Getting Away With Murder on Guam: Part 2

This is the second part of Pornchai's story.  Part 1 is found here.  Pornchai's lawyer has been in contact with the Guam Police Department, the Office of the Attorney General regarding the cold case of Wannee Baily (Porchai's mother) who was murdered on Guam in 2000.  There is evidence, and all that is needed is for this cold case to be reopened.  Unfortunately, there has been very little to no response from our police department and our Attorney General.....so sad!  Where is justice for Wannee Baily?  The article below can be found here.

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Human Traffic: The ICE Deportation of Pornchai Moontri

Taken from Thailand to America at age 11 by a now-convicted sex offender, this Thai victim will now be an ICE detainee awaiting forced deportation 36 years later.

“I’m reclaiming my time!” That term became a familiar line of political theater during a recent congressional grilling of Attorney. General William Barr. Our friend, Father George David Byers, wrote a short post highlighting the ridiculous nature of that sad moment in American politics.

I’m reclaiming my time, too. All 26 years of it. That’s how long I have been unjustly held in an American prison while its crazy politics play out before polarized audiences. At about the time I reach the 26-year mark in September 2020, my friend, Pornchai Moontri will have been handed over to the hidden national shame of ICE detention. It is easy to stay on the sidelines and keep this topic out of sight and out of mind until someone you know and care about is on the receiving end of it.

This looming deportation process, especially its weeks or months in overcrowded detention, is a personal crisis for us. The politics of it do not help at all. A word of advice: Try to avoid having a crisis in a deeply divided presidential election year. It will inevitably become subjected to the political, and some of those around you will use it to score political talking points.

It has already been suggested to me that President Donald Trump is to blame for my friend’s looming deportation, and for the inhumane treatment that he and other ICE detainees will endure. The deportation order that is just now unfolding in the case of Pornchai Moontri was a decision of a federal judge in 2007. It’s the result of a one-size-fits-all policy requiring removal of any non-citizen who commits any crime on U.S. soil regardless of circumstances.

Then it was suggested to me that ICE detention and forced removal is a strictly Republican endeavor that Democrats would happily fix if elected and given the power to do so. I subscribe to a publication of the Human Rights Defense Center called Prison Legal News. If anything, it leans to the left of our divisive political spectrum. In the July 2017 issue is a well researched article by Derek Gilna entitled “Deportations of Undocumented Reach Record High.” It is an analysis of deportations in the six years prior to the 2016 election. Here is an important excerpt:

• “In the past six years, the number of people removed from the country against their will far surpassed the totals of the previous administration of George W. Bush reaching over two million people. According to human rights advocates, President Obama had become the ‘Deporter in Chief.’”

So please don’t subject the real human tragedy of what is happening now to the polarity of our “if you’re not with us you’re against us” politics. We are struggling right now behind These Stone Walls and I do not want our struggle to become political ammunition. Instead, I want to point you to something deeply unjust – demonic would be a better word – that has happened here. In his recent post, “Pornchai Moontri: Hope and Prayers, for a Friend Left Behind,” Pornchai wrote something that struck me like lightning and stabbed at my conscience as an American:

• “In December of 1985 I was taken from Thailand 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.”

Pornchai’s mother, Wannee, was only 22 years old when she left her two small sons. She was in desperate straits, unable to feed them. So she went to the city to find work. Instead, she found Richard Alan Bailey, an American helicopter pilot serving in Vietnam who was in Bangkok for a long recovery in the 1970s. He took control of Wannee’s life, and brought her to America where she was kept in servitude. Wannee could not speak, read or write English and was permitted no friends outside Bailey’s home.

AN AMERICAN HORROR STORY

Pornchai’s mother would later be murdered – beaten to death according to the autopsy report – on the U.S. Territorial Island of Guam in the company of Richard Bailey. Referred to by Pornchai as “An American Horror Story,” the case remains today an unsolved “cold case” homicide despite new evidence pointing to Bailey.

The murder occurred in 2000 as Wannee filed for divorce from Bailey and just before court-ordered dispersal of finances and property to Wannee was to take place. After the murder, Bailey sold his home and left Guam without settling the financial court orders with Wannee’s estate. He returned to Thailand to bring back a young Thai woman barely out of her teens. They settled in Oregon.

