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Annotated articles from the Boston Globe and The Pilot
Allegations against 2 priests draw scrutiny By Walter V. Robinson and Stephen Kurkjian, Globe Staff, 8/22/2002
The accusation in a lawsuit last week that the Rev. William J. Cummings had raped a teenage boy in a hotel room during an overnight church youth-group trip to New York City in December 1982 struck like a thunderbolt at Our Lady Help of Christians Parish in Newton, where Cummings was revered by many for his years of work with teenagers. [No mention of negative reaction among some local Catholics when Cummings announced that he had AIDS in 1993.] The single charge against Cummings was dwarfed by the accusation that between 1980 and 1985, the Rev. Michael Smith Foster - now a monsignor and the Boston Archdiocese's top canon lawyer - molested the same teenager, Paul R. Edwards, in his rectory bedroom at Newton's Sacred Heart parish numerous times. [Since he had AIDs, Cummings' rape of Edwards could have been a death sentence; and Edwards accused Foster of "inappropriate sexual behavior," that is, serious misconduct and a profound betrayal, but not a violent attack.] Because of the allegations, Foster - like 19 other priests suspended because of sexual abuse charges since February - has taken a leave of absence [he had no choice], though through his lawyer he has called the charges false. Cummings died [of AIDs] in 1994. But in both parishes, friends of the two priests have angrily denounced the charges and questioned the credibility of Edwards, the 35-year-old Winchendon man who filed the lawsuit. Edwards, according to many of his childhood friends [all Foster supporters], has a long history of embellishment, from claiming a role in a hit movie [when he was seven years old] to boasting that he was a semipro hockey player [boast fabricated by Foster supporters]. And they say they have evidence that raises serious doubts about the accusations. [No evidence was ever presented.] Inquiries this week by the Globe appear to support their skepticism. [The Globe never attempted to verify any of Foster's supporters' claims.] Cummings, according to several adult chaperones and students who went on the New York City trips, could not have raped Edwards in a hotel room in December 1982, because the annual December excursion was a day trip, with no hotel room or overnight stay. [Edwards was wrong about the location, but the Cummings rape was confirmed by two independent sources. The Archdiocese has now settled with Edwards on the Cummings charges.] Doubts have also been raised this week about the allegations against Foster. A childhood friend of Edwards [Foster supporter], William A. Priante Jr., said yesterday that Edwards called him on May 2 to discuss the alleged abuse, but told him that it was Cummings - not Foster - who raped him numerous times in his rectory bedroom. [Misinterpretation of conversation] Priante said Edwards said nothing to him in that call about Foster allegedly molesting him [because Edwards knew that Priante was Foster's friend]. A second childhood friend of Edwards [Foster supporter] said he received a similar call about the same time in which Edwards declared he was molested and cited only Cummings. [Edwards was following the advice of his lawyer; he didn't mention Foster because these two are Foster's friends. Edwards was actually trying to track down his high school year book, a very common source of information in these cases. Also, victims usually seek out other victims. Scores of serial molesters --such as Cummings-- have been exposed as a result.] Additionally, the Sacred Heart pastor, the Rev. John J. Connelly, and three teenagers who worked at the Sacred Heart rectory between 1980 and 1985 said there were strict rules forbidding visitors from the second floor of the rectory. It would not have been possible, they say, for Edwards to spend any appreciable time upstairs without being observed. [Foster admitted on August 18 that Edwards had been in his bedroom on several occasions. Apparently, neither Robinson nor any other Globe reporter ever asked Foster if Edwards had been in his bedroom. Foster and other RCAB officials remained silent while the Globe repeatedly reported this false claim.] Priante [in keeping with his loyalty to Foster] said he called Edwards this week to challenge his account in the lawsuit. Edwards, he said, apologized for misleading him in May but insisted the charges are true. Eric J. Parker, Edwards's lawyer, has refused since last week to allow a Globe reporter to interview Edwards, saying Tuesday that, ''We cannot comment on a pending case.'' Friday, however, Parker arranged for Edwards to be