On the Day of Padre Pio, My Best Friend Was Stigmatized

Background photo by Sue Thompson (CC BY-ND 2.0)

Writing from Thailand, Pornchai Moontri hopes and prays for justice for Fr Gordon MacRae who begins a 30th year unjustly in prison on the Feast Day of St Padre Pio.

September 23, 2023 by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri

Note from our Editor: Pornchai Moontri wrote this post in 2020 as he was returning to Thailand after a 36 year absence. The post is mostly about a very important person in his life whom he had to very painfully leave behind. Father Gordon MacRae was wrongly sentenced to prison on the Feast Day of his Patron Saint, September 23, 1994. As Father G begins his 30th year under this injustice, Pornchai implores us all to pray for him that his faith and strength and hope will never fail.

+ + +

To My Dear Friends and Family Beyond These Stone Walls : It was not until my friend, Fr Gordon MacRae wrote “Pornchai Moontri and the Long Road to Freedom’’ in 2020 that the weight of this immense change in our lives really hit me. My emotions were on a roller coaster then. Father G and I worked long and hard over the previous 15 years that we had been friends, family and roommates. I could not have imagined on the day we first met that I would be facing this day with hope.

Hope is just one of the emotions competing for space in my heart back then. I was also scared beyond measure, and anxious, and excited, and I was very deeply sad. I guess I have to try to sort this out for myself and for you. I was scared because my whole life, and all that I have known since I was a homeless and lost teenager 32 years ago, was about to change completely.

I was anxious because I was to be cast among strangers for a time, and it was a long time due to Covid-19 pandemic and the constraints on international flights. Weeks after leaving Father G in Concord, New Hampshire Prison, ICE agents took me away to be a prisoner in another crowded, chaotic place where I lived among strangers, taking only the clothes I was wearing.

I was excited because this journey may well be the last of the nightmares of my life. At the other end of that ICE nightmare five months later, I was left in Bangkok, Thailand where I was entirely free for the first time in my living memory. I was adjusting to freedom and a new country and culture all at once. From inside the prison cell we shared for all those years, Father Gordon miraculously built a bridge to Thailand for me through this wonderful blog. Where there was once only darkness ahead, there were now people in Thailand waiting for me and I was not alone.

Father G wrote about my life before prison in an article that changed everything for me. I have not read it myself because I can’t. I will explain why, but I already know what is in it because I have lived it. I am just not ready to see it in print. The article was “Pornchai Moontri: Bangkok to Bangor, Survivor of the Night.”

All that had become familiar to me had to be left behind. Far worse, Father G had to be left behind and for that I am also sad beyond measure. I knew that when that day came, I would likely never see my friend, my mentor, my father, again in this life. There were times as that day approached when I would lay in the dark in my upper bunk in our prison cell at night, and my darkness and dismay about this felt overwhelming. The person who gave me hope would remain in prison while I would be set free, while banished to a foreign land.

But I was set free in another way, too, and it was Father Gordon MacRae who set me free. I can only barely remember being a happy 11-year-old boy living and working on a small farm in the North of Thailand. In December of 1985, I was taken from there and brought against my will to the United States. Though it was my mother who took me, I did not know her. She had abandoned my brother and me in Thailand when I was only two years old. She waited until I was age eleven to come and take me away because her life was under the control of a monster who sent her to bring me to him. It is that simple, and that terrible.

I have always wondered if readers know how unlikely this alliance between me and Father G is. To explain it, I have to go into what happened to me in life. That is very painful, even unspeakable, so I will spare you what is known only to Father G and God. Father G would later write about this in more general terms in an article that shattered my childhood shame for once being a victim. That post was “Getting Away with Murder on the Island of Guam.”

I was brought to America as a child. I was eleven when taken from my home and twelve years old when I arrived here. I spoke no English at all so I could not tell anyone what was happening to me. I became afraid to go to sleep at night. This went on for over two years before I escaped into the streets. I was fourteen in a foreign country fending for myself. While trying to protect my mother from what she was also suffering, I kept what had been happening to me a secret even though it had severely affected my mind and destroyed my spirit. This was no story about repressed memories like so many of the stories against Father G and other Catholic priests. My burden was that I could not forget a single moment of what happened no matter how much I tried.

So when I was sent to prison at age 18, I was broken and bitter. It is not a good place to grow up. I was forced to fight, a lot, and I convinced myself that I will never again be anyone’s victim. Eight years after I was sent to prison, I learned that my mother was murdered on the Island of Guam. She was brought there by the man who arranged for me to be taken from Thailand. It’s all in Father G’s article linked above and it is an American horror story.