Back in the 1970s when Bailey prepared to bring Wannee from Bangkok to the United States, he knew she left two young sons behind in Thailand but he had no interest in a two-year-old. They settled in Bailey’s town of Bangor, Maine. Just blocks away, Stephen King was writing his own American horror stories. Bailey bided his time until Pornchai was 11 years old. Then, in 1985 he sent Wannee to Thailand to retrieve her sons.

This is a clear story of human trafficking, but it remains off that radar screen. In Bailey’s devious and narcissistic mind, these were human beings whose rights were at his personal disposal. Bailey would not permit Wannee to apply for U.S. citizenship. He knew her sons would one day reach an age that no longer interested him. It would thus be easier to be rid of them if they were not citizens.

In September 2018, Richard Bailey was finally brought to some form of justice. He entered a “no contest” plea deal, but was found guilty in Penobscot (Maine) Superior Court on forty felony counts of violent sexual assault against Pornchai and his brother. He was sentenced to 44 years in prison, all suspended, and 18 years of supervised probation. He returned to his lakeside home in Oregon without ever serving a day in prison.

That the vicious sexual and physical assaults against Pornchai and his brother had never previously been investigated or prosecuted remains another unsolved mystery. They took place over four years after Pornchai’s arrival in Bangor in 1985. There were school reports of a battered child. There were neighbors who expressed concern about the bleeding and traumatized Asian boy at their door pleading for help in a foreign language. There were reports from sheriff’s deputies who picked up a runaway child and handed him back over to Richard Bailey because they could not understand his protests.

Bailey’s violence and perversion drove Pornchai into homelessness – a teen stranded in a foreign country. There were reports filed by staff at the Maine Youth Center that took custody of Pornchai at age 14. There were reports when he was made a ward of the state at age 15. There were reports when he again became a homeless adolescent living alone on the streets of Bangor at age 16. It does not take rocket science to connect all this to the offense of a drunken 18-year-old in 1992. But all this history just disappeared.

Pornchai could not himself raise it. Right under the noses of state officials, Richard Bailey sent a battered and desperate Thai woman – Pornchai’s mother – to warn him while held pre-trial at the county jail that her life would be in danger if Pornchai told. Pornchai thus refused to participate in his own defense.

At sentencing, Judge Margaret Kravchuk told him that he was given a new life in America but squandered it.

Certainly no one can claim that sexual abuse was not on the public radar at that time. Just one state away in New Hampshire in 1988, a witch hunt was underway involving Catholic priests. The story that sent me to prison was just taking shape at that time while some local lawyers were taking out their calculators. The dollar signs were dangled before them by a local sex crimes detective who brought over 1,000 cases while Maine, right next door, was ignoring the predator who was openly destroying the lives of three young Thai immigrants. A lot of people in the State of Maine covered up for Richard Bailey. Who investigates the investigators?

GETTING AWAY WITH MURDER ON THE ISLAND OF GUAM

On the U.S. territorial Island of Guam, officials have reacted with silence about inquiries into the unsolved homicide of Wannee in 2000. The Guam police, the Attorney General, and the U.S. Attorney there have been only minimally responsive over the last two years.

Pornchai Moontri, whose life was destroyed by Richard Bailey when he was twelve to fourteen years old, has now spent the last 28 years in prison for an offense that Bailey himself set in motion. In days or weeks, Pornchai will be moved to an overcrowded ICE holding facility where he will be forced to wait out the Covid-19 pandemic sleeping on a dayroom floor filled with ICE detainees.

Meanwhile, Richard Bailey, now convicted of 44 felony counts of sexual abuse against Pornchai and his brother, has not spent a single night in prison. He waits out the pandemic in his lakeside home in Oregon. He has simply ignored attempts by Pornchai’s advocates to recover what he owes to Wannee’s estate – funds that could make an enormous difference to someone who must now start his shattered life over. Not a single American attorney would agree to represent Pornchai for civil protection.

In his moving recent post, “Hope and Prayers for My Friend Left Behind,” Pornchai himself raised the enormous paradox in our parallel stories of imprisonment:

• “Father Gordon MacRae freed me from the evil this man inflicted on me. He taught me that this evil is not mine to keep. What do I do with such a story? If Father G had not been here, what would have become of me? He freed my mind and soul from the horror inflicted by a real predator. It breaks my heart that the man responsible for my freedom will now be left behind in prison.”