interviewed, but only by WHDH-TV, Channel 7. Parker has already acknowledged that there are discrepancies in Edwards's account. Cummings, for instance, was not yet assigned to Our Lady in 1982, the year he is accused of the rape. Pressed to provide evidence to corroborate his client's account, Parker refused to say what steps he took to verify the allegations before filing the lawsuit. [Parker conducted almost no research and told Edwards, who suffers from a learning disability, to correct the final draft of the lawsuit.] Repeated attempts by the Globe to seek comment from Edwards, including a detailed message on his home answering machine, were unavailing. [Globe reporters had already gone into attack mode. Edwards, who had checked into a hospital after becoming distraught by the Archdiocese's campaign to destroy him, was in no position to subject himself to interrogation by hostile journalists.] Tuesday night, a Globe reporter visited Edwards's Winchendon home and asked his wife, Shannon, about challenges to her husband's claims of abuse. She replied: ''I know there are serious questions. But I'm not involved in it. It's for him and his lawyer.'' [Misleading: Edwards' wife never questioned his story and always supported him 100%.] Paul Edwards's parents, Robert A. and Diane, have long been close to Monsignor Foster [and estranged from their son]. Friends of the family [unidentified] said yesterday that the parents are stunned that their son would make the allegations. The family, however, said it would have no comment [so we really don't know if they were "stunned."]. Among the 20 priests who have been relieved this year, many [almost all] have defenders, parishioners who have said they cannot believe the charges [as in the case of John Geoghan, who was staunchly supported by many Catholics]. But in the two Newton parishes, friends of Foster and Cummings - most of them young adults who revere both priests for the inspiration they provided them when they were teenagers - have organized this week to share information they believe will exonerate both men. [Note pairing of priests--so far three lawsuits against Cummings have been filed; more are expected. Also, in keeping with the anti-homosexual agenda of the Catholic Church, many local Catholics were suspicious of Cummings. These former youth group members did not have any information that could have "exonerated" either priest.] Much of the effort on Foster's behalf was organized from London by Linda Amicangioli, a marketing and public relations consultant who used e-mail contacts to rally 21 former youth group members from Sacred Heart. The group released a statement last night describing the allegations as ''false.'' [Whatever these people believed, they had no basis for this assertion. Although all of the direct quotes questioning Edwards' credibility came from the signers of this letter, they are never identified as such.] ''Father Mike is one of the good priests. And he's a great guy,'' Amicangioli said in a telephone interview last night. ''He does not deserve this, and we're mad. We know better. [How?] ''We are sensitive to the fact that there are genuine victims out there. But we feel that in this particular instance, Father Mike is the victim,'' she added. Sharon Phinney, who was a student leader in the Catholic Youth Organization at Our Lady, said yesterday that it was inconceivable to her that Cummings would molest any child. ''There was never any inappropriate behavior. He breathed life into the church,'' said Phinney, who was among the students and chaperones who said there was never an overnight trip to New York. [Three lawsuits against Cummings have been filed so far; two have been settled.] In his lawsuit, Edwards asserted that he went on an overnight CYO trip to New York [Edwards was wrong about the location, but told both the Rev. Rodney Copp and Delia Brennan in the early 1990's that the rape had occurred on an overnight ski trip. Brennan emailed Parker of her own accord to confirm Edwards' account] in December 1982, and found himself assigned to a room with Cummings. During the night, the lawsuit says, he awoke to find that Cummings was lying on top of him, and the priest then raped him. Cummings was not assigned to the parish until June 1983, according to archdiocesan records. In interviews this week, more than a dozen men and women who attended school and church with Edwards [all organized Foster supporters] expressed shock and sadness that he has lodged such accusations against the two priests. The Globe could not locate anyone at either parish who thought the allegations were credible [Cummings' file shows that other priests refused to work with him, and some parishioners