I ended up in solitary confinement for years, a prison within a prison that just magnified the inner madness. In 2005, at the age of 32, I was chained up and transported to a prison in another state, New Hampshire. As you already know, I met Father G there. I heard why he was in prison. I wanted him to help me transfer to a Thai prison, something that he refused to do, but I also thought that he and I could never be friends. Then I heard that there were articles about him and his charges in The Wall Street Journal so I read them. The articles were the result of an honest investigation. I was shocked by them.

As a childhood survivor of horrible sexual abuse and violence, I felt disgusted by what I knew to be accusations made up for money. This guy, Thomas Grover was seen as credible by a police detective, a prosecutor, and a biased judge, but I did not see how that could be possible. Any real survivor of sexual abuse should see right through this. There was a claim that this con man, high school football player at age 15, was raped by Father G in a rectory office, then the guy returned five times saying that he repressed all memory of it from week to week. The stories of his brothers were even more incredible. Then I read that they all stood to get a $200,000 check from the Catholic Diocese of Manchester and no one questioned any of this???

I read that Father G was offered a plea deal from a corrupt detective and prosecutor. One year in prison. If he was guilty, of course he would take it. Even if he was innocent, but had no integrity, he might still take it. But he was innocent, and he did have integrity, so he refused the deal. Then he was sentenced to more than sixty times the time in prison he would have got if he was guilty. When I read all this, I was furious just as every real survivor of sexual abuse should be furious.

Now I have to jump ahead several years. I made a decision to trust Father G. This was a miracle all by itself because I never really trusted anyone. There is a writer in France named Marie Meaney who somehow wrote about this story. It is not a long version, but she caught every important detail and its meaning in just two pages. Her article is “Untying the Knots of Sin — In Prison.”

Ever Deeper Into the Tangled Threads

As the trust grew between me and Father G, I began to reveal all that happened to me. I did not imagine then that he was storing every detail in support of some future deliverance. We had been living in the same cell for two years when Beyond These Stone Walls began in the summer of 2009. I had been secretly thinking about becoming Catholic then, and had been taking correspondence courses in Scripture and Catholic teaching through the Knights of Columbus. My interest in the Catholic faith was growing because I saw it quietly working every day in the person I was living with in a small prison cell. I remember a day, just after I was moved into the area where Father G lived. It was a few months before we became roommates. I walked into his cell and the first thing I saw was a picture taped to a beat up steel mirror on the wall. I stared at it. The man was balding with glasses, and half in priest’s clothes and the clothes of a prisoner. Father G was busy writing something. I asked, “Is this you?”

It turned out to be the most important question of my life. Father Gordon then told me all about Saint Maximilian Kolbe, of how he was sent to prison in a Nazi concentration camp on fake charges, of how he helped other prisoners, and finally of how he gave his life to save a younger prisoner from execution. Father Maximilian was 41 years old when this happened. Father G was 41 when he was unjustly sent to prison. I learned about not only sainthood, but manhood from these two men. In another miracle, Felix Carroll, the Editor of Marian Helper magazine, wrote a book with a chapter about me. He wrote of this story:

“Eyes that once smoldered with coiled rage now sparkle with purpose and compassion. Through Fr. Gordon MacRae, Pornchai discovered the saints and the Blessed Mother. In St. Maximilian Kolbe he discovered what it means to truly be a man, what it means to be tough. A man doesn’t seek to destroy other men. A man doesn’t hold his own needs above the needs of others. A real man is selfless. St. Maximilian knew what it was like to be stripped of his humanity and dignity. In him, Pornchai found recourse because Maximilian never caved into despair. In 1941 at Auschwitz, he gave his life to save that of another man.”

— Loved, Lost, Found, pp.166-167

Over time, Father G became all of these things for me. He never once put himself first, and he made great sacrifices for me. He told me once that sacrifice is the most necessary part of being a man and a father. While I was slowly being drawn into faith and hope, Father G was always looking out for my best interests, never putting himself first. He became my best friend, and the person I trust most in this world. From prison, he opened for me a window onto Christ.

As I mentioned above, Beyond These Stone Walls began in our cell in the summer of 2009. It was another miracle I never would have thought possible. It was proposed to Father G in a phone call and he came to our cell and told me about it. He let me decide what to call it so I chose “These Stone Walls,” I always saw prison as a place where we were sent to be forgotten. Father G said that we could speak to the whole world from here, and we did.

