Priest refutes allegations in new legal filing
Documents filed in court contain Harrison’s denial of inappropriate conduct
New documents filed by the Rev. Monsignor Craig Harrison’s legal team contain a lengthy sworn statement by the priest in which he refutes the allegations of inappropriate conduct made against him by a Catholic activist during a news conference in Bakersfield in May.
Harrison is suing the activist, Stephen Brady, and an activism group Brady founded called Roman Catholic Faithful, for defamation. The new documents were filed in opposition to an anti-SLAPP motion filed in recent weeks by Brady’s attorney, Paul M. Jonna.
It is also revealed in the 384-page filing in Kern County Superior Court that a private investigator on Harrison’s legal team attended Brady’s news conference and audiotaped the event.
A transcription was submitted by Harrison’s attorneys as part of the legal filing as evidence. Up until now, no recording of the news conference where the alleged defamatory statements were made was publicly available. Brady’s attorney had tried to subpoena an unaired video of it from KGET-TV 17 but a judge denied the request.
“The certified transcript reveals numerous defamatory statements and accusations made by Brady against Monsignor Craig Harrison,” Harrison’s attorneys, Craig A. Edmonston and Kyle Humphrey, said in a joint news release Thursday. “(It) also reveals that
Brady admits that one of the ‘victims’ does not exist. Nevertheless, Brady distributed printed materials containing lurid and salacious statements attributed to the nonexistent victim to those in attendance at the press conference ...”
THE ALLEGATIONS
At the heart of the defamation case is whether Brady shared and published false accusations of child sex abuse by Harrison during a May 29 news conference in Bakersfield.
Prior to and during the conference, Brady distributed to the local media copies of a letter and an email from the early 2000s that he said he recovered from his personal files detailing allegations against Harrison. Brady, who lives in Illinois, has said that since the mid-1990s he and others with Roman Catholic Faithful have undertaken investigations of priests suspected of wrongdoing and, in some cases, forced their resignations. The letter and email about Harrison surfaced as part of an unrelated investigation into other priest misconduct Brady and Thomas Walsh investigated in the Merced area in 2004, Brady said.
The August 2004 letter was from Walsh, who identified himself as a former FBI investigator, and was addressed to Gordon Spencer, Merced County district attorney. The letter alleged Harrison operated a home for troubled boys when he was a priest in Merced. Walsh named a man who lived in the home who allegedly said Harrison would examine boys’ private parts every morning to check whether they were using drugs.
The email was sent to Stephen Brady from a man who said that he was in high school in Firebaugh when he allegedly had sex with Harrison, who was a pastor in Firebaugh at the time. Brady provided a copy of the letter and email at his news conference.
The “victim” Harrison’s attorneys say Brady has admitted does not exist refers to the man who alleged he had sex with Harrison while a high school student in Firebaugh. Brady did repeatedly state in the news conference, according to the transcript filed by Harrison’s lawyers in court, that the man’s name was purposely changed to protect his identity. He went on to state he needed to go through old files he had in order to uncover the man’s real identity.
When questioned later in the news conference about why he went public with the allegations without certainty they’re true, Brady states: “I put the word out of what I’m doing, the investigation, and individuals come forward. ...You’ve gotta get out there and get public, and you’ve gotta make known what you’re doing.”
Brady later states: “... it’s just how I operate and how I function. And to be quite honest with you, I fire a shot over the bow, and I see what happens.”
He then says he’s been threatened with lawsuits a dozen times and he has five law firms behind him that would be happy to do discovery on any priest that tries to sue him.
In his written statement filed in court, Harrison states that he never had a sexual encounter with anyone after taking his vows to become a priest, nor with anyone in Firebaugh. He says the incident never happened and the alleged victim does not exist.
In responding to the letter sent to the Merced district attorney, Harrison states he helped create a group home for men age 18 and over in Merced that was operated by an independent nonprofit board, not solely by him.
He never lived in the house and denies ever having conducted tests for narcotics by viewing the men’s private parts. He goes on to say he was unaware of any drug testing that happened at the home.
A transcript of a recent interview between Harrison’s private investigator and the man named in the letter who lived in the home was also included in the filing. The man told the private investigator he never said Harrison examined boys’ private parts nor ever heard of Harrison doing that, the transcript of the interview said.
Attorneys will argue the anti-SLAPP motion and opposition to it at a hearing scheduled for Nov. 25.