Jesus Wept: The Death of Father Kenneth Walker, FSSP

At a Phoenix Catholic church on June 11, 2014 Fr Kenneth Walker was murdered and Fr Joseph Terra brutally beaten by a man paroled from prison six weeks earlier.

June 11, 2023 by Fr Gordon MacRae

Note from Father Gordon: Father Kenneth Walker, FSSP was tragically murdered at his parish on June 11, 2014. He was killed by a man who had recently been released from prison. Father Kenneth was 28 years old and had recently marked his second anniversary of ordination. As a priest and a prisoner, this tragedy struck me doubly. I wanted to remember him on this date with the post I wrote about him at that time. I believe this young martyr now stands in the presence of God.

With Blessings,

Father Gordon MacRae

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“Jesus wept.” Those two words in the Gospel of Saint John (11:35) comprise the shortest sentence in all of Sacred Scripture. Upon the sudden death of their brother Lazarus, his sisters, Martha and Mary, were consoled by many in their community. When they heard Jesus was coming, Martha went out to meet him while her sister Mary remained inside.

Martha engaged Jesus in a dialogue of faith in light of her brother’s death, but Mary challenged him with another kind of statement of faith: “Lord, if you had been here my brother would not have died” (John 11:32).  Jesus asked to be taken to Lazarus. He saw Mary weeping, along with many others who had come to console her. Then, “Jesus wept.”

I must write of the tragic death of one of my brothers, Father Kenneth Walker, a  young man I have never even met.  I must write of this because I have friends who knew him, and who know Father Joseph Terra who was seriously injured in the attack that took Father Walker’s life. Like Martha in the Gospel account, I, too, believe Jesus is the resurrection and the life. But like Mary, I, too, want to say in my grief, “Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died.”  But  I believe in my heart that Jesus was there, and upon this senseless scene of human brokenness and tragic loss, Jesus wept.

For some who were not there, however, this story has all the makings of dark journalism. Father Joseph Terra, age 56, who went to investigate noises in the church courtyard, was ambushed and brutally beaten with a tire iron. Father Kenneth Walker, 28 years old and ordained just two years ago, walked in on the scene and was murdered by the intruder.

The man arrested for the murder and assaults is 54-year-old Gary Michael Moran, paroled from prison just weeks earlier having been convicted in 2005 of home invasion, burglary, and assault with a deadly weapon. In that case, he had stabbed a man in the abdomen before being subdued. Four years before that, he was sentenced in another case involving weapons. Moran did not know any of his victims then or now. In 2005, he said that he was crazed on methamphetamine, and cited a long history of drug abuse and its usual desperation for money to feed itself.

And in what has suggestively become the darkest fodder for politicizing the news of this tragedy, the gun that was used to kill Father Kenneth Walker did not belong to the crazed killer. It belonged to Father Joseph Terra. As the dust settled upon this case, I had no doubt that one or both ends of a political and moral spectrum would take this up, take it out of its context, and abuse this aspect of the story ad nauseam into a cacophony of political correctness.

That would be neither fair nor just, and if this aspect of the story gathers steam into a post mortem controversy, I believe you should give it the attention it deserves — which is none whatsoever. Father Joseph Terra bears no blame whatsoever for this tragedy, and is in fact one of its victims.

The Duty of Defense

Already, the mere fact that Father Joseph Terra owned a gun is littering the online world with suggestive overtones of disdain. Columnist EJ Montini, writing June 16 for AZCentral.com, had a posting entitled: “Should Catholic priests carry guns?” Of the murder of Father Walker, Mr. Montini wrote:

“The two priests operated in a tough part of town. And priests have as much right to protect themselves as anyone else. But does it seem incongruous for a priest to have a gun? … the former altar boy in me can’t imagine any of the priests I met as a kid carrying a weapon.”

I am not advocating that priests carry handguns, and in fact there is no evidence at all that Father Joseph Terra ever did. According to the news accounts, after being brutally beaten with a tire iron, which fractured his skull among other serious injuries, he had to flee the scene to retrieve a weapon kept in a rectory nightstand.  He then returned to try to stop the intruder from intruding any further.  The crazed meth addict allegedly wrestled the weapon away from Father Terra, and then shot and killed Father Walker who had just entered the scene.