These are Pornchai’s questions, but they are not the questions I would ask. For 26 years, I have witnessed the unbridled outrage leveled at Catholic bishops and priests over allegations of sexual abuse and the necessity of protecting the vulnerable from abusers. But Americans are very selective in their outrage. Is there none left for Richard Bailey? Is there no outrage for Pornchai’s expulsion from the very country where his horrific abuse took place?

Some time ago, I wrote a post entitled, “President Donald Trump’s First Step Act for Prison Reform.” This President undertook a bold initiative for criminal justice. He called for the removal of “The Box” from all federal employment application forms. “The Box” was infamous among prisoners. It was a check-off box on most employment applications asking if the applicant has ever been convicted of a felony. In effect, it was an extension of a prison sentence that had long since been fully served. It took a non-politician to do what most politicians lack the political will or courage to do. “The Box” served only one purpose: to prevent former prisoners from finding meaningful jobs.

The President’s rationale for this is the fact that if a man or woman applying for a job had ever been in prison, the fact that they are now filling out this application means that the sentence has been served and it is over.

ICE DETENTION

By mid-September 2020, Pornchai Moontri will have fully served the entire sentence that the State of Maine imposed upon him at age eighteen. He has accomplished many things in that time, and is today an asset, not a hindrance, to his country. His country is Thailand, but he was taken from there as a child by a monstrous American predator who has never answered for it. Now America will keep the predator in freedom while expelling the victim.

The truth is that Pornchai wants to go and is ready to go. Thanks to These Stone Walls, a future has been built there for him, and a fresh start with people who will care for him. Our well-founded concern is not for his deportation, but for the added insult and injury that he must emerge from prison just to wait out this pandemic in a horribly crowded ICE detention facility – aka, another prison. He could not be deemed any threat to the community because his sentence is over. If he were not an ICE detainee, he would simply walk free.

And he could not be considered a flight risk because he has worked long and hard to build a future in Thailand that he now looks forward to. The Divine Mercy Thailand organization has a team waiting for Pornchai. The Father Ray Foundation (www.fr-ray.org) has a plan for training him and putting his skills to use. It is an awesome place as a visit to their website will show.

Public risk and flight risk are the only real reasons why ICE detainees are held. We were hoping and praying that bail could be arranged for Pornchai to live in the community until Thailand can open its borders for a flight during this pandemic. Some TSW readers nearby had an ideal location for Pornchai to spend those weeks learning instead of just surviving. However that was deemed to be impossible.

What follows is a recent letter I received from another former prisoner, an Asian friend from here who recently went through ICE deportation and is now back in his native country after an ordeal lasting months:

• “You will first sit in a holding tank with a bunch of junkies and young criminals whining about a two-week county sentence in a county jail. Then at about 11 PM you will get moved to a federal detention pod. If you are lucky you might get a cell with one other person, but more likely you will be sent to a crowded dayroom with a thin mattress. You will have to find a place put it among the crowd. If there are no bunks, they use these things like plastic canoes to sleep in. You will have to find a place to park it. One of the cells is kept empty so all the detainees living on the dayroom floor can use the single toilet in it.”

Justice is supposed to be blind, but sometimes it is deaf and dumb too. Our friend deserves better than to go to his new life like this. Here is a small exercise in the blindness of criminal justice you can easily do and that we now hope those who measure Pornchai will do. He has the most unlikely internet footprint of any person who has been in a U.S. prison for 28 years. Do a google search for “Pornchai Moontri” using the quotes. It is a great stretch of the imagination that the results are anything less than a good man deserving of our protection. America was once better than this.

Please pray for us as we do for you.

Pornchai Moontri: Part I

This is a two part series published by Father Gordon.  The first part was written by Pornchai Moontri, whose mother was murdered in Guam.  Her killer was never brought to justice, but we are hoping that there will be justice will be served soon.  The following article was written by Pornchai Moontri and can be found here.

