sex-offense matters which contains around 1300 pages of essay material on various aspects of that phenomenon as it has evolved in this country.

    (Readers interested in my philosophy and approach are invited to this site’s first ‘Father Avery’ Post, wherein there are 62 or so comments, and especially in the later comments I discuss my legal, philosophical, and other thoughts. Since I have noted a palpable spike in readers of that blog in the past two days, I presume readers are already taking up that option.)

    Lastly, continuing in meta-narrative mode, and given both my assessment of dynamics sometimes operative in this site’s comments and my own appreciation of historical efforts to squelch dissent from party-lines operative in so much recent world and Western history, may I try to save us all from time and pre-emptively state the following: there might soon appear insinuations or assertions that my thoughts are irrelevant, paid-for, distracting, or uninformed or else that I am myself all manner of unsavory things.

    If I don’t try to engage each of the more predictable instances of the foregoing, it is merely to spare the readership. I am going to imagine that comments to a number of the preceding Posts in this series on this site have already demonstrated the range and depth of such characterizations and my responses there should suffice.

    Ideas, of course, are always welcome and I will happily respond, as a service and responsibility to the readership.

    Beyond that, the age-old tactics of the squelch can will simply be left to hang in the web-osphere where they are put by those who make them. They will, as they always have, prove more damaging in the recoil than in the projectile.

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  6. I am now understanding the logic of the apologists and offer the following in the style of Jonathon Swift:

    I have been making the point in a blog that I write for the national socialist audience and various comments in other blogs that there seemed to be extraneous hydraulic pressures working that led to poor Adolf Eichmann being snatched from his happy home in Argentine to stand trial in a sham event in Jerusalem several decades after the events were even relevant. A link between the Government of Israel and the ultimate prosecution of Eichmann-- certainly gives grounds for further thought about it. And it is interesting, from a purely metaphysical way, that the national integrity of Argentine could be invaded for this issue rather than Argentine being invaded for the bad fashion taste of Eva Peron. Funny how the night moves. And one must question whether the entire Falklands War was really a distraction by the British to distract further attention from the violation of Argentine sovereignty by the Israelis in 1962 since pressures at that time from posts I was writing for several national socialist newspapers were exposing the truth back in the early 80s and putting tremendous pressure on the Israeli Government to make amends to the Argentine military who helped Eichmann with his resettling.

    The matters in the Eichmann case go back 17 years or more, and none of them reflected the subsequent decade of intensive activity that has resulted in the fact that – with the now greatly monitored and self-monitored poet war Germany – there were less than ten accusations of recent or ‘current’ abuse of any Jews deemed to be credible in 1962.

    Why then the Jerusalem District court has chosen to bring these cases (although it perfectly within the prosecutors authority to do so) is still a mystery. No DA’s office prosecutes every crime, so why focus on an old case, especially after the patterns that were conceivably operative in those past instances have now been – by all extant indications – reformed?

    Back in the 1920s there were thousands of deaths from negro lynching per year (recall that in the entire Vietnam War we suffered 53,000 or so KIA). Although it was a crime then to lynch negroes, not only did many well respected folks do so, but many others did not become involved to the point of keeping-back keys or calling the police, even if they themselves would never think of lynching negroes themselves. As a result, many victims of negro lynching died who might otherwise have lived.

    Yet it was simply not in the spirit of those times, the sensibility of the times, that people should take great notice. Efforts were made by individuals and within families, by judges here and there and by communists, quakers, negro churches and civil rights activists ditto, but nothing too much more.

    Do we judge that there was a conspiracy to keep negro lynching as a viable enterprise? Was the majority of the legal and law enforcement organizations, and even of the citizenry, somehow conspiring to enable negro lynching and discrimination? Were police chiefs who did not, in the 1950s, investigate crimes against minorities (even with the simpler technology of the day) somehow premeditatedly and criminally conspiratorial?