Can “the former altar boy” in EJ Montini imagine the priests he knew as a kid being beaten to death in their churches by crazed meth addicts? Until he can, he has no right to cast a shadow on the fact that a citizen who defended himself was also a Catholic priest. These men of God were not attacked for some high ideal such as their profession of faith. They were attacked — one murdered and one nearly so — for the mere contents of their wallets, and whatever plunder could be carried off.

EJ Montini equated this scene with a story of a World War II priest chaplain in a war zone who was “armed” only with his rosary. The comparison was an insult to both our intelligence and our faith. Has Catholic culture in America become so comfortable with the notion of the last two decades that its priests should be little more than expendable targets with no ability or right of self-defense?

One friend with whom I spoke of this case by telephone this week asked if my position on Father Terra’s gun seems incongruous with the case against capital punishment that I laid out in “Stay of Execution: Catholic Conscience and the Death Penalty.” It is not, and in fact the very same moral principles apply to Father Terra’s right and duty of self-defense.  The Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC 2263) quotes Saint Thomas Aquinas in the morally legitimate defense defined in CCC 2264 and 2265:

“The act of self-defense can have a double effect: the preservation of one’s own life, and the killing of the aggressor. . . . The one is intended; the other is not..”

— St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa II-II, 64,7

“Therefore it is legitimate to insist on respect for one’s own right to life. Someone who defends his life is not guilty of murder even if he is forced to deal his aggressor a lethal blow.”

— CCC 2264

“Legitimate defense can be not only a right, but a grave duty for one who is responsible for the lives of others. The defense of the common good requires that an unjust aggressor be rendered unable to cause harm.”

— CCC 2265

The Death of Father Michael Mack

This story has brought back to me the full brunt of another tragic and eerily similar death of a priest with whom I once lived and who was — and remains — my friend. It’s an account that has come back to haunt me many times in the 12 years since it occurred, and with the Father Walker and Father Terra tragedy it has come back to haunt me again. I wrote some of this in a post called “The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts,” but I had left out an important factor that I have often reflected upon since. What if I had been there?

On December 7, 2002, the Vigil of the Immaculate Conception, Father Michael Mack started a letter to me in prison from his rectory room in a parish in the Gallup, New Mexico Diocese where he had been assisting for several months. In the letter, Father Mike wrote of his decision to return to his community, the Servants of the Paraclete, and indeed was leaving that moment to commence the four-hour drive. He promised to continue the letter upon his return to the home he and I once lived in while I was a guest of that community, and a member of their staff in a ministry to wounded priests.

Late that night, as I was later able to piece together, Father Michael’s letter continued. Upon his arrival at the Servants of the Paraclete residence at midnight, he wrote of his happiness at finally being home, and of his hope that he might visit me in prison, might correspond more, and might help restore my freedom.

As he finished his midnight letter, Father Michael, who would have turned 60 two weeks later, did not know that he was not alone in that house. A 33-year-old drifter named Steven Degraff had chosen that night to break in through a back door, noting that the house had been empty for weeks as he staked it out. Armed with a knife and a hammer, hiding in a closet just fifteen feet from the desk where Father Mike finished his last letter to me, Steven Degraff awaited his moment to spring upon my friend.

Father Mike took his letter outside to a mailbox to be picked up the next day, and then walked back into that house to his death.  His body was found the next day. Father Mike had been beaten to death with a hammer. The intruder then took Father Mike’s wallet and fled in Father Mike’s car.

Being in prison where no one can contact me except by mail, Father Mike’s last letter to me reached me just minutes before news of his murder. After mail call on the evening of December 12, 2002, I sat at a table outside my cell to read my friend’s letter. I can never forget this moment. As I read, someone laid the previous day’s newspaper on the table. With Father Mike’s letter still in my left hand, I turned the page to “National News Briefs” and read of his murder.

Days later, Steven Degraff was arrested in neighboring Santa Fe County for stealing yet another car, and for drug paraphernalia. He had served prison sentences in four states before killing Father Mike, a crime for which he confessed to police.

December 2002 was also the height of the nationwide explosion of claims of sexual abuse by priests, and the lurid news was not lost on Steven Degraff.  Once Degraff talked with a lawyer, and learned that his murdered victim was a priest, he changed his story.  This 33-year-old sociopath admitted that he broke into the home, but added that he killed Father Mike because the priest tried to molest him. Fortunately, even at the peak of nationwide witch hunt about priests, Steven Degraff’s story was dismissed as a blatant lie, but not before it became lurid fodder for some in the news media.