I became a Catholic on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. Meanwhile, Father G’s writing at Beyond These Stone Walls got the attention of others. One of them was Mrs. Clare Farr, a Trademarks attorney in Western Australia. She and Father G teamed up to begin an investigation of my past life. They were relentless, and over time what they accomplished grew and grew. I never thought justice was even possible, but they kept probing and making connections. Then the police came to interview me. They came a second time along with a District Attorney. As a result, in 2017 Richard Alan Bailey was arrested in Oregon and held on $49,000 bail charged with forty felony counts of sexual abuse against a child.

There was to be no trial, however. Richard Bailey took a plea deal. He today stands convicted of all 40 felony charges. His sentence was suspended and he was given probation. This would be an international outrage if Richard Bailey were a Catholic priest. The story of the murder of my mother when he took her to the Island of Guam remains there a cold case unsolved homicide even though there is new evidence pointing to a solid suspect.

Pornchai Moontri’s mugshot at the time of his arrest at age 18 in Bangor, Maine, after having lived on the streets for two years.

True Crime and Punishment

Father Gordon MacRae freed me from the evil this man inflicted on me. He taught me that this evil is not mine to keep. I just see the horrible injustice in the handling of these two cases. My abuser did monstrous things. His assaults were more than the number he was charged with. There were witnesses ready to testify and lots of clear evidence.

He was sentenced to mere probation because I am a prisoner and the prosecutor feared that I would be assailed on the witness stand because of that. So they offered Richard Bailey a plea deal. He took the deal because he is guilty. So for forty counts of rape, he will never serve a single day in jail and all the evidence was never placed before the court.

In the case of Father Gordon MacRae, a plea deal was also offered. It was offered three times, and each time he refused the offer of a single year in prison because he is innocent. These offers were made because Thomas Grover, his 27-year-old accuser at trial, was not credible at all. He was a drug addict with a criminal record that was kept out of the trial by a biased judge. He was biased from the beginning and once told the jury to disregard all the inconsistencies in Thomas Grover’s story. As Dorothy Rabinowitz wrote in “The Trials of Father MacRae” in The Wall Street Journal, “They had much to disregard.” Father G was not on trial. The whole Catholic priesthood was on trial. Convicted of five counts with zero evidence, he got 67 years in prison.

What do I do with such a story? If Father G had not been here, what would have become of me? This is part of the Cross I now carry through life. I would give my freedom to save his, but he would have none of that.

For the last 14 years in this prison while becoming a Catholic and living as a Catholic, I have also lived in very close quarters with a man I know without a doubt to be innocent. During this time, I have been scandalized by the response of most other priests, and especially by Father G’s cowardly bishop who treats him like a dangerous outcast.

When they have come here for an occasional Mass, they barely speak or even acknowledge him. I am ashamed for their cowardly and petty attitude. Father G says the Church and the Mass are much bigger than the flawed human beings behind them.

After 29 years in prison, 15 of them as Father G’s roommate, and 12 of them as a Catholic, freedom came to me in steps. Three years ago I was freed from this prison, but I will never be free of Father G. It breaks my heart that the man responsible for my freedom was left behind unjustly in prison.

When I asked that question all those years ago — “Is this you?” — I got my answer. It was Saint Maximilian in that picture on the mirror but it is also Father Gordon MacRae, the man who freed my mind and soul from the horror inflicted on me by a real predator.

I could not bear to leave my friend, and I have not. We speak every day, and his fatherly guidance is no less potent now than it was in that prison cell. We have another Patron Saint, Saint Padre Pio who brought about much healing in my life. The day the Church honors him is also the date Father G was cast into prison. They have a special bond. I entrust Father Gordon MacRae to him, and to all of you.

Please do not forget Father G behind those stone walls.

+ + +

You may also like these related links:

When Justice Came to Pornchai Moontri, Mercy Followed, by Clare Farr

A chapter in the book, Loved, Lost, Found: The Divine Mercy Conversion of Pornchai Moontri, by Felix Carroll

Imprisoned by Walls, Set Free by Wood by Pornchai Moontri

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.”

The Toll of Decades in Prison on a Mind, Heart, and Soul

Pornchai Moontri was released after almost three decades in prison. A new development could also release Fr. Gordon MacRae, but what does freedom look like for them?

June 8, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

Someone who is an old friend to both Pornchai Moontri and me posted a Facebook rant in 2021 that was printed and sent to me by an angry reader who saw it. Our friend was reacting to a cut in Covid pandemic relief services. Clearly, the last two years have posed challenges for many people. Our friend’s rant protested the budget cut while bemoaning all the “free services” that he believes had been afforded to prisoners: “Free food, free housing, clothing, health care, legal representation, and free education!” I understood his argument. It is one held by many people, but none of it is true.