    I don’t say this in any way to ‘explain’ the events of almost 20 years ago in the Eichmann case, much less to explain-away.

    But there is this element of cultural asymmetry active here in Eichmann's case and it continues to be of interest, especially insofar as the Israeli Government's substantial investment in the case continues to invite thought.

    I remain convinced that such pressures – as they so often have historically in such cases – can have a deranging effect, to which we should remain alert

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    1. The crazy thing is that this was a true "Springtime for Hitler" situation. I thought what would be the most outrageous example of complaining that somebody unfairly railroaded, and figured Eichmann was a good example. I mean, who would ever write a piece complaining that Eichmann was treated unfairly. I had no idea that Pertinax actually wrote a blog entry using Eichmann as an example of an guy treated unfairly.

      First they came for Eichmann, but I wasn't a Nazi war criminal, so I didn't speak up.
      Then, they came for Shanley, but I wasn't an admitted pedophile, so I didn't speak up
      Then they came for McCrae, but because I never pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting 3 children and was convicted of abusing others, I didn't speak up.
      Then, they came for Avery, a priest who pleaded guilty to raping several boys and wasn't even charged for the likely abuse he committed against the Hmong kids he adopted, and because I never pleaded guilty to abusing children, I didn't speak up for Avery.
      Then, they came for Brennan, a priest who was removed from High School for inappropriate relationships with boys and subject of a nun's complaint, but I didn't speak up because I never lived with a teenaged boy in a convent after I was thrown out of a high school.
      Then, they came for Brennan, a monsignor who shredded memos of known abusers and transferred at least 9 known abusers around the archdiocese, but because I never obstructed justice or enabled pedophiles that way, I didn't speak up.
      Then, they came for me for doing 48mph in a 35mph zone, and I paid the fine because I was guilty of speeding; and nobody spoke up for me because they were more worried about sex abusers. Oh, the injustice of it all.

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    2. kopride -
      Thank you for proving that you are an idiot and that Godwin's Law, which was originally construed as a joke, is actually true when it comes to discourse with morons like you.

      Delete
    3. themediareport,

      You better watch your mouth. If I see you call kopride or anyone else an idiot or a moron, I'm going to teach you some manners. I am not the least bit anonymous, and I'm not the least bit of a coward, and am willing to meet you anywhere in Massachusetts if you want me to teach you some manners.

      Delete
    4. You Boston guys are feisty folks. No need to defend my honor. And if you jump in for me, Dave's sex offender buddy Pertinax will jump in and it will be a rumble. We'll see what happens when the Flyers meet the Bruins in the playoffs. Oh, I forgot, Boston lost to Washington. But I feel for you Neill. Its bad enough that you have to watch the Flyers, Devils, and Washington advance without having to deal with Dave's nonsense. if MacRae is your cause, and apparently, it's Dave's, then you've got issues. Ask Dave if MacRae testified at his criminal trial and told his side of the story. He didn't because there was so much baggage on him involving other acts and admissions that he would have been crucified on cross. MacRae tells his story now to gullible catholics, but he couldn't testify because he had already admitted the abuse to therapists and supervisors.

      Delete
  7. Dear Media Report. Thanks for your kind words. Whenever the media forms a moral posse, it's good to have guys like you working the other side of the fence. However, I have to disagree with you about Cardinal Bevilacqua. You ain't gonna sell me that turkey.

    The cancer that His Eminence had was prostate cancer; find me a guy in his 80s who doesn't have that. As for his dementia, I am reminded of what former District Attorney Lynne Abraham told me back in 2005: “Any persistence in the questioning of Cardinal Bevilacqua may have resulted in part from his evasiveness and claimed forgetfulness on the witness stand.”

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    1. Ralph - The coroner would be the most neutral observer in this. The coroner said he had "fairly advanced" dementia, He didn't just make that up. (And did we forget that he was 88?)