condemned him for being an active homosexual.] And since they became public last weekend, archdiocesan officials said, there have been no other claims of abuse against either priest. [Another lawsuit against Cummings had already been filed in June.] A penchant for fanciful invention When Paul Edwards was growing up in Newton, his friends recall, he returned home from his 1974 summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard to tell them that he had been cast that summer as one of the shark's victims in the filming of ''Jaws.'' The hit film opened a year later - without Edwards. [Edwards was seven years old that summer. Having spent time on beaches where crowds of vacationers had been used as extras, he imagined that he would appear in the film. The Globe repeated this anecdote in at least five subsequent articles without ever specifying that Edwards was seven years old at the time.] To his friends, that came as no surprise. Edwards, they said this week, has long had a penchant for fanciful invention, including critical details about his career and health [Robinson never presented any evidence to show that Edwards had misrepresented any aspect of his career or health.] During high school, three of his school chums [Foster supporters] said this week, he showed up at school one day to tell them his uncle had just died. [His uncle, actually a close family friend, did die.] After he transferred to Newton North High School, several of his friends remembered, he led others to believe that he was deaf. [Edwards took a sign languages course; signed to deaf friends --and why would this be relevant to sex abuse allegations?] To all of them, Paul Edwards was a teller of tall tales. There was no movie role. The uncle, they quickly learned, was alive. And his attempt to portray himself as deaf left them bewildered. [Repetition of information that is both irrelevant and incorrect.] Hallie Huffman Wells, who said she was once ''smitten'' with Edwards, said she could not recall anyone seriously challenging him on the stories he embroidered as a child because, she said, the fabrications seemed harmless. Now, however, it's different. [Who said this?] Wells, one of those who was fooled by Edwards's feigned deafness [Who else was fooled?], said that when she first tried to speak to Edwards, ''He'd use that hollow garbled voice like he couldn't understand me.'' But she said her interest evaporated when she learned that he was pretending to be hearing impaired. It was Father Foster who first told her Edwards wasn't deaf, she said. Foster and Mark Bennett, one of her friends, even drove her to a gas station where Edwards worked to prove that Edwards wasn't deaf. Over the years, and, some of his former friends [Foster supporters] said, in conversations that occurred within the last few months, Edwards has variously claimed to have played semipro hockey in the Montreal Canadiens organization [never made this claim], been a police officer on Martha's Vineyard [was a police officer], and become a paraplegic after spinal surgery [suffers from documented spinal condition; did require surgery]. But family friends [who?] said those accounts are not true. John Cappadona, who was in the wedding party for Edwards's first marriage in 1993, said Edwards called him on April 30 to discuss the alleged abuse and told him he met his first wife while playing hockey in Canada. Cappadona said he knew she had grown up next door, in Waltham. [If Cappadona was in the wedding party, why would Edwards make this claim years later?] Edwards uses a wheelchair, a self-described paraplegic who has become so accomplished as a disabled athlete that he was a member of the US Paralympics team at Nagano, Japan in 1998, where he competed as a downhill skier. [Robinson later claimed that his use of the term "self-described paraplegic" was not designed to shed doubt on Edwards' medical condition.] Cappadona, Priante, and a third schoolboy friend, Nicholas Abruzzi, [all Foster supporters- members of Linda Amicangioli's organized group] said in separate interviews that Edwards called them in late April and early May to raise the allegations against Cummings. Abruzzi said Edwards also told him that Foster acted ''inappropriately.'' But he took that as a reference to Edwards's claim, repeated in the lawsuit, that he went to Foster to complain about the rape by Cummings, and Foster told him to say nothing about it. [True] Abruzzi said he is mystified that Edwards would report a one-time act of abuse by one priest to a second priest he now states abused him multiple times. [This is common--victims are often revictimized when they turn to priests for help after having been molested by a priest. If Robinson had