MAINE
Portland Press Herald
BY EDWARD D. MURPHY
STAFF WRITER
The founder of a Haitian orphanage is appealing a court ruling that affirmed a decision to toss out his defamation suit against a Freeport man.
Michael Geilenfeld, the orphanage founder, had sued Paul Kendrick over an email campaign that began in 2011 in which Kendrick accused Geilenfeld of sexually abusing boys in his care. Later, Kendrick expanded his campaign to include Hearts with Haiti, a North Carolina charity that raised funds for the orphanage.
Geilenfeld won his suit in 2015 and a federal jury awarded $14.5 million in damages, roughly split between the charity and Geilenfeld. But last summer, a federal judge in Maine threw out the case and the award, determining that Geilenfeld hadn’t lived in the U.S. for years and therefore lacked standing to bring the suit in an American court.
Geilenfeld, a native of Iowa, has been living in Haiti and, more recently, the Dominican Republic, for decades.
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