Prisoners where I have been forced to live against my will for 28 years are required to hold a prison job. However most prisons have become so overcrowded that more than 50-percent of prisoners are in the category of “no job available.” Prison jobs here pay a base rate of $1.15 per day for four hours of daily work. Both Pornchai Moontri and I held relatively privileged positions in specialized jobs that required some skill. These full time positions required working a full day, five days per week. Pornchai was the Safety Trainer for the prison woodworking shop managed by the Recreation Department. I am the sole legal clerk in the prison law library, a position that every prison is required to have by law. Both jobs were salaried positions with a rate of pay at $43 per month.

Prisons are required to provide the most basic level of sustenance including food, housing, clothing, etc. Beyond that, most prisons — this one included — sell food, hygiene items, and clothing items to prisoners either directly or through a prison-approved vendor who manages these sales with a healthy kickback to the prison’s recreation fund budget. A pair of shoes costs about six weeks’ pay.

Because the prison food budget affords lots of carbohydrates but far less protein, most prisoners strive to supplement food intake through purchases from a commissary. Those who cannot afford food, or who do not have families to help them, contrive all sorts of means to assure that they have adequate food. There is a lot of exploitation. Some prisoners will purchase food, and then sell it at inflated rates to the hungry who then rack up debts that they sometimes cannot pay.

The main meal of the day here is between 3:30 and 4:00 PM. By policy, prisoners are allowed 10 minutes to eat. It seldom ever takes that long. Neither Pornchai nor I were ever well off here, but we could not turn away prisoners who asked for a package of ramen noodles to fend off hunger at night. We both bought and stored them just so those around us would not have to owe someone who wanted to exact a profit — or worse.

The same is true with coffee and postage stamps, neither of which are provided to prisoners. A four-ounce bag of generic instant coffee is $5.00. A four-ounce packet of chicken is $3.25. A book of ten postage stamps is more than three days’ pay. Over the years, Pornchai and I have loaned enough coffee — seldom if ever repaid — to keep Juan Valdez on his burro for decades to come because those earning one dollar per day cannot afford coffee.

Many other items are required, but acquired only through purchase at the commissary. This includes soap, shampoo, toothpaste and toothbrushes, deodorant, cough syrup, Tylenol, bandages, toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, and, during the pandemic, face masks. Those who can afford to do so also purchase multivitamins, Omega-3, Vitamin D3, and other essential supplements. There are over 260 food and hygiene items sold to prisoners in the commissary here and in most other prisons.

Some enterprising prisoners develop little side ventures such as a laundry service. The more artistic ones create and sell greeting cards. Several have a sneaker cleaning service. The costs do not end with food, clothing and postage. A visit to daily Sick Call at Health Services has a co-pay that for some is the equivalent of three days’ pay. Telephone calls must be prepaid and are charged by the minute.

Money Laundering

Union Supply Direct, a company that markets only to prisoners, has cornered the commissary market here and also has a mail order business for prisoner clothing, electronics, and other needs. The catalog sells just about all clothing items except the actual New Hampshire prisoner uniform which consists of dark green slacks and a matching long sleeve buttoned shirt. Prisoners here may request three sets every two years. However, what we receive is used clothing. Ironed-on patches have the prisoners’s name and number. Prisoners often turn the replacements back in if they are in worse shape than the ones we already had. The last set I received had four prior ironed-on labels under the one with my name. The last set of new clothing I received was in 1998. The last used replacement set that was in good enough condition to keep was in 2012.

Purchased clothing is at risk of being stolen and then resold to other prisoners. This has never happened to me or to Pornchai, but it has happened to some of the people around us. My current roommate does not want to lose the new towels and clothing he purchased so he never puts them in the prison laundry. Instead, he washes them himself in the bucket that I use for Mass. In our small cell, he hangs them on a removable shoestring clothes line and aims a fan at them. Some enterprising prisoners have set up a sideline for private laundry services. They will pick up newer clothing, wash and dry it, and return it folded, all for a bag of coffee or food. Union Supply sells a gray fleece jacket for $42.95, and just about everyone will pay the fee to have it washed because it is a hot item for theft and resale.

The Union Supply Catalog sells about 200 items including clothing, sheets, towels, hygiene items, electronics, televisions, etc. at seemingly inflated prices. A small flat screen Clear Tunes TV is $275. In the latest catalog, a 4-ounce tube of Crest toothpaste is $12.95. A poor quality Swintec typewriter doubled in price this year and is now $375.95.