asked credible sources, they would have pointed this out.] Priante said he believes Edwards called him about the alleged abuse because, he said, ''Paul was fishing around to get me to join in a group making claims.'' [No support provided.] Even when Edwards led him to believe that Cummings was his only abuser, Priante said, ''I had doubts, because he had made so many things up before.'' [Such as?] Debra Bennett, who dated Edwards for several months at Newton North in the early 1980s, described him as ''kind of goofy, and also a complete flake.'' ''There was clearly something up with Paul,'' she said. ''He was someone who would very much embellish stories. ... He was a very cute guy and he was funny and silly, and that's why you'd like him - because he was cute and charismatic. But his behavior was just erratic.'' [As one would expect from someone who had been sexually abused.] ''Paul's stories just don't seem to add up over the years,'' said Bennett, who said she hasn't been in contact with Edwards since the mid-1980s. ''Most people have not kept in touch with him because it's just way too difficult to be a friend to him, when somebody's not telling the truth and embellishing. ... It's hard, because everybody liked Paul a lot because he does have a lot of really great, sweet qualities.'' Bennett said she cannot imagine that his allegations against the priests are true. ''If it's true,'' she said, ''it must have taken Paul so much courage to get up there and say this, and if he's not believed, how awful for him. On the other hand, if it's a lie, how awful for the person's life he's ruining.'' [Four paragraphs of innuendo.] [All of the people directly quoted in this story in reference to Edwards' credibility had earlier signed a letter of support for Foster in which they declared, without providing any evidence, that Edwards' claims were false.] Matt Carroll and Sacha Pfeiffer of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 8/22/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. More doubts surface about abuse allegations By Walter V. Robinson and Matt Carroll, Globe Staff, 8/23/2002 The lawyer for a former Newton resident who has accused two priests of molesting him in the 1980s said yesterday that he will seek to verify claims by his client that are now in doubt, even as new evidence [No evidence presented] arose that his client, Paul R. Edwards, misrepresented details of the allegations and of his own background. [Parker panicked under pressure from the Globe, but never doubted Edwards' story. The "evidence" consisted of false, irrelevant, or unverifiable claims made by Foster's legal and public relations team.] Eric J. Parker, the Boston attorney who filed the lawsuit last week for Edwards, said his law firm, Parker Scheer, has begun ''an enormous effort to look at the truthfulness'' of assertions made by Edwards in the lawsuit. [Parker reiterated at this time that he "totally believed" Edwards.] In yesterday's editions, the Globe, quoting more than a dozen people who grew up with Edwards [members of Linda Amicangioli's organized group of Foster supporters], as well as parents who were active in the two Newton parishes, raised questions about the truthfulness of his claim that he was sexually abused. [How would they know?] The Edwards acquaintances [Foster supporters] also portrayed him as a person prone to fanciful embellishments of his personal story, including false claims that he was deaf, that an uncle of his had died, that he had a role in the movie ''Jaws.'' [More repetition of irrelevant and/or wrong information] Last spring, he told some childhood friends [Foster supporters] that two Boston hockey stars helped him get a start in semipro hockey. In interviews yesterday, both players denied his account [because Edwards never made this claim, which is, in any case, irrelevant]. Arnold R. Rosenfeld, the former head of the state board that oversees the conduct of Massachusetts attorneys, said in an interview yesterday that rules of civil procedure require lawyers to investigate information that casts doubt on allegations that are at the center of clients' lawsuits. [Parker could not investigate because there was no information that actually shed doubt on the allegations. Instead, especially on Cummings, Edwards' credibility was confirmed.] ''If the investigation shows the allegations are not true, the attorney has an obligation to withdraw the suit,'' Rosenfeld said. [No connection made to this case.] In the lawsuit, Edwards accused Monsignor Michael Smith Foster, the archdiocese's top canon lawyer, and the late Rev. William J. Cummings of molesting him during the early 1980s when they served, respectively, at Sacred Heart and