Since then, I have often thought of what I might have done had I still lived in that house and was there with Father Mike that night. These are not pleasant thoughts for a priest — for anyone. In more reflective moments, I wish I could have left in that house the means for my friend to defend his own life. I have no doubt in my mind that if I had been there, Father Michael Mack would not have died.

Blaming Father Terra ... Raising up Psychopaths

Finally, I must write of this story because I have lived for two decades with one foot in both worlds: the world of Father Kenneth Walker whose life was taken, and Father Joseph Terra beaten and scapegoated; and the world of Gary Michael Moran, the career criminal and methamphetamine addict released from prison just six weeks before these horrific Phoenix crimes. I do not, as you know, live in that latter world by choice, or even by any act of my own.

But in the two decades in which I have been forced to live in that world, I have encountered many men like Gary Michael Moran and Steven Degraff in prison. Don’t think it is lost on me for a single moment that Moran had been paroled from prison three times — and the sociopath Steven Degraff four times — during the two decades that I have been kept in prison for crimes that never took place. This story is not about me — I know that — but it is a sobering thought for anyone who still believes America’s criminal justice system is not broken and still works in real life like it does on TV’s “Law and Order.”

Far more than prison itself, however, it is the “Pollyanna” naiveté of so many Americans — both Catholics and not — that I find most demoralizing.  The notion that men would not possibly accuse Catholic priests just for money is laughed at in prison by criminals like Gary Michael Moran and Steven Degraff. I have met some in prison who have snuffed out lives for a tiny fraction of the $200-grand doled out by my diocese to anyone ready to point at any priest.

I can no longer even count the number of times the minds of criminals have wandered in my direction, exploring ways to exploit our Catholic blindness about them while priests are thrown out of ministry — and sometimes into prison, and kept there. Should my post, “Our Catholic Tabloid Frenzy About Fallen Priests” now include even those who seek to defend themselves?

Might this tragedy in Phoenix cause some soul stirring about the bigger picture it represents? We can hope, and in fact it already has. A remarkable blog post by Rebecca Hamilton, “Guns. Blaming Father Terra for Trying to Defend Himself. And Raising Up Psychopaths.” (June 20, 2014) stands out among all the suggestive undertones about who wielded the murder weapon and how. I recommend reading all of it, but here is a portion that gave me pause:

“Guns are not the problem. We are. … The problem is our unwinding society and the feral young people we are raising up inside it. ... The blame-Father-Terra crowd is part of the problem... Good, normal people are always at a disadvantage in these situations ...”

I have prayed for Steven Degraff over these twelve long years, and I will pray for Gary Michael Moran.  So will the families, friends, and parishioners of Father Joseph Terra and our tragically lost son and brother, Father Kenneth Walker. These people are not Catholic lite.  They know their duty to the Gospel, and they will do it.

And as for Father Joseph Terra, I hold you in the highest regard, and with the deepest respect.  I humbly ask for your prayers, and from prison I offer you my fraternal Blessing. May Divine Mercy reign in our hearts.

Funeral Mass for Father Kenneth Walker, FSSP

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Thank you for reading and sharing this Special Post. We will occasionally add other Special Posts to honor significant dates. You may also like these related posts:

The God of the Living and the Life of the Dead

The Holy Longing: An All Souls Day Spark for Broken Hearts

The Eucharistic Adoration Chapel established by Saint Maximilian Kolbe was inaugurated at the outbreak of World War II. It was restored as a Chapel of Adoration in September, 2018, the commemoration of the date that the war began. It is now part of the World Center of Prayer for Peace. The live internet feed of the Adoration Chapel at Niepokalanow — sponsored by EWTN — was established just a few weeks before we discovered it and began to include in at Beyond These Stone Walls. Click “Watch on YouTube” in the lower left corner to see how many people around the world are present there with you. The number appears below the symbol for EWTN.

Click or tap here to proceed to the Adoration Chapel.

