MAINE
Portland Press Herald
BY SCOTT DOLAN STAFF WRITER
sdolan@pressherald.com | @scottddolan | 207-791-6304
Michael Geilenfeld, the American founder of an orphanage for boys in Haiti, testified Monday that he had never heard of Freeport resident Paul Kendrick before Kendrick’s first email arrived on Jan. 31, 2011, accusing him of sexually abusing children in his care.
“I never sexually abused children anywhere,” Geilenfeld said. “I did not know what he was relying on. … This is the first time I had heard from him.”
Geilenfeld said that after that first email, he would awake nearly every day at St. Joseph’s Home for Boys in Port-au-Prince to find new “blitzes” of emails from Kendrick to more than 500 recipients claiming that Geilenfeld was a pedophile.
Geilenfeld filed a federal lawsuit against Kendrick in 2013, accusing him of defamation.
Geilenfeld’s testimony came as the defamation trial entered its second week in U.S. District Court in Portland. He testified all day Monday and is expected to return to the witness stand Tuesday.
The trial was supposed to begin in October but was delayed after Geilenfeld was imprisoned in Haiti while police investigated Kendrick’s claims. Criminal charges against Geilenfeld were dropped in April, but only after he spent 237 days locked up. Haitian officials have since told the Associated Press that attorneys for alleged abuse victims have petitioned to have the case re-examined.
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