The day after the Boston Globe lectured the Archdiocese, there appeared a column by Brian McGrory about Rev. Charles Murphy, a priest twice sued by attorney Mitchell Garabedian.
In 2006, Father Murphy was sued for improperly touching a minor, a girl who claimed the incident occurred 25 years prior. Father Murphy maintained his innocence, and on the eve of the trial, the woman dropped her suit.
In 2010, Father Murphy was sued by a man who alleged that he was fondled 40 years before. The accuser, it turns out, was deep in debt and had his credibility questioned even by his family members. Father Murphy was exonerated after an archdiocesan review board took six months to examine the charges.
Father Murphy died in June, a broken man. McGrory called what Garabedian did “a disgrace.”
The day the column appeared, Bill Donohue called Garabedian and simply asked the lawyer if he had any regrets for pressing charges against Father Murphy. Garabedian responded by screaming at the top of his lungs. Indeed, he went ballistic, bellowing how he lost his case because of the archdiocese’s “kangaroo court.” Donohue asked him several times to calm down and to speak rationally, but instead he engaged in more boilerplate, making sweeping condemnations of Boston priests.
It is a sad day when a priest is falsely accused of sexual abuse. It is even sadder when it happens a second time. Sadder still is the scenario where a falsely accused priest goes to his deathbed suffering such indignation. It is worse than sad—it is obscene—when lawyers who lose in their bid to take down an innocent priest not only express no remorse, they behave like barbarians