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Pornchai Moontri: Hope & Prayers for My Friend Left Behind

After 14 years as friends and cellmates at These Stone Walls, Pornchai Moontri writes of his coming deportation while Fr. Gordon MacRae remains unjustly in prison.

Editor’s Note: The following guest post by Pornchai Maximilian Moontri is his last for These Stone Walls until he arrives and is settled in Thailand. After 28 years in prison commencing at age 18, Pornchai will soon be handed over to the custody of ICE (Immigrations and Customs Enforcement) for deportation. For the unforgettable story of Pornchai’s life, don’t miss Father Gordon MacRae’s gripping article: “Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam.”

To My Dear Friends Beyond These Stone Walls: It was not until my friend, Father G wrote “Pornchai Moontri in Thailand, Patrick O’Brian at Sea” a few weeks ago that the weight of the coming change really hit me. My emotions are on a roller coaster right now. We are approaching a day that Father G and I worked long and hard for over the last 14 years that we have been friends and cellmates. I could not have imagined on the day we first met that I would be facing this coming day with hope.

Hope is just one of the emotions competing for space in my heart right now. I am also scared beyond measure, and anxious, and excited, and I am very deeply sad. I guess I have to try to sort this out for myself and for you. I am scared because my whole life, and all that I have known since I was a homeless and lost teenager 28 years ago, is about to change completely.

I am anxious because I will be cast among strangers for a time, and it could be a long time due to Covid-19 and the constraints on international flights. One day soon, ICE agents will take me away to be a prisoner in another crowded, chaotic place where I will live among strangers, taking only the clothes I am wearing.

I am excited because this journey may well be the last of the nightmares of my life. At the other end, on some day weeks or months away, I will be left in Thailand where I will be entirely free for the first time in my memory. I will be adjusting to freedom and a new country and culture all at once.

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. (Note: The article is linked in Father George David Byers’ Editor’s Note at the top of this post.)

Soon, all that has become familiar to me must be left behind. Far worse, Father G must be left behind and for that I am also sad beyond measure. I know that when that day comes in a matter of weeks, I will likely never see my friend, Father G, again in this life. There have been times when I lay in the dark in my upper bunk in our prison cell at night, and my darkness and dismay about this feels overwhelming. The person who gave me hope will remain in prison while I will be set free.

But I was set free in another way, too, and it was Father Gordon MacRae who brought it about. 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.

ENTANGLED BEHIND THE TAPESTRY OF GOD

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. That is very painful so I will spare you what is known only to Father G and God, Father G wrote of this in his human trafficking article linked above. 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 happened 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 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, and it is an American horror story.

I ended up in solitary confinement for years, a prison within a prison that just magnifies 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 knew
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 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 this 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 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, p.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, 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 wrote a recent post about the bridge to Thailand TSW built for me. My post was, “Pornchai Moontri: The Catholic League Changed My Life Too.”

I became a Catholic on Divine Mercy Sunday, 2010. Meanwhile, Father G’s writing at 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.

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 am a prisoner and the prosecutor feared that I would not be a credible witness. 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 21-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 Wall Street Journal, “They had much to disregard.” Father G was not on trial. The whole Catholic priesthood was. Convicted of five counts, 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 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 28 years in prison, 14 of them as Father G’s cell-mate, and 10 of them as a Catholic, freedom came to me in steps. In a few weeks, I will be free of this prison, but I will never be free of Father G. It breaks my heart that the man responsible for my freedom will be 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 cannot bear to leave my friend, but I must. So I entrust him now to God and to you.

Please do not forget Father G behind these stone walls.

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Editor’s Note: Next week on These Stone Walls – a blistering post by Father Gordon MacRae on the injustice of deporting Pornchai Moontri while the man convicted of 40 felony counts of abusing him lives comfortably at his lakeside home. Don’t miss it.

If you are in a position to assist Pornchai Moontri is starting a new life, please consider a gift to him.