Our Lady Help of Christians parishes in Newton. Foster, like 19 other priests who have faced such allegations since February, is on leave at his own request [he had no choice] while the Boston Archdiocese investigates the validity of the charges. In a brief statement yesterday, Foster's attorney, Joseph L. Doherty Jr., said he was ''encouraged'' by the revelations [false information achieves the status of "revelations"] in the Globe. Doherty said, however, that ''our primary focus is the dismissal of this unfounded lawsuit so that Monsignor Foster can get his life back.'' Edwards asserts in his lawsuit that Cummings raped him in a hotel room during a December 1982 overnight trip to New York City, sponsored by the youth group at Our Lady Help of Christians. He also alleges that Foster molested him numerous times between 1980 and 1985 in Foster's rectory bedroom at Sacred Heart. The Globe reported yesterday that peers of Edwards and adults who chaperoned the trip have said the annual visit to New York City was a day trip, with no overnight stay. [That the rape took place on an overnight ski trip was confirmed.] At Sacred Heart, the pastor and three youth group members who had rectory jobs in the 1980s said in interviews that there was a strict policy barring visitors from the rectory's second floor. It would not have been possible, they say, for Edwards to have spent so much time in Foster's living quarters without being noticed. [If Robinson had asked Foster, he would have discovered that this policy was not enforced and that Edwards had visited Foster’s bedroom on several occasions.] The lawsuit appears to contain several other errors. [How many?] The alleged rape in December 1982 predates by six months the assignment of Cummings to the Newton parish. Edwards claimed in the lawsuit that he visited Foster at St. Jean's parish in Newton, after Foster returned from studying in Washington in 1988, to tell him of the rape by Cummings. Foster did not return until July 1989, according to archdiocesan records, and it was to St. Jerome's in Arlington, not St. Jean's in Newton. [As shown by the RCAB’s settlement with Edwards on the Cummings claim, minor discrepancies on dates are generally not seen as sufficient to warrant doubts about allegations of childhood sexual abuse.] In an interview late yesterday, Parker said he had already decided to amend his complaint to reflect that the visit occurred at St. Jerome's. Yesterday, new questions arose about Edwards's tendency to embellish his personal story [which was never established in the first place]. Two childhood friends, John Cappadona and Nicholas Abruzzi [Foster supporters], said Edwards told them last spring that two former professional hockey players - Jim Craig, hero of the 1980 US Olympic gold medal team, and Rick Middleton, a right winger for a dozen years with the Boston Bruins - had helped him land a spot on a semipro hockey team affiliated with the Montreal Canadiens. [Not true] Yesterday, both men said they had done no such thing. [because Edwards never made that claim]. ''Never heard of him,'' said Craig. [True] Middleton said he has known Edwards socially for about five years. ''I never helped him out with a semipro team,'' Middleton said. [This is a true statement because Edwards never made this claim. Middleton, Edwards' friend, was livid about the way his words had been twisted here.] Parker also represents Edwards in a federal lawsuit filed in Boston seeking monetary damages against two manufacturers of a monoski that Edwards said caused him to be injured while using it in December 1999. Filed in 2000, Edwards's suit contends that he suffered serious and permanent injuries while using the monoski while training for the US Disabled Ski Team. [Parker withdrew from this case citing problems created by the media and the Archdiocese.] He competes as a paraplegic and finished eighth in one downhill competition during the Paralympics held in Nagano, Japan in 1998. Parker said that despite questions raised in the Globe about Edwards's suit against the priests, he remains confident that his client's allegations are credible. ''Before we take any case,'' Parker said, ''we take great pains to review the facts with the client to determine whether the client is credible. We have no reason to believe Paul Edwards is not a credible person, despite this deluge'' of news coverage. Parker added that he hopes the Globe and Edwards's detractors ''measure the damage you're doing to this poor young man and his wife.'' David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests and a nationally known victims' rights activist, said yesterday that he expected some false allegations to surface during the church