The following is a translation from the Polish in the image above: “Eighth Star in the Crown of Mary Queen of Peace” “Chapel of Perpetual Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament at Niepokalanow. World Center of Prayer for Peace.” “On September 1, 2018, the World Center of Prayer for Peace in Niepokalanow was opened. It would be difficult to find a more expressive reference to the need for constant prayer for peace than the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.”

For the Catholic theology behind this image, visit my post, “The Ark of the Covenant and the Mother of God.”

Veterans Day: War and Remembrance for Freedom Was Not Free

Omaha Beach during the Invasion of Normandy

Veterans Day and Remembrance Sunday first honored the great sacrifices of the First and Second World Wars, and freedom from a global tyranny too easily forgotten.

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”

— Thomas Paine, 1776

What we today honor as Veterans Day (November 11) in the United States, and Remembrance Sunday (the Sunday nearest November 11) in the United Kingdom, began in Europe as Armistice Day. This history is worthy of a reminder, for we forget the fine points of history to our own peril. The armistice that ended hostilities in World War I, culminating in the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, was signed on November 11, 1918. In 1954, Armistice Day was expanded to become Veterans Day in the United States and Remembrance Sunday in England to honor all who served in the two World Wars. Today this memorial is expanded to honor the veterans of all wars.

The quote from Thomas Paine above was a criticism of American colonists who became comfortable in their isolation and failed to heed the growing oppressions that would eventually end up at their doors in the War for Independence. At a time when the American footprint is fading from the paths to tyranny throughout the world, it’s perilous to forget the high price that was paid to win and preserve our freedoms. The freedom from tyranny that we sometimes take for granted in America was won at the price of our brothers’ blood which today cries out to us from the Earth. We are free thanks to them. War is futile without remembrance.

World War I engulfed all of Western Europe, pitting the Central Powers of Germany and the Austria-Hungarian Empire against the Allies: Great Britain and its Dominions, France, Russia, and then later Italy and the United States. All was not quiet on the Western Front of that war which extended all the way from the Vosges Mountains in Eastern France to Ostend, Belgium.

America entered World War I in 1917 in response to Germany’s use of submarines to destroy commercial vessels crossing the Atlantic. This tipped the balance of the war which ended a year later. The First World War cost the lives of ten million people by the time an armistice was signed on November 11, 1918. World War II, which began with Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 and ended with the surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, took the lives of fifty-five million people. Freedom was never free.

Dates with Destiny

We citizens of a civilized society remember significant dates for a reason. But the Internet generation is causing us to lose some of our collective cultural memory. Today, we rely too much on a Google search to provide meaning to our existence. There’s something to be said for having at least a basic framework of meaning for dates we observe and why they are of some cultural importance to us. Anniversaries that lend themselves to our social or cultural identity are in danger of being lost for subsequent generations.

Perhaps the most modern example of a date with cultural meaning in Western Civilization is September 11, 2001 a date that today lives in infamy on a global scale. At Beyond These Stone Walls, I marked its twentieth anniversary with “The Despair of Towers Falling, the Courage of Men Rising.” That post was a vivid description of how that day unfolded from a very unusual perspective, that of a prison cell, and of its far reaching impact even here.

But most people in the Western world are not conscious of the whole story behind the significance of that date. Knowing why America became a target of al Qaeda on that date gives the event a whole new meaning, and human beings engage in an innate search for meaning in the events of our lives. That is the very purpose of religion. It seeks and finds meaning in our individual and collective existence. In human history, no culture has survived for long without religion, or a substitute for religion.

And it’s the substitute for religion — for real religious meaning — that we should most fear. Those who set the infamous day of September 11 in motion were themselves marking the anniversary of events they retained in collective consciousness for over 300 years, events that much of the rest of the world had forgotten. What happened in New York and Washington on September 11, 2001 began in Europe more than three centuries earlier during the Siege of Vienna on the night of September 11, 1683.