      As far as anything pre-2005, you may be right, but let's not forget that Abraham clearly has a bone to pick in all of this. She is hardly a neutral observer.

      Delete
    2. True, Abraham is very opposed to child rape, unlike the Catholic church.

      Delete
    3. "As far as anything pre-2005, you may be right, but let's not forget that Abraham clearly has a bone to pick in all of this. She is hardly a neutral observer."

      That's just a baldfaced lie. What bone did Abraham have to pick. Abraham was a career trial judge and DA. She was elected multiple times and nobody ever claimed that she harbored any animus against the AOP. If anything attacking the AOP in Philadelphia is political suicide for a politician who is not African American. Unfortunately, the City of Brotherly love is balkanized by race, not religion. Most of Abraham's political support always came from ethnic white residents who are largely catholic and blindly follow the AOP. Most of the long serving cops and detectives in this city are catholics. What facts do you have to suggest that Abraham was interested in anything else aside from looking into clear cases of abuse? There is no evidence that the AOP was reporting these abuse cases to the Philly cops or DA and Abraham was not doing her job. She didn't need political cover. And she would have been elected over and over again by her constituents without attacking the church

      You talk about false allegations. Lynn Abraham was many things, but not neutral when it came to the church. That is simply false. Anybody who ever met Abraham or worked for her would tell you straight out that you are simply an ignorant liar.

      For example, Dave Rudovsky, a noted civil rights lawyer in Philly, always criticized Abraham's aggressive prosecutorial approach against all defendants, particularly her love of the death penalty. But even he, her most strident critic, stated that her office of 18 years was run without a whiff of corruption, patronage, or preferences. The only people who would accuse her of being anti-catholic are delusional. If she was anti catholic, then she would have indicted several AOP officials in '04 because the AOP was completely uncooperative. She didn't, which speaks volumes. She held her nose and let Bevilacqua and Rigali continue to live in their mansion and collect money from old ladies on sunday. Philly has hundreds of homicides and is awash in drugs. Abraham had no interest spending her office's limited resources fighting with high priced lawyers from the AOP rather than prosecuting drug dealers.

      Its stuff like this that you drop so casually, like you know Lynne Abraham, or whether she is neutral, that makes you such a pernicious liar.

      Delete
  8. I am pleased to see ideas engaged, and in the manner of Jonathan Swift – most impressive.

    I have a Post of some months ago up on my own site, examining the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem in 1960 (entitled “Eichmann and the SO Mania” (SO for sex-offense)) in its relevance to current American sex-offense law. I am happy to see that some here have read it.

    However, “reading comprehension” remains perhaps an issue.

    My position in that essay was that while the very special nature of the Holocaust as historical event (its indubitability as to the offenses committed and of the role of the defendant in perpetrating those outrages) might well have justified the actions perpetrated by agents of the Israeli state in taking Eichmann, yet there was a substantial difficulty raised by that trial as it bears on developments in sex-offense law: the uniqueness of the Holocaust’s indubitability justified the transactions as a special and unique exception to acceptable legal, law enforcement, and jurisprudential praxis.

    But what happened instead was that the Eichmann trial was taken as a metaphor and precedent for further such approaches (and ‘reforms’) in legal, law enforcement, and jurisprudential praxis.

    Thus starting in the 1970s, a decade later, the Holocaust and the plight of its victims were taken as a metaphor by which numerous emerging advocacies in this country framed their issues as latter-day instances of ‘holocaust’ and – far more ominously – any advocacy’s targeted perpetrators as Nazis and as ‘other Eichmanns’, so to speak.

    But whereas Eichmann’s guilt and the profoundly outrageous nature and consequences of his perpetrations were so clear as to obviate and presumption of guilt, yet the metaphorical framing of ‘holocaust’ clearly could not be applied in American constitutional legal jurispraxis and jurisprudence with its utterly indispensable and foundational presumption of innocence. Or at least, it could not be applied without inflicting lethal – and perhaps fatal – damage to the integrity of American jurisprudence.