scandal and has dreaded the prospect. [Clohessy was not referring to Edwards case and has called for a reopening of the Foster investigation.] While he could not comment on the Edwards case because he doesn't know the details, Clohessy said, ''The problem of sexual abuse of kids by clergy is so horrifying that we desperately want to believe it doesn't happen or that it's greatly exaggerated. ''Our fear is that people will overreact and say, `See, see, it has been blown way out of proportion,' '' said Clohessy. But the problem is huge, he said, and there have been only a handful of false accusations that he is aware of. [Clohessy also complained that his words were taken out of context.] Stephen Kurkjian of the Globe Staff contributed to this report. This story ran on page B4 of the Boston Globe on 8/23/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company. Church files show more abuses By Michael Rezendes and Matt Carroll, Globe Staff, 12/13/2002 The allegations are stark: One raped a Hyde Park boy and walked away from the priesthood after impregnating a woman 17 years younger than him; another molested a West Roxbury boy while working as a Boy Scout leader; a third who abused a Framingham boy was later confined to a psychiatric facility. These accusations of priestly sexual abuse are contained in church records released yesterday in a sexual abuse lawsuit that has opened a window on pervasive child abuse by many priests of the Boston Archdiocese and the failure of church leaders to control the problem. The four personnel files - the latest of dozens being aired under a court order - also include records on Monsignor Michael Smith Foster, the only Boston priest of the 25 suspended this year to be cleared of abuse allegations. Roderick MacLeish Jr., an attorney with the firm Greenberg Traurig, which represents about half of the 450 claims against the archdiocese, said the records show that sexual abuse committed by Boston priests was ''truly horrendous'' and that supervisors in the church failed to stop it. With Cardinal Bernard F. Law at the Vatican to discuss his possible resignation and a potential bankruptcy filing by the archdiocese, Donna M. Morrissey, his spokeswoman, said she could not comment on the records because ''they are the subject of ongoing litigation.'' But the records, like others released earlier, underscore that child sexual abuse was a problem in the archdiocese even before Law was installed as archbishop in 1984. Alleged victims of former priest Paul E. McDonald, for example, date their abuse to the early and mid-1960s, when McDonald was a priest at St. Joseph Church in Hyde Park and Cardinal Richard Cushing was the leader of the archdiocese. One said he was repeatedly molested by McDonald over five years, beginning when he was 10 years old, during outings to the Blue Hills in Canton, when McDonald would allow the boy to hold the steering wheel of his car. In a weekly routine, McDonald would fondle the boy in the car while driving, then stop and masturbate in front of him, the alleged victim said. He added that the priest also orally raped him. Another said he was repeatedly molested by McDonald after a fire destroyed his Hyde Park home and killed two of his brothers. McDonald, the victim said, befriended his family and then molested him and his cousin over a period of two years. McDonald left the priesthood in 1976 after he was granted a one-year leave by Cardinal Humberto S. Medeiros, in a letter in which Medeiros asked that God grant McDonald guidance ''during these difficult days.'' Three months later, McDonald wrote to the archdiocese for financial assistance, saying that he and a woman companion had been fired from their jobs and that the woman was enduring ''a most difficult pregnancy.'' McDonald, reached at his home last night, said he was married to the woman when he asked for help but did not receive any assistance. He wouldn't comment on church records showing he molested several Hyde Park boys. ''I really don't want to say anything about it,'' he said. In the case of the Rev. John M. Cotter, who died in 1989, men and women said they were molested as boys and girls in West Roxbury and Beverly during the 1960s and 1970s. Cotter molested them in swimming pools, in church rectories, and in motel rooms, they said. In one instance, after fondling two boys in a motel room, Cotter allegedly told the boys to kneel and pray or they would go to hell for committing a mortal sin. In 1995 and 1998, the archdiocese settled with seven of Cotter's victims for a total of $575,000. According to additional insurance records obtained independently by the Globe, four more cases against Cotter were settled for $361,000. Other Cotter