The story was described by the late Christopher Hitchens in “Why the suicide killers chose September 11” (The Guardian, October 3, 2001). Then it was expanded upon by Father Michael Gaitley in a great book entitled, The Second Greatest Story Ever Told.” In the book, Father Gaitley wrote of the historic significance of September 11:

“For some 300 years, an epic struggle raged between the Ottoman (Muslim) Empire and the Holy Roman (Catholic) Empire. The Battle of Vienna marked the turning point in this struggle as it stopped the Muslim advance into Europe…. On the night of September 11, [1683], the Muslims launched a preemptive attack on Austrian forces…”

— The Second Greatest Story Ever Told, p.45

By the next night, September 12, 1683, after a night of fierce battle, the Islamic forces were repelled and routed by the Polish cavalry led into battle by King Jan Sobieski himself. But victory also brought the knowledge that 30,000 hostages, mostly women and children, were executed before the Islamic retreat on orders from the Moslem commander. The Polish king wrote in a letter of his horror at the savagery of the fleeing invaders. Then, writing his post-victory letter to his nation, King Sobieski paraphrased in Latin Caesar’s famous words of victory: “Veni, Vidi, Deus Vincit” — “I Came, I Saw, God Conquered.”

King Sobieski had entrusted that battle to the intercession of Mary, Mother of God, and it was in honor of this victory that the Pope established the date of September 12 as the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. What had thus been the date that began an event of glory and great sacrifice for Christendom was a date of infamy for fundamentalist Islam, a date remembered for over 300 years. It was for this reason that September 11 was chosen for an attack on the West by al Qaeda terrorists in 2001.

From the cover of A Pope and a President by Paul Kengor

Swords into Plowshares

Lord Jonathan Sacks, former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the British Commonwealth, described the West’s lack of awareness of that significance as being “among the worst failures of political intelligence in modern times.” In “Swords Into Plowshares,” an essay in The Wall Street Journal (October 3-4, 2015), Lord Sacks wrote that our lack of awareness was not accidental, but “happened because of a blind spot in the secular mind: the inability to see the elemental, world-shaking power of religion when hijacked by politics.”

That story of the significance of September 11 told above is not war in the name of religion as some would today have you believe. It is what takes the place of religion when it is suppressed in the human heart and soul, and overshadowed in the public square until man’s search for meaning is hijacked by politics.

One of the great victories of the First and Second World Wars — great victories won at great price — was freedom of religion. In our era of forgetfulness, this has been twisted into a guarantee of freedom FROM religion, and the result has been an agenda to park religious voices somewhere outside the American public square. By America, I mean all of the Americas. What happens in the U.S. does not stay in the U.S. Lord Jonathan Sacks has composed a wise and well informed caution for America:

“The liberal democratic state gives us freedom to live as we choose, but refuses, on principle, to guide us as to how we choose…. Religion has returned because it is hard to live without meaning in our lives… [but] the religion that has returned is not the gentle, quietist and ecumenical form that we in the West have increasingly come to expect. Instead it is religion at its most adversarial and aggressive. It is the greatest threat to freedom in the post-modern world.”

— Jonathan Sacks, “Swords Into Plowshares,” WSJ.com, October 3-4, 2015

It is only when religion is denied a voice in the public square that such a hijacking happens. Humanity will seek meaning then only in what is left. There is a broad assault on religion in Western Culture today with the goal of just that — of removing voices of religion from the public square by the process of selective memory, of blaming war on faith. The reality is very different. An analysis of 1,800 conflicts for the “Encyclopedia of Wars,” by Charles Phillips and Alan Axelrod determined that fewer than ten percent had any real religious motivations.

It’s very interesting that today Lord Jonathan Sacks cites the Western intellectuals’ belief that the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the fall of European Communism in 1989 was “the final act of an extended drama in which first religion, then political ideology, died after a prolonged period in intensive care…”

“The age of the true believer, religious or secular, was over. In its place had come the market economy and the liberal democratic state in which individuals, and the right to live as they chose took priority over all creeds and codes.”

The fall of the Berlin Wall and European Communism was, therefore, “the last chapter of a story that began in the 17th Century, the last great age of wars of religion.” What makes this theory so interesting is that it blatantly overlooks the fact that one of the greatest religious figures of the 20th Century — Saint John Paul II — is also the person most responsible for setting in motion the collapse of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall. That is what Father Michael Gaitley unveils as an essential element in The Second Greatest Story Ever Told, but first it has to look back upon Armistice Day.

Religious faith was never a cause for war, nor was it ever an excuse. But for those who survived the Great Wars of the Twentieth Century — and for 65 million lives lost in the face of Godless tyranny, faith was all that gave it meaning, and without meaning, what’s left?

