RHODE ISLAND
News 12
Updated: February 16, 2013
By The Associated Press MICHELLE R. SMITH (Associated Press), NICOLE WINFIELD (Associated Press)
PROVIDENCE, R.I. – (AP) — The disgraced Roman Catholic religious order the Legion of Christ bent its own rules for a wealthy elderly woman while it also isolated her from some relatives, according to newly released court documents, and a lawyer says the moves show the order was intent on becoming the beneficiary of her $60 million fortune.
The Legion counters that widow Gabrielle Mee was independent, strong-willed and happy and was never coerced into anything. The fact she led a less-restrictive life than others in its community shows she freely gave them her money, the Legion argues. Mee died in 2008 at age 96. …
Mee’s niece, Mary Lou Dauray, sued the Legion after her aunt died. She said Mee was defrauded by an order whose leaders orchestrated an effort to hide its founder’s misdeeds from her aunt.
A Superior Court judge ruled in September that Dauray did not have standing to sue. But Judge Michael Silverstein took pains in his order to detail the process by which the Legion wooed Mee, bending the rules to let her become a “consecrated” member of its lay movement, giving her privileged access to Maciel and inviting her on special trips to Rome and Mexico.
Among the documents released Friday was a deposition from one of Mee’s friends, Joanne McKosker, who testified how the two had bonded in the 1980s through their deep Catholic faith. She said she would visit after Mee moved into a Legion center in Smithfield, R.I. Around 2001, she asked Mee for a $5,000 donation for an anti-abortion charity. After Mee gave it to her, McKosker was prevented from visiting or calling Mee again.
“Months that went on, my trying to see her,” she said. “I was getting, I was angry because I, I wanted to be still friends with her, you know, and I wanted, I felt she wanted, too.”
The Legion says Mee had her own private phone line in her apartment and it never screened her calls.
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