victims called church officials to report his abuse. Two brothers also from West Roxbury said that in about 1967, when they were about 13, they accompanied Cotter on a trip to New York. In a motel room, Cotter asked them if they had ever played with their penises. He then molested them. Cotter served in St. Theresa of Avila Church in West Roxbury from 1965 to 1973 and was transferred to St. John the Evangelist in Beverly, where he would also be accused of sexually molesting children. He was placed on sick leave in 1980 and never returned to active ministry. In the Rev. Robert E. Barrett's case, the first sexual abuse allegation against him appears in church files in 1993. In the case, a man reported that Barrett, while a priest at St. George's parish in Framingham in the 1960s, had grabbed his genitals during an overnight trip to Maine. Barrett made a partial admission to the accusation, writing to Law in 1994 that, ''there was no genital activity but my actions were suspect, and the allegations were credible.'' Still, Law reassigned him to St. Rose's parish in Chelsea. The archdiocese settled the case in 1994 for $30,000. A second claim was made by a man who said Barrett had sexually abused him from 1967 to 1968, when Barrett was assigned to St. Mary's parish in Hull. The church settled that claim in 1999 for $20,000. By the time Barrett was placed on permanent disability, in July 1995, he had served in eight parishes and at several hospitals and nursing homes. Barrett also was committed to McLean Hospital in Belmont. Law wrote empathetically to Barrett at that time: ''Please know, Robert, that you have my forgiveness and my love. '' The documents released yesterday include more than 400 pages about Monsignor Foster, accused in a lawsuit in August of repeatedly molesting a Newton boy over several years during the 1980s. But Foster's accuser, Paul R. Edwards, withdrew his lawsuit after substantial questions arose over the truth of his allegations and Edwards's credibility. [Questions were based on misinformation supplied by Foster supporters and repeatedly reported in the Globe.] The files contain an edited transcript of an archdiocesan interview with Edwards in September, in which Edwards described a friendly relationship with Foster that evolved into horseplay, wrestling, and incidents in which the two napped together in their underwear. During the interview, Edwards cited just one incident in which he said Foster became sexually aroused. His account contradicted the numerous incidents of sexual molestation he had claimed in his lawsuit. [There is no discrepancy: sexual abuse is not measured by perpetrators’ level of sexual excitement. Edwards’ account in his interview was exactly the same as the descriptions provided in his lawsuit. As Amy Strickland, one of Foster’s lawyers, wrote in an email to Church investigator Sean Connor on 9/14/2002, “As for Michael’s contact with the media, I was told that …the only contact with the media had been the substance of the new claim (essentially the same alleged victim and fundamentally identical charges) and that Michael would be issuing a statement.”] When church officials interviewed Foster in August, he answered ''yes'' when asked whether Edwards had ever been in his bedroom, but said he could not recall whether Edwards had ever sat on his bed. In that interview, Foster said it was common for adults and teenagers to visit the upstairs suites of priests, where they had both offices and bedrooms. [No mention of contrary information supplied by Foster supporters and repeatedly reported in the Globe.] In an interview last night, Foster said Edwards's contradictory accounts [no contradiction established.] are false. And while he said it is possible that Edwards might have been in his living quarters in the rectory, it would never have occurred without others being present - including Edwards's own parents during one Christmas party at the parish, Sacred Heart in Newton. [Foster had already admitted being alone in his bedroom with Edwards. The presence of Edwards’ parents on one occasion does not preclude criminal activity on another.] Foster expressed incredulity that the archdiocese would release an incomplete file that appears to exclude almost all of the exculpatory evidence [such as?] the archdiocese gathered between mid-September and Oct. 30, when the church finally cleared Foster. ''This is a helluva way to restore my reputation,'' Foster said, referring to the archdiocese's promise to take steps to do so. Sacha Pfeiffer and Walter V. Robinson of the Globe Staff contributed to this story. This story ran on page A62 of the Boston Globe on 12/13/2002
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