MAINE
Bangor Daily News
By Darren Fishell, BDN Staff
Posted Jan. 12, 2016
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PORTLAND, Maine — A Freeport man ordered by a jury to pay $14.5 million for defaming a Catholic brother and a nonprofit based in Haiti is appealing his case to the U.S. First Circuit Court.
The attorney for Paul Kendrick, an advocate for children sexually abused by clergy, on Tuesday filed an argument with the court seeking to dismiss the case.
Catholic brother Michael Geilenfeld and the nonprofit Hearts with Haiti sued Kendrick for a campaign he launched against Geilenfeld and the North Carolina-based nonprofit for which he worked in 2011, alleging that Geilenfeld sexually abused children he had taken in at an orphanage in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and that the nonprofit had turned a blind eye.
After hearing testimony, including from seven men who alleged that they were sexually abused by Geilenfeld in the 1990s, a jury in Portland awarded damages of $7.5 million to Hearts with Haiti and $7 million to Geilenfeld.
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