    And so we have seen in the following decades as the presumption-of-innocence has been for all practical purposes greatly eroded; and the rights of the accused (cast in this framing narrative as the ‘Nazi’ and the indubitable perpetrator) have been equally eroded.

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  9. And this toxic re-framing and misapplication of the holocaust metaphor such that it became a precedent rather than an exception in law enforcement and jurisprudence assumed the proportions of a Mania-stampede (my terms) when American legislators rather too eagerly and (hopefully) without too much consideration of the lethal dangers involved, erected this initial mistake into a Plan, creating a web of laws – based on what are now, decades later, seen to be seriously erroneous Findings that justified the legislative ‘reforms’. Nor was the media totally non-complicit in nurturing this development, alas.

    And the public mind was manipulated to accept that the ‘victim’ in any of these cases was merely ‘another Holocaust victim’ and hence required the instant respect and acquiescence to ‘story’ with which we are all familiar and which has become a staple of ‘principle’ of current jurisprudence.

    Needless to say, in both criminal and civil praxis this toxic synergy has worked great mischief.

    This is n-o-t to ‘deny’ actual crimes that may have been committed nor to ‘disrespect’ genuine victims.

    But again: it has also become a staple of current practice that one must either completely agree or else one must be on the side of the perpetrator (too easily replacing ‘the accused’ in the public mind). And the valorization of this primitive and childish, cartoonish either-or thinking cannot but corrode the competence of the public mind and the government in trying to deal with issues of great and grave national import, domestically and in foreign affairs.

    As we saw in President Bush’s framing of what became the monstrously toxic military misadventures of the past decade and which we see, so clearly and note-perfectly expressed even in some comments on this site.

    All of the foregoing is in the Eichmann essay on my own site. My point being that the Holocaust is precisely n-o-t appropriately or safely applicable to a general framing of American civil and criminal law.

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  10. So pedophilia is an essential part of Catholicism? Is that what Catholic apologists like David Pierre and Pertinax are saying when they claim it's anti-Catholic to take action against pedophile priests? That is the logic they are inadvertently revealing.

    Here is a link to Pertinax's website: http://senseoffenses.blogspot.com
    so how much credibility can he have, really?

    Here is a link to my site too: http://cityofangels12.blogspot.com
    and believe me, the Catholic Church went to great lengths to stop me from continuing to blog. The Church has all the resources in the world, and they use them to fight the pedophile priest victims, while claiming to advocate for us.

    One complaint. Please stop referring to blue-haired old ladies as if we are second class citizens. A lot of us wear our bluish white hair with pride... The persons in the pews who are most dangerous are the ones who think you have to be a Republican to be a Christian... If the Church hadn't been more interested in protecting its wealth and assets, this whole decades long crime spree would never have been able to happen.

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  11. For example, Pertinax bemoans "the rise of the Domestic Violence Regime and the Sex Offense Regime" at his sense offenses blog.

    Yeah, who needs justice?

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  12. See Pertinax's logic? We should all be quiet and let husbands beat wives and allow pedophile priests to rape children.

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  13. When one Googles David Pierre, all that comes up is The Media Report and his recent writing on the Catholic clergy abuse crisis, nothing from before that time.

    Could it be that David Pierre is not his real name?

    With all due respect, I ask that question.

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    1. Exactly, Dave Pierre is the Bagdad Bob of Journalism. In the church's corner are a sex offender and a "journalist" who doesn't even have a student newspaper credit. In the other corner is reality.

      Delete
  14. Because, isn't writing under a pseudonym the same as remaining anonymous?

    Just asking...

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  15. In regard to the most recent spate of comments:

    I have never said it is "anti-Catholic" to take action against priests who have committed crimes. Once again the willful or ignorant creation of some sort of "straw-man" position - convenient for one's purposes. And again: I get the strong impression that in certain circles this passes for knowledge, wisdom, and smarts.