Don’t let your religious freedoms and your voices of faith be so easily parked along the wayside of America and the rest of the free world, for thus it will not remain free for long. People died to give us that voice, and today is a good day to remember that, and to honor their sacrifice. To distance ourselves from war and remembrance — from the price of freedom — is to give witness to Thomas Paine’s dismal foreboding on the eve of war:

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: Thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please join us in prayerful remembrance for those who served and especially those who gave their lives to secure and preserve our freedom. None of those who speak today about political threats to democracy have any real idea of what freedom cost.

You may also be interested in these related posts:

From Hong Kong to America Freedom Is under Siege

Beyond Ukraine: The Battleground Against Tyranny Is Us

The Despair of Towers Falling, The Courage of Men Rising

Left in Afghanistan: Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS-K, Credibility

Walking Tall: The Justice Behind the Eighth Commandment

Amid reports on scores of men wrongly imprisoned, a California FBI investigator’s study concludes that at least half the claims against Catholic priests are false.

“IF YOU LET ‘EM GET AWAY WITH THIS, YOU GIVE ‘EM THE ETERNAL RIGHT TO DO THE SAME DAMN THING TO ANY ONE OF YOU!”

That memorable line was delivered with blunt force by actor Joe Don Baker portraying the famous anti-corruption sheriff, Buford Pusser, in the 1973 film, “Walking Tall.” Buford stood shirtless before a packed courthouse, the lacerations of his brutal scourging by local thugs still glistening with blood, while a corrupted judge pounded his gavel charging Buford with contempt. The entire courtroom, and the viewing audience, also gasped with contempt, but their contempt was not for Buford Pusser.

A part of me was hoping that Cornelius Dupree, Jr. would shout something similar to Buford Pusser’s declaration early this month as he stood before cameras in front of a Dallas courthouse with Innocence Project founder, Attorney Barry Scheck. Cornelius Dupree has now been free for a decade, to the extent a man can be free after 31 years in prison for a sex crime he had nothing to do with. During those 31 years he passed up two opportunities for parole because they required that he admit to being a sex offender. Cornelius Dupree served more time for a crime he didn’t commit than any of the 41 wrongfully convicted and exonerated prisoners in Texas alone since 2001.

20-year-old Cornelius Dupree was arrested for the crime in 1979, and sentenced to 75 years in prison. In 2004, he was set to be released on parole until he refused it again because it required that he submit to a sex offender treatment program which in turn required an admission of guilt. The 20-year-old turned 51 in prison before being exonerated and released.

I have also been forced to pass up parole, and for the same reasons.  I would have to enter a required program and openly admit guilt not only to crimes charged, but to everything I have merely been accused of.  I would not even be eligible for that program until about the age of 80, forced to recall fictitious events alledged to have occurred when I was in my twenties.  This is a story I wrote about in “Why this Falsely Accused Priest Is Still in Prison.”

On a national scale, only two other exonerated men spent more time in prison than Cornelius Dupree. Jamie Bain was one of them. He walked out of prison after serving thirty-five years for a rape crime that DNA evidence proved he did not commit and had nothing to do with. These two men are among hundreds exonerated nationwide after being wrongfully imprisoned for sexual offenses. 

Cornelius Dupree exonerated after 31 years in prison.

Study Suspects Thousands of False Convictions

The National Center for Reason and Justice is a Boston-based organization formed to defend those wrongfully convicted of such crimes.  NCRJ exists not only to sponsor a defense for the wrongly convicted but also to educate the public about the great damage done by wrongful convictions, not only to the individual wrongly sent to prison, but to the justice system itself.  NCRJ sponsors my defense despite the fact that to date no judge would agree to hear the evidence or witnesses.  The NCRJ maintains a page entitled, “Father Gordon MacRae.”

If you don’t think this is really a problem, spend some time at the site of the National Center for Reason and Justice. I think this site will convince you. Why should you be concerned about this? Well, Buford Pusser provided THAT answer. I woke up one night in prison muttering his very same words. I think the court I was standing before was the court of public opinion, and it wasn’t my body that was lacerated, but my name and my priesthood and the entire Church.

