In Fr Gordon Macrae Case, Whack-a-mole Justice Holds Court

By Ryan A. MacDonald
A Ram in the Thicket
July 24, 2013

http://araminthethicket.blogspot.com/2013/07/in-fr-gordon-macrae-case-whack-mole.html

I grew up in the sprawling metropolis of New York City. My parents, being somewhat refined folks, took me to all of the city's great cultural institutions, all within walking distance or a subway ride of home. During summer trips to a friend's Lake Winnipesaukee, New Hampshire home, however, all that hard won culture was cast off at a Weir's Beach arcade where I excelled at a game called "Whack-a-Mole." Armed with a heavy padded mallet, there was something cathartic about clobbering those moles popping up in rapid succession. In the summer of 1994, I was hands down the “Whack-a-Mole"champ of Weir's Beach.

I was completely insulated back then, of course, from something happening in another corner of New Hampshire that year. As I played "Whack-a-Mole," Catholic priest Gordon MacRae, today winding up nineteen years in prison, was fighting for his life and freedom in Cheshire County Superior Court sixty miles away in Keene, NH. Having studied in depth that debacle of a trial and all that preceded it, I know I've lost my "Whack-a-Mole" title to some folks in the "Live Free or Die" state.

As I prepare to publish this article, I have just learned that a pending habeas corpus appeal in the Father MacRae case was denied by Superior Court Judge Larry Smukler without a hearing on its new evidence or merits. This will bring about further appeals and additional media scrutiny of this case. The latest in a series of articles on the MacRae case by Wall Street Journal investigative writer, Dorothy Rabinowitz, drew international attention to this injustice. At WSJ.com, "The Trials of FatherMacRae" (May 11, 2013) was the most viewed and most emailed article of that week. At last count, it generated over 32,000 links and was cited in whole or in part in hundreds of other venues.

Among the more than 150 comments posted at the article's on-line version, a few were from New Hampshire resident, Ms. Carolyn Disco, an outspoken critic of the Diocese of Manchester and of Father MacRae (who, by the way she has never met, seen, or spoken with). In posted comments at WSJ and other sites over recent years, Ms. Disco has played a skillful game of "Whack-a-Mole," knocking down any and every exculpatory fact to vie for points in the one-sided propaganda game that fueled MacRae's trial, sent him to prison, and keeps him there today. A few years ago, Carolyn Disco was honored by SNAP, the Survivor's Network of those Abused by Priests, for her outspoken pursuit of New Hampshire's accused priests.

No one else among the Diocese of Manchester's 65+ accused Catholic clergy merits more of Carolyn Disco's vitriolic comments in number, volume, and tone than Gordon MacRae. He also happens to be the only New Hampshire priest who publicly maintains that he was falsely accused. A growing volume of compelling evidence backs up that claim.

I have tracked and documented Ms. Disco's comments from a number of venues over recent years. The most misleading is a repeated and insulting claim that MacRae himself somehow convinced journalists, legal investigators, and other experts all of whom, in the Disco mythology, supposedly rely only on the imprisoned priest as their sole source for information in this case. When anything new surfaces, MacRae is described by Ms. Disco and a few other SNAP-connected detractors as a skillful manipulator alleged to possess some magical ability to convince many people of his innocence.

Carolyn Disco would have us believe that from a cell in the New Hampshire State Prison, Gordon MacRae, Prisoner No. 67546, somehow mesmerized a Pulitzer-winning member of The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board into taking only his word for it, to consider nothing but his own point of view. Then, in this jaundiced view, MacRae's hypnotic powers from inside prison convinced me and a number of other writers. Supposedly my eight published articles on this case, each containing exhaustive research, overlooked everything but MacRae's own spin.

Then, in the Disco mythology, MacRae went on to similarly convince a career and highly decorated veteran FBI agent who independently investigated this case for three years before concluding in a recent court document that he "discovered no evidence that Gordon MacRae committed the crimes charged or any other crimes." The truth is that when hard questions were finally being asked, not one of this priest's accusers would talk.

Thomas Grover, whose claims sent the priest to a life sentence in prison, reportedly did not present as someone egregiously victimized. Today taking refuge in a Native American reservation in Arizona, he presented as someone caught in a monumental lie. He refused to answer any questions, saying only that he wants a lawyer.

Then MacRae convinced author, David F. Pierre, whose 2012 book, Catholic Priests Falsely Accused has a chapter analyzing MacRae's trial and other accusations and who asserted in his site that "TheMediaReport.com has thoroughly examined Fr. MacRae's case." Then MacRae convinced author and psychologist, James Valladares, Ph.D., whose 2012 book, Hope Springs Eternal in the Priestly Breast was an exhaustive exploration of the injustices visited upon this imprisoned priest by both Church and State.

Then, in Ms. Disco's mythology, this conniving priest conned the entire Board of Directors of the Boston based National Center for Reason and Justice whose team of wrongful conviction experts spent a year looking at the MacRae case before unanimously agreeing to sponsor it for further appeals. Then MacRae convinced the Catholic League for Religious & Civil Rights based in New York to overlook all input but his own before repeatedly coming to the imprisoned priest's defense. Then before any of this began, MacRae convinced a nationally known polygraph expert by passing two pre-trial polygraph examinations. Of interest, my repeated calls for his accusers to undergo similar polygraph tests have been met with silence.