On trial in Kansas City: The Kansas City Star's Judy L. Thomas (l) and Mary Sanchez (r)

The Kansas City Star may not have been officially listed as a party in the recent high-profile clergy abuse trial in Kansas City, but the credibility of the Star was certainly on trial. And by all accounts, it lost.

A splashy, three-part series in 2011, entitled, "The altar boys' secret," by the Star's Judy L. Thomas, relayed the shocking charges of a man named Jon David Couzens, who claimed that an abusive priest, Msgr. Thomas O'Brien (who died in 2013), had forced Couzens and three other altar boys thirty years earlier to perform sex acts upon each other and upon him only minutes before Mass was to begin at the Catholic school where the boys attended.

And according to the Star, Couzens claims that this episode happened not just once, not twice, but on three separate occasions.

Color me skeptical: Not when it comes to the Catholic Church

The accuser:
Jon David Couzens

Well, the first other alleged victim is Brian Teeman, who died of a suicide in 1983. The second alleged victim is Chuck Caffrey, who died in a car accident in 2000.

That leaves the only other alleged victim still living, Jeff Barlow. But Barlow completely rejects Couzens' wild story and vehemently denies ever being abused by O'Brien or anyone else.

Appearing at the recent trial in Missouri, Barlow forcefully asserted, "With God as my witness and without a doubt, I was never abused."

In other words, the only person alive today who can corroborate Couzens' wild story denies that it ever happened. Yet when the Star's ace reporter Judy Thomas spoke with Barlow, and Barlow denied that such repeated group orgies had occurred, Thomas did not become the least bit skeptical of Couzens' claims.

And when Barlow testified at trial earlier this month, he offered his opinion about the Kansas City Star's journalistic integrity and ethics. Barlow declared:

"I was infuriated because it was clear that The Kansas City Star was not interested in the truth. It was like I was discounted."

Barlow also offered an opinion to the plausibility of repeated group molestations just moments before Mass was to begin. Barlow testified:

"This idea that in this short period of time you're going to molest four boys, swear them to secrecy and then walk into Mass is ridiculous."

The Kansas City Star's lower bar for the Catholic Church

Thomas' reporting just demonstrates how low the bar is for the Star to trumpet any story alleging abuse by a Catholic priest. In her never-ending zeal to bludgeon the Catholic Church, Thomas forged ahead with her story of "Four young lives, innocence lost," despite the fact that only one of the four actually claimed something happened, and the only other living alleged victim claims it didn't. (Couzens has also claimed he was abused by a second priest as well. And in addition to the alleged four-at-a-time group orgies before Mass, Couzens also claims that O'Brien abused him individually in the confessional, in the church basement, and in O'Brien's own bedroom.)

(To be precise, Barlow has indeed said that he believes that it is very possible that the abusive O'Brien could have molested Couzens and others individually in separate episodes. However, Barlow has always been adamant that Msgr. O'Brien "absolutely" never abused him, nor did he witness the priest ever actually abuse anyone.)

Honorable mention

We also want to cite the Star's Mary Sanchez for one of the most vulgar and bigoted pieces we have read in a while. In a rambling and wild-eyed article written shortly after the trial, Sanchez, who wholeheartedly embraced Couzens' claims of group orgies, asserted that the Church had somehow been "forgiving" to the admittedly abusive O'Brien.

And in the course of lambasting the Church, Sanchez also claimed, "Federal laws mandating that certain people must report suspected child abuse have been around since the mid-1970s. They always included clergy" (emphasis added).

No, they haven't, Mary. You made that up. Read the federal law, and please issue a correction to your readers for your indisputably incorrect statement of fact.

[NOTE: In his case against the Church, Couzens had sought over $10 million. Yet moments before a jury was to weigh in on the credibility of Couzens' claims, Couzens agreed to be part of a $9.95 million settlement with approximately 31 other accusers. In the end, Couzens apparently accepted far less money than what he originally sought.]

These documents reveal that plaintiff attorneys have utilized SNAP to issue press releases about lawsuits that have yet to be publicly filed in court.

Defense attorneys for an accused Kansas City priest have chronicled an eye-opening series of events from last October. Please take note of the times:

• October 20, 2011, 8:14 a.m.: SNAP issues a press release announcing a lawsuit against a priest and the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph. The press release stamps the accused cleric as a “predator priest who still walks free now.” The release lists David Clohessy, SNAP’s national director, as the contact person, and it provides his email address and cell phone number.
• October 20, 2011, 10:55 a.m.: Attaching the press release sent to her by SNAP, a Kansas City Star reporter (very likely Judy Thomas) contacts the diocese and the accused priest’s attorney for them to comment on the suit. Neither party makes a statement, citing a gag order that’s in place.
• October 20, 2011, 2:44 p.m.: The lawsuit that SNAP has already publicized is filed in court.

The defense for the accused priest has stated the obvious with regards to this surly succession of events (capital letters in original):

"There is simply no way that the SNAP press release was made without the assistance of plaintiff counsel since the lawsuit was publically filed hours AFTER the press release was issued."

SNAP and the abuse attorney then repeated this surly practice a few weeks later, on November 8, 2011. The Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph received a press release from SNAP around 11:12 a.m. about a lawsuit that was not even filed until 1:28 p.m.

The priest’s attorney adds (emphasis added):

"SNAP could not detail allegations from lawsuits that weren’t even filed at the time of the press releases without plaintiff counsel assistance. A conclusion can be drawn from the timing of the press releases and the filing of the lawsuits that Plaintiff counsel and SNAP are working in concert to vilify [the accused cleric] and the Diocese in the media."

An important, final note: It is because of this series of events that David Clohessy was ordered to appear at a deposition earlier this month. The accuser's attorney appeared to clearly violate a court gag order that was in place regarding the accused priest, and it is pretty obvious that Clohessy was party to this.

David Clohessy wants to dupe the media and the public into believing that the Church deposed him for the explicit purpose of revealing accusers’ names and violating people’s privacy. This is patently false, and Clohessy knows it. (The Church already knows the names of the people who have accused it, and it guards their privacy according to civil law.)

If Clohessy never took part in these shifty series of events, he never would have been deposed. Period.

[Click here to view the court documents cited for this story.]