You may use the PayPal link at These Stone Walls. Just add his name in the subject line. You may also send your check in his name to Pornchai Moontri, to:

These Stone Walls
P.O. Box 205
Wilmington, MA 01887-0205

Finally, a PayPal account has also been established in his name. The donor address is: pornchai.moontri@gmail.com

Back To Lockdown

I'm glad to see that the Church remained open despite that it is a parking lot Mass.  Better a parking lot Mass than no Mass at all.  In the first lockdown, all church buildings were shut down, and Mass was conducted on the Internet.  Church is essential, and I'm glad that the Archdiocese of Agana were able to work cooperatively with the government in allowing the churches to remain open despite that it is a parking lot Mass.  The parishes have done an excellent job in following the emergency health guidelines and protocol to ensure the safety of its parishioners.  Church is essential.  

According to the Pacific News Center, there was a 1,150% increase of calls to the crisis hotline in the last six months while Guam was under the pandemic.  Many people called in seeking out help to deal with the mental stress caused by the lockdown and the pandemic.  The Church also helps in alleviating this mental stress.  The word of God and the Eucharist are nourishment for our troubled souls as we struggle through this crisis.  People are laid off and jobless.  Businesses are closing.  People who are still employed have the virus to worry about, but there are those who feel more stressed because their livelihood have been destroyed due to a loss in job or closed business. 

Due to the lockdown, the Neocatechumenal Way have resorted to Zoom.  Listening to the word every week is nourishment for our soul.  It helps us to overcome the daily stress we are facing and to rely on God's providence.  God provides, and we have seen this first hand in our lives.  God bless Guam and may the Lord strengthen us in our faith as we go through this second lockdown.      

God Provides

It has been a while since I published some of Father Gordon's articles.  Two days ago, he sent me an excellent article about an elderly woman.  We should never forget the elderly who are the most vulnerable during this pandemic, and sometimes even the most lonely. 

However, I entitled this post "God Provides" because of what our Lord did through this elderly woman.  She took in a homeless and elderly priest who was discarded by the Catholic Church and shunned even by her extended family.  Shocking of all is a bishop sending the elderly woman a letter, reprimanding her for sheltering the homeless priest.  According to These Stone Walls:

Twenty years ago, her husband died from cancer after she cared for him at home every day until the end. They had no children. Five years after his death, she courageously defied our Puritanical social mores when she took in a 62-year-old homeless man suffering from chronic heart disease.

That man was also her parish priest. She had been burdened with chronic depression and the anxiety of being alone when his plight intersected with hers. He had been summarily discarded during the purge of 2002 when (then) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, (then) Bishop Wilton Gregory, and (then) SNAP Director David Clohessy convinced the panicked U.S. Bishops that accusation is sufficient probable cause for execution. The priest in question, 34 years ordained, was given 24 hours to remove himself from church property.............

Mrs. South faced substantial pressure when she provided a home for that discarded priest who, though twelve years younger, suffered from a debilitating decline in cardiac functioning. Some of her extended family sent her notes inviting her to holiday gatherings, but made it clear that her “friend” was not invited. His bishop once sent her a letter of reprimand for taking him in.

As you can see, God does not forget even those who were discarded by the Church.  He still loves them and provides for them.  That homeless elderly priest will not forget the woman who gave him shelter and neither will God.  Those who are rejected are cared for by God. God provides.    

Matthew 25:34-36  "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father, take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world.  For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you visited me.'" 

The rest of the story below is found here:
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In a Pandemic, Elders Out of Sight Must Not Be Out of Mind

If the state of the world has you in a state of anxiety, if politics and this pandemic find you frazzled, reach out to our elders in solitary confinement.

“Semper Ubi Sub Ubi.” Those Latin words came up in casual conversation recently. I’ll explain why in a moment. I learned that Latin phrase from Miss Ruggiero, my tenth grade public school Latin teacher at age 14 in 1967. I never forgot them. She had been attempting to explain that the sound of words can take on a different meaning than how they appear in print.

“Semper Ubi Sub Ubi” literally means “Always Where Under Where,” which makes no sense of course. If you say it aloud to yourself, however, it becomes a snippet of wisdom passed on by generations of mothers to their reckless adolescent sons.

When the global Covid-19 pandemic descended upon us in early 2020, I wrote a post that tried to bring some perspective to our plight. Its title was, “Holy Week, Coronavirus, Loneliness, Politics, Yikes!” That title now reads like a summary of the last six months as 2020 rolled along heavily burdened by both politics and a pandemic, and the urban riots of “Cancel Culture.”