This could go on and on. Every category that our friend’s Facebook rant described as free for prisoners was falsely stated. When you consider the ratio between a prisoner’s expenses and what he or she can earn, prisoners are typically the most impoverished citizens on the planet. I know that the common argument for seeing this as “okay” is that “prisoners put themselves in prison.” That is indeed true for some, perhaps even most, but I hope that readers know by now that it is by no means true for all.

The Seeds We Sow in Prison

Surely the most advanced society on Earth can come up with a better model for the management of criminality than the current prison system, which has a recidivism rate of 50-percent. As a culture, we cave to our worst instincts for instant vengeance by the establishment of laws that make an adequate criminal defense virtually impossible. I am not guilty of the crimes attributed to me and I am by no means the only one now saying that.

When I heard Judge Arthur Brennan intone the jury instructions at my trial, I knew then that I was doomed. This was a case without evidence. None whatsoever. Judge Brennan first instructed the jury to “disregard inconsistencies” in accuser Thomas Grover’s claims. Then he told them that under New Hampshire law, (RSA 632a-6) “no evidence or corroboration is necessary for a conviction” under this category of offense.

After dutifully disregarding all the inconsistencies, the jury convicted me in less that ninety minutes. You already know that after refusing three efforts to convince me to take a plea deal to serve a minimum of one year in prison, Judge Brennan sentenced me to a term of 67 years. Attorney James Higgins, speaking for my bishop and diocese at the time, wrote to me in prison: “To the extent that you are without funds for an appeal, contact the Public Defender’s Office.” I was sent to prison at age 41 in 1994. I will be 70 on my next birthday. I will be 108 when my sentence is completed. I was 29 when the fictitious crimes were claimed to have occurred.

My peers in priesthood and in life are preparing for retirement. In contrast, I have spent the last nearly three decades of my life earning and trying to live on $43 dollars per month. Some readers have helped over time, and both Pornchai and I have survived almost solely because of that. We have profound gratitude. This blog could not exist without such help. One of the tragedies of prison is that people here for decades leave with nothing — with no life built up and no buffer or support system upon which to build one.

For a priest in prison, whether guilty or innocent, survival after would depend on the willingness of his bishop to observe Canon Law and provide some basic infrastructure such as housing, health insurance, etc. In the neighboring Archdiocese of Boston, a 75-year-old priest coming out of prison was told to go find a homeless shelter. Over time in the abuse scandal, fear reigned and the observance of Canon Law has diminished. Some bishops simply discard priests deemed inconvenient, again whether guilty or innocent. My bishop has given no indication whatsoever that he would assist me in any way. He visited me briefly ten years ago, but he would not let me speak of any of this.

Back in January, 2022, a surprising development surfaced. A New Hampshire court ordered the Attorney General to make public a previously secret list of police officers whose investigations or testimony have been tainted and discredited by misconduct. It turns out that former NH Detective James McLaughlin is on that list as revealed in “Predator Po1ice: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell.”

He is on the list for a 1985 incident of “Falsification of Records and/or Evidence” which is exactly what I have claimed of him for three decades. I am now expected to hire legal counsel for a new appeal based on this newly discovered evidence. I have been frozen in place ever since then. Only time will tell whether and how this develops. Saint Paul wrote that three gifts abide, Faith, Hope, and Love, and the greatest of these is Love (1 Corinthians 13:13). But Hope is the most fragile.

A part of me does not dare to hope or to even move on this. The last such hope in 2013 met a dead end with a prosecutorial judge who refused to review new evidence or hear new witnesses. Justice from men is not always even or just. At almost 70, I feel closer to meeting God’s justice than that of anyone in New Hampshire. Shall I try or shall I simply wait? Stay tuned!

+ + +

Important Notes from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please do not understand this post as a plea for help, for many of you have already done just that. I offer profound thanks for your support, encouragement, and prayers for both me and Pornchai Moontri whom God has entrusted to my care.

An important sequel to this post will appear here next week. My heart was broken, as were many, by recent events in Uvalde, Texas. Twice in two weeks, a lost and deeply troubled and broken 18-year-old committed grave acts of terror in Buffalo, New York and then in Uvalde, Texas. My friend, Pornchai, was also 18 and broken when his offense was committed. Something essential has been lost in our culture and must be faced with bold courage. Pornchai and I both have some thoughts of hope about this that will be a part of our post next week. Meanwhile: please share this post, and please consider reading more through these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

The Ordeal of Father Gordon MacRae by Catholic League President Bill Donohue

Predator Police: The New Hampshire ‘Laurie List’ Bombshell

Police Misconduct: A Crusader Cop Destroys a Catholic Priest

The Measure By Which You Measure: Prisoners of a Captive Past

The New Hampshire State Prison exit gate.