    It is no wonder these folks are enraged so much: they keep seeing their 'knowledge' fail to pan out in the real world and conclude that this can only be because of a conspiracy. That their own failures to accurately comprehend are setting them up for misreading of matters ... does not, and probably could not, occur to them.

    I "bemoan" the rise of the Domestic Violence and Sex-Offense matrices of laws for precisely the reasons I gave in my comment (a few up the page here) about the Eichmann trial. Had this commenter not read my thoughts before putting something up here?

    Thus the conclusion that "we should all" is ... what it is. In light of what I said in my Eichmann comments above, what I have been pointing out about all this recent spate of laws is that there are consequences built into them which are going to create and have created damage to the legal and justice systems in this country. The consequences remain and have always remained, and they cannot be wished away either by an insistent and infinite regress to 'good intentions' or to 'the emergency'.

    This is precisely what happens and has happened in 'emergency laws': the consequences for the polity that adopts them are automatically set in train, and yet the polity remains unaware of them - until it is too late - because the proponents of the emergency-law have stampeded the citizenry while simultaneously controlling public discourse so that no serious discussion of the consequences takes place.

    In that regard, I would add, it is precisely the cartoonish, two-dimensional, one-note, either-or, straw-man type of thinking that was so useful to the most successful (for a while) propagandists such as Mussolini and Goebbels. (The Soviets did not so much propagandize their own people; they simply imposed their laws and shot anybody who disagreed; the imperial-era Japanese did not need to be propagandized because in accepting the divinity of the emperor they had pretty much divinized the government and its authority.)

    And my point - again, do people not read comments or do they ignore them? - is precisely that these emergency-law regimes do not provide 'justice' in the first place. And even if they manage to get a small percentage of the cases right, the costs and consequences to the integrity and legitimacy of the Law are great and grave.

    These are vital and profound matters we are dealing with here. One-liner thinking isn't sufficient to the matter.

    Although I acknowledge freely the psychology of the one-liner approach to matters on general websites, I don't see how any such horseplay - to put the most charitable light on it - is going to advance comprehension and understanding at all.

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  16. Think of a building: it has both non-load-bearing ‘decorative’ walls and it has vital, load-bearing ‘carrying walls’. You can take down or puncture the former more or less at will, depending on your preferences. But you cannot do that with the latter because you derange the integrity of the structure’s ability to remain standing.

    Now imagine that for whatever reason some ‘interest’ insists on punching through a wall – and so controls the discussion that nobody is allowed to ask whether this wall is a decorative or carrying wall. The wall is – alas – punched through or perhaps so largely swiss-cheesed with punctures that it no longer functions as a wall.

    Then the building starts to give indications of structural insufficiency and yet nobody is allowed to wonder if perhaps a vital carrying-wall had been breached.

    This, I would say, is pretty much what has happened in the emergency-laws of the past two decades in this country.

    And the only solution certain ‘interests’ can come up with is to keep on doing what they have been doing all along (which led to the derangement of the wall in the first place).

    Additionally, it is quite possible that even most of the adherents of that ‘interest’ also didn’t allow themselves to consider – or perhaps were so naïve so as not to imagine it possible – that there might be negative and indeed lethal and grave consequences to the agenda of their cherished interest and their good Cause.

    This, I think, goes a long way to explaining the genuine befuddlement and anger expressed by many who are now being confronted with the possibility that there were serious costs and consequences to what they had for many years imagined was simply the wonderful Cause in the service of which they have found purpose, meaning, status, role, and some form of communion with other like themselves.

    Which – from a purely logical point of view – does not preclude the possibility that some such adherents will respond to this situation not with efforts to put out the fire (that they helped to start) but simply with efforts to shut off the noisy and irritating fire alarm.

    Nor does it preclude other ‘interests’ which benefit from the whole mess also seeking to shut off the alarm.