In that post, I briefly mentioned that I cope with all this stress by reaching out to someone more stressed and vulnerable than myself. I am a prisoner, as you know, and as of this posting I have been so for twenty-five years, ten months, and seven days. All this time has passed unjustly in a state with “Live Free or Die” as its motto and in a country that calls itself the cradle of liberty and justice for all. Living with such contradiction is the most stressful thing I have ever encountered.

Until, that is, I encountered “Mrs. South,” an 87-year-old friend with whom I pass the last thirty minutes of each day. This friend faces our pandemic in solitary confinement in a small Cincinnati apartment hundreds of miles from this prison. Twenty years ago, her husband died from cancer after she cared for him at home every day until the end. They had no children. Five years after his death, she courageously defied our Puritanical social mores when she took in a 62-year-old homeless man suffering from chronic heart disease.

That man was also her parish priest. She had been burdened with chronic depression and the anxiety of being alone when his plight intersected with hers. He had been summarily discarded during the purge of 2002 when (then) Cardinal Theodore McCarrick, (then) Bishop Wilton Gregory, and (then) SNAP Director David Clohessy convinced the panicked U.S. Bishops that accusation is sufficient probable cause for execution. The priest in question, 34 years ordained, was given 24 hours to remove himself from church property.

In 2005, when Dorothy Rabinowitz and The Wall Street Journal published “A Priest’s Story,” a groundbreaking series about my imprisonment, Mrs. South also reached out to me by mail after weeks of trying to discover my address. Over the next fifteen years, we spoke occasionally by telephone. In 2007, before the visiting period here was reduced to 90 minutes, they visited me.

In November of 2019, after providing that priest with a home for fifteen years, my friend found him dead in his room. It was catastrophic and traumatic, and now, at age 87, she is alone again, facing this pandemic without even the consolation of a human voice. So, for the previous months since his death, I call her from my prison cell in the last half hour of my day.

A PREVENTION WORSE THAN THE DISEASE

Be patient, please, for I am getting to the point about my Latin phrase that began this post. Covid-19 has caused over 56,000 deaths among our elders in long-term care facilities. When you add to that number those who lived self-sufficient and alone who became infected with this virus, the death toll is astronomical. An estimated 85-percent of U.S. deaths have been people over the age of 75.

But the picture is more complicated than that. A multitude of studies have shown that isolation and loneliness are detrimental, not only to one’s mental and spiritual well-being, but to physical health as well. Chronic loneliness diminishes the immune system. Depression is linked to weight loss, and, in many elderly, malnutrition. A lack of human companionship and interpersonal communication impairs cognitive functioning, and exacerbates the natural decline that aging brings to mental capacity. Mrs. South never imagined that she would outlive her friend.

Mrs. South faced substantial pressure when she provided a home for that discarded priest who, though twelve years younger, suffered from a debilitating decline in cardiac functioning. Some of her extended family sent her notes inviting her to holiday gatherings, but made it clear that her “friend” was not invited. His bishop once sent her a letter of reprimand for taking him in. However, her saving him from homelessness had the unintended consequence of also saving her from her greatest fear: being alone.

When he suddenly died in her home fifteen years later, she was devastated. It took Mrs. South several days to contact me, and when I finally received her letter I telephoned her immediately. The trauma of what happened and what it meant to her was clear.

It was also clear that she was facing it alone. In the ensuing months, she could no longer keep up her home and had to move to a small rented apartment. Just as she moved in, the global pandemic was unleashed, trapping her in a prison of loneliness and isolation. She sent me a selfie-photo of herself sitting on the small apartment’s balcony. Her weight loss was alarming.

After my first conversation with her following the sudden death of “Father Ken,” it was clear to me that she neither could nor should face this alone. She broke down in tears while describing that it took her three days to reach me. So I told her that I would call each night at 9:30 PM. The thought of her alone in the prison of that apartment during this pandemic haunted me.

Because of the introduction of GTL tablets in this prison two years ago, I am able to make telephone calls directly from inside my cell. So I suppose you could say that I have a cell phone, something that three years ago would have earned me a stint in the hole. I can only place outgoing calls until 10:00 PM so I decided to give Mrs. South the last half hour of my day.