In 2004, a report was published under the title, “Study Suspects Thousands of False Convictions.” It examined 328 cases of exoneration including 120 sexual assault exonerations. In 90 percent of those cases, defendants were convicted based on misidentification of witnesses. Many of the wrongful convictions — about 25% of them — involved coerced confessions or “plea deals” because the accused had little or no hope of acquittal, or lacked the resources to fight the claim. 

This happens in too many cases against Catholic priests.  When I was accused, my Diocese issued an immediate press release declaring my guilt so that financial settlements could begin negotiations.  In 2002, when the bishops adopted the Dallas Charter, this became standard operating procedure.  Any priest accused in America is now barred from presenting himself as a priest and immediately banished from Church property, often without income, in claims that are usually decades old.  This is an important reality.  In a 2003 column in The Wall Street Journal, Deputy Editor Dan Henninger commented on accusations against pop star Michael Jackson:

“… Mr. Jackson, like Kobe Bryant, was able to mount a defense equal to the accusatory powers of the state. Not everyone can do that. When Michael walked, I wondered if any of the many convicted Catholic priests similarly charged were in fact innocent but found guilty because they couldn’t push back against the state’s relentless steam roller.”

A little time spent at The National Center for Reason and Justice will demonstrate that “relentless steam roller” really does characterize exactly what happens when state prosecutors try a case of sexual abuse or sexual assault without actual evidence. And when the defendant is either a pop star or a Catholic priest, all eyes are on the prize for prosecutors. Just consider my response to Dan Henninger in the Wall Street Journal :

Michael Jackson is acquitted.

“As a priest without the means to push back in equal measure to Michael Jackson, I must point out some factors you overlooked. Imagine how steeply uphill Michael’s battle would have been if twenty years passed between the alleged crime and the state’s prosecutorial steam roller rumbling into action for a trial.

“Imagine the state having to prove nothing while Michael Jackson’s defense tried in vain to prove that something alleged to have happened two decades earlier never happened at all. Then imagine Michael struggling to proclaim his innocence while the institution he served denounced him and his attempts to defend himself, seeking only the path of least resistance to settle with his accusers and rid themselves of liability at the expense of due process.

“Imagine all of this, and you will have captured the scene faced by many similarly accused Catholic priests.”

A Measure of Truth

David F. Pierre, Jr. is author of a new book, The Greatest Fraud Never Told: False Accusations, Phony Grand Jury Reports, and the Assault on the Catholic Church. David Pierre is also host of The Media Report. Some years ago, David Pierre forwarded a link to an article of his on The Media Report entitled: “Special Report: Los Angeles Attorney Declares Rampant Fraud; Many Abuse Claims Against Catholic Priests are ‘Entirely False.’” The report was described as a “bombshell” in David Pierre’s article. It was also sent to me by several BTSW readers.

The report cited in David Pierre’s article was submitted to the Los Angeles County Superior Court by Attorney Donald H. Steier who compiled his investigation along with the aid of a retired F.B.I. agent working with him. His stunning conclusion was:

“About ONE-HALF [emphasis his] of the claims made in the clergy cases were either entirely false or so greatly exaggerated that the truth would not have supported a prosecutable claim for childhood sexual abuse.”

What is most stunning today is how little the Church and the news media have considered the weight of that report.  David Pierre also cites in his newest book (page 27) Wall Street Journal writer Dorothy Rabinowitz, who commented in 2005 on the nature of the case against me:

“People have to come to understand that there is a large scam going on with personal injury attorneys, and what began as a serious effort has now expanded into a huge money-making proposition.”

— Dorothy Rabinowitz, WSJ

As I prepared for trial in 1994, trial-by-media was already underway in its condemnation of the accused. Any person who has faced false accusations in a public trial will tell you of the role played by the media in stacking the deck against him. As I proceed in my reading of the Prison Journal of George Cardinal Pell, now exonerated and sadly deceased, abuse by media of his due process rights is a central factor.  It is all horribly, even traumatically familiar to me.  But Cardinal Pell also provides a model for sacrificial suffering and the faith and trust necessary to endure.  For that, I am thankful to him.

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You may also like the related links that appear in this post:

Why this Falsely Accused Priest Is Still in Prison

The Greatest Fraud Never Told by David F. Pierre, Jr.

And for a doubly sad cautionary tale of real victimization but misidentification and wrongful conviction:

For The Lovely Bones Author Alice Sebold, Justice Hurts

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