    You see where this type of thing can go.

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  17. I just finished reading Thursday's post by R. C. above. (I have not read the comments which follow.) This message is directed to R.C. about his article.

    I do hope the focus on Lynn results in a guilty verdict but I hope he will not become the scapegoat for the many abuses by the Phil. Diocese. Lynn reported to two bishops as identified in the Grand Jury Report. My hope is that this trial eventually leads to further indictments from high ranking clergy who were active during that time, one of whom is now the Bishop of the Raleigh Diocese. I hope this is only the beginning....

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    1. Agreed. Cardinal Bevilacqua was the mafia "don" of the philly child rape mafia. They should dig him up and throw his body in a cesspool.

      Cardinal Rigali hid known pedophiles for years, and lied to a full congregation, saying there were "no accused priests in ministry", just two weeks before the grand jury report showed that there were at LEAST 21 that they absolutely knew about. THAT is child endangerment.

      Bishops Cistone and Cullen were there when the document listing 35 known pedophile priests was shredded in 1994.

      Most of this only came out because they found some of the Catholic church "secret archives".

      Prosecutors are gutless, and are afraid of losing the Catholic pro-pedophile vote. They know Catholics don't care, and probably assume that if Catholics don't mind their priests raping their children, why should the law?

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  18. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  19. In regard to the immediately preceding comment that "prosecutors are gutless", I would say that they have not demonstrated that at all.

    It took a great deal of chutzpah to bring this case in the first place. The offenses-charged took place almomst 20 years ago, and between today and then a tremendous amount of highly relevant reform and repair has taken place, which by all extant indications has had the desired effect of breaking such patterns as may have existed and of preventing any pervasive repetition (and this presumes that those 'patterns' have been accurately described and explained, which is itself a generous presumption).

    And Philadelphia has enough current crime on its plate, and its finances are in as poor a shape as any major American city's (with all due respect to the long-suffering citizens of that city).

    So it was not 'courage' that the prosecutors lacked. Unless - as I have been thinking - it be the courage to have just said No to the hydraulic and extraneous 'interests' that pressured to have this case brought at this point in time in the first place.

    Prosecutors in other jurisdictions have indeed said No (including those across the state at Pittsburgh). Even up in Massachusetts, site of Cardinal Law and the Shanley trials, prosecutors have not brought such a prosecution as Philadelphia has brought.

    Is that because Philadelphia is possessed of the only non-gutless prosecutors in the country? That is certainly one possible explanation.

    Another is that most other prosecutors sense not only the legal complications but also the moral question as to expending significant resources and monies on a fire - if I may use he metaphor - that has been pretty much put out, while other fires are burning. A fire chief who puts 9-alarms worth of apparatus at the scene of a now-extinguished fire while other major blazes roar away in other parts of the city would soon be cashiered

    And related to that, as I have been saying, is the Question: what confluence of pressures, forces, cricumstances and interests might have driven the Philadelphia prosecutors to make such a calculation?

    None of this is to deny crimes may have been committed (although it is most surely also not an 'admission' that crimes went on as described, nor that the Charged activity will support the Charges brought). But normal trial procedures could have been deployed, rather than this rather hyped thing surrounding the case at bar.

    The Philadelphia trial at bar is - in my opinion - destined for at least a permanent footnote in the prosecutorial manuals and text-books.

    But as to the reason Why it will qualify for that ... there is the real Question in this trial. And it is relevant even to the trial as it proceeds. And, I think, it is relevant to larger legal issues that I have been concerned about in my writing here and on my own site.

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  20. I stand corrected. Here is what is on Amazon about David Pierre http://www.amazon.com/David-F.-Pierre-Jr/e/B004G3WE10/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0 and it has his picture.

    So okay, he is not hiding behind a pseudonym... at least not since he started The Media Report...

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    1. Of course he's not hiding. DPierre and "temediareport" are here to sell books.

      Delete

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