The importance of this was clear from the start. She would often tell me that mine was the only human voice she heard that day. Inevitably, many calls resulted in her tears as she grieved. She described each day alone waiting for my call as the plight of a fellow prisoner.

Because her apartment complex was limited to senior housing, its residents were required during the shutdown to remain in their apartments and not interact in the hallways. She was discouraged from leaving for any reason except the use of a common laundry room. Because Mrs. South was” the new kid on the block,” and the fact that she rarely saw her neighbors, she was unaware that some of them had a schedule for use of the laundry room. Her first venture to it resulted in a post-it note on her door: “The Laundry Room is for Everyone. Please Don’t Hog It.”

THE PRISON LAUNDRY CHRONICLES

When a person’s inner resources are already depleted, such things become magnified to the point of painful obsession. Mrs. South was in tears as she told me that night about the anonymous note on her door. I encouraged her not to dwell on it, but I also knew that was impossible. For the next two long sleepless nights the note loomed ever larger and more sinister. Then on the third day, a new twist in the story occurred.

Hundreds of miles from Cincinnati, in the cell block where I live, is a five-gallon bucket where prisoners wash laundry. I had two T-shirts soaking in it when I forgot about it while typing a post. When I went back to start the “rinse cycle” someone had taped a note to the bucket: “This laundry bucket is for everyone’s use. Please don’t hog it.” I could not wait to tell Mrs. South that I have joined her on the public registry of misdemeanor laundry hogging. There was a long pause when I told her the story, and then she burst into a hearty laugh, the first I had heard from her in months. Then she asked me why we use a bucket for laundry.

Prisoners here have clothing that falls into only one of two categories: greens and whites. “Greens” refer to our outer uniform, dark green slacks and a matching long-sleeve shirt. We are allowed three sets of each with names and numbers imprinted on them. On laundry day, we throw them into a large bin where they are taken for washing in the prison laundry.

“Whites” are another matter altogether. Every 12 months, we can turn in three pairs of boxer shorts and T-shirts to obtain replacements. They are of very poor quality and often mis-labled. So those who can do so purchase their own “inner” clothing from a catalog company, Union Supply, that markets to prisoners. We can also purchase three towels and three pair of socks. To wash all of these items, we must stuff them into a laundry net bag) tie it with an old sock with our name and location, and then throw it into a huge bin with 300 other laundry bags. The entire load is then put into huge washing machines.

Because the white laundry is washed while still balled up in the net bags, it sometimes comes back damp, and smelling worse than it did when it went in. Sometimes, if it contains newly purchased “higher end” T-Shirts and underwear, It does not come back at all. Who steals underwear? Anyway, it isn’t really snobbish of me, but I have a natural aversion to putting on a T-shirt that smells like a wet dog. So both Pornchai Moontri and I put only our socks and towels into the net bags. It is amazing that the cosmic mystery of missing socks is a phenomenon even in prison, and even when a net bag with no holes is tied in a very tight knot.

We wash our own underwear and T-Shirts by hand in a five-gallon bucket. I never really liked the idea of my underwear tumbling around with the underwear of 299 other prisoners, some of whom send theirs to the laundry not quite as often as they should. Our electric dryer is a shoe string extended In front of a fan.

When I conveyed all of this to Mrs. South, it was met with alternating rounds of shock and laughter. I told her that this all reminds me of the Latin exercise in misunderstanding language that Miss Ruggiero taught me at age 14, fifty-three years ago: “Semper Ubi Sub Ubi,” “Always Where Under Where.” Mrs. South laughed long and hard, and said, “I sure hope you will write about this.”

And so I did. 

Sons of Guam Were Not Deserters

Junglewatch said some false things about the former Guam RMS and its local seminarians, which you can find here.    

First of all, the former Guam RMS was never a fake seminary.  That's what the mob wanted people to believe.  Anyone who had done their research on the former Guam RMS would have found that the seminary was approved and accredited by the Pontifical Lateran University of Rome (also called the Pope's University). 

Secondly, the seminarians from Samoa and American Samoa did not withdrew their seminarians because their bishops believed it was a fake seminary.  Their bishops pulled them out from the Guam seminary because they did not want their seminarians embroiled in the continuous attacks by the mob of angry protesters. After all, the protesters invading the RM Seminary was a great concern for the bishops of Samoa and American Samoa (See story here).    

And finally, the RMS seminarians did not abandon Guam.  They were rejected and exiled by the mob in Junglewatch Nation and by Archbishop Michael who was pressured by the mob.  The only reason the Umatuna and the Archdiocese of Agana published the story on Darren Tomas and Preston Perez was because they were "sons of Guam".  According to a former seminarian who has come forward: 

 AnonymousAugust 2, 2020 at 1:50 AM 

Tim Rohr has deleted my post that contradicted this statement: 

"Chancery give public media prominence to two individuals from Guam who deserted Guam to serve as priests elsewhere? They had a choice to go to a seminary in California and thereafter return to Guam to serve our people. Instead they chose to go to an NCW seminary and serve somewhere else."

First of all, let me introduce myself: I am one of the last 12 Seminarians from the former RM Seminary of Guam. We did not desert Guam --- Guam was our mission and home. In 2017m we were told to meet with the "Office of Vocations" director and liason to the NCW who would give us "options" on how to continue formation post-Redemptoris Mater. 

The truth was: there were no options. They proposed to us a deal they couldn't shake on, saying it would cost too much money that they didn't have. To the theologians, they said the proposal was for those who were beginning the Seminary. To those in Philosophy, he said the opposite --- the proposal was meant for those finishing the Seminary.
They told both groups of seminarians the proposal was for the other --- when neither were offered anything at the table. This is the truth. It needs to be said. No more "one-sided" truth. 

We did not desert Guam. The Church, under the INTENSE PRESSURE from CCOG and the Jungle, succumbed and kicked us out. We were not a fake seminary, as over 10 ordinations within the first 3 years have shown.

Again, my people of Guam, we did not abandon you. We were rejected and exiled with no option of remaining. Although, of course, those in charge will say an option was discussed....but it was all a puff of smoke. 

Archbishop Michael was under pressure by the mob (See the story here).  Four seminarians from RMS Guam were local men.  These Chamorro men wanted to become priests for Guam and met with Archbishop Michael according to an anonymous poster who posted on my blog on March 23, 2018.  According to that anonymous poster : 

AnonymousMarch 23, 2018 at 9:31 PM 

CLARIFICATION: The four Chamorro Seminarians who graduated from the Yona Seminary were college students and because they were never ordained by AB Byrnes, they never officially belonged to the Archdiocese of Agana.  

In fact, here is Byrnes' statement from an October 4, 2017 article in the Guam PDN: "Archbishop Michael Jude Byrnes announced on Wednesday the Redemptoris Mater Seminary, which is controlled by the Neocatechumenal Way, will close by the end of the year because its model of priest formation is not sustainable for an island like Guam." (https://www.guampdn.com/story/news/2017/10/04/archbishop-byrnes-yona-seminary-close/730118001/) 

The four Chamorro Seminarians met one on one with AB Byrnes and it was his decision not to ordain them under the Archdiocese of Agana because he felt the RMS was not the acceptable model of priest formation for Guam. Guam has lost these four Chamorro Seminarians to U.S. mainland Archdioceses during a time when Guam really needed younger priests to begin replacing some of the aging and sickly priests on Guam. Sad, Sad Decision by AB Byrnes.

The four Chamorro seminarians were Juan Gomez, Darren Tomas, Preston Perez, and Gabriel Camacho.  Three of them are now priests in the United States, and one is presently a deacon.  These Chamorro men were not deserters.  They were rejected and exiled by the Archdiocese of Agana under intense pressure from the mob of the Junglewatch Nation.  

If there is anything to be learned, it is that one should never give in to mob rule.  Just look at what happened in Democrat-run cities of the United States who gave in to the mob. The citizens and businesses in those cities are hurting.  Violence have also increased in those cities.  And in the end, the mob turned against the mayors of those cities by demanding their resignations and defacing their homes.  As a result of giving in to the mob, Guam lost four sons of Guam, three of whom are priests and one a deacon, and Guam moved backwards into "borrowing" priests mainly from the Philippines.  And in the end, the mob branded these Chamorro men as "deserters" and even criticized the Archdiocese for recognizing two "sons of Guam."