From the Guam Daily Post story
Mr. Chen gives me too much credit. In fact, other than being willing to be the one to keep the news in the news, I don't deserve any credit. APURON DOES.
I didn't accuse Apuron of molesting anyone. John Toves, Roy Quintanilla, Walter Denton, Doris Concepcion, Roland Sondia, and Mark Apuron did.
I didn't run Apuron out of town. Apuron ran out of town.
I didn't tell young men that they couldn't be priests in the Archdiocese of Agana unless they joined the Neocatechumenal Way, Apuron did.
I didn't create a neo-only seminary and then pretend that it was not a neo-only seminary in order to raise money for it, Apuron did.
I didn't create what now appears to be a fake charitable corporation that for nearly a quarter of a century solicited money from the public to care for the poor and instead used the funds for personal reasons, Apuron did.
I didn't craft a deed that gave away control of a mega-million dollar property to a shadow board, Apuron did.
I didn't pay for a false certificate of title for said property, Apuron's attorney did.
I didn't illicitly - and in violation of canon law - terminate the pastorship of Fr. Paul Gofigan, Apuron did.
I didn't publicly trash Msgr. James Benavente, Apuron did.
I didn't ordain men I knew who shouldn't be ordained, Apuron did.
In short: Apuron did, Apuron did, Apuron did.
And most, if not all, of these stories were already news before I posted about them in JungleWatch. So what exactly did I do, Alexander Chen?
It is absurd to think that the pope and powerful Roman cardinals are even reading my blog let alone being influenced by it. What a laugh.
Let's look at the list of people I would have had to influence to get where we are:
- Over 155 alleged victims
- Many attorneys
- Federal judges and magistrates
- Superior court judges
- The Pope
- Cardinal Burke
- Archbishop Hon
- Archbishop Byrnes
- Several other powerful church prelates
- All of the local media
- Hundreds of local faithful
- etc., etc., etc.
Wow, I must be really good. To believe Mr. Chen, I would have had to con all these people and keep conning them. Really? A guy with a blog? Or was it because I had facts? documents? truth? And more importantly because of what Apuron himself did: HE RAN.
And by the way, Apuron was in perfect health when he ran. In fact, let's revisit that moment because Apuron's defenders like to cast his running in the current context of the mega allegations that have now poured forth.
Apuron ran to Rome just days after Roy Quintanilla came forward on May 17, 2016. We know this because of this series of pictures taken by a Vatican photographer on May 25, 2016:
Archbishop Apuron runs to the Pope from Undercover Neo on Vimeo.
Now let's review.
At the time Roy Quintanilla came forward, there was no law in place lifting the civil statute of limitations on sex crimes against minors. In fact, there wasn't even any talk about it yet. Roy Quintanilla had NO legal recourse at all. In fact, it was Apuron who had all the legal power. He could have simply sued Roy for defamation and there wouldn't have been a thing Quintanilla could have done about it. Attorney David Lujan might have been standing next to Quintanilla, but at that point, there was nothing Lujan could have done either.
Apuron had already shown his willingness to sue as he had already threatened to do so to both John Toves and myself. So why didn't he threaten to sue Roy? In fact, why DIDN'T he sue Roy? At this point there was only one allegation from someone who hadn't lived on Guam for many years. And yet this was reason to run to the Pope?
As already mentioned in the previous post, Australian Cardinal Pell had been accused of the same thing as Apuron. And Pell responded by immediately leaving Rome for Australia to face his accusers and exonerate himself, while Apuron did exactly the opposite.
Yet, Mr. Chen and others want you to believe that I am the cause of Apuron's downfall and the reason he is "dying."
Of course, Mr. Chen's pathetic attempt to impugn me as the cause of all this is as absurd as any sane person believing the Vatican has the resources to render a verdict that will even matter in the civil sphere. It won't. Apuron's guilt or innocence (or his liability since it is a civil and not a criminal case), will be determined in our own Superior and Federal District Courts, NOT the Vatican.
But to answer Mr. Chen's question: "what benefit did you get..." The answer is absolutely nothing, unless you want to count the 4 subscribers I have at $5.00 per month:
In fact this has not only cost me 4 years of my life, but threats on my life, and much, much more. So why did I do it? The question is: DID WHAT? Report on the news? Run a blog?
For those who don't know, keeping injustice in the news was something I had already long since been doing:
In 2008, I learned that Guam was the easiest place in the nation to get an abortion because of our scandalous lack of pro-life legislation. In response, I and a friend initiated The Esperansa Project which essentially exposed the scandal about Guam's almost completely unregulated abortion industry, and then as we tried to get legislation through, we began exposing the legislators who opposed it.
In addition to The Esperansa Project, I maintained a web log at GuamOpenGovernment.org. If you follow any of the work I did there, you will notice that senators who played a major role in trying to derail our legislation are no longer senators. And I (and others) accomplished this simply by keeping the injustice in the news.
(Note: While Senator Aguon was a major opponent at one point, he later became our greatest ally. When he did, I offered to take down the posts showing his former opposition to our legislation. To his credit he asked me to leave it up because it was the truth about what he did and he was sorry for it.)
When I learned of the injustice against Fr. Paul, and later Msgr. James, I simply did what I was already doing: keeping injustice in view. At the time, I had no idea that doing so would lead to the uncovering of decades of debris of the type we are now seeing. I recounted all of this in Orchestrated.
Lastly, I find Mr. Chen's quoting of following scripture to be quite ironic:
God is the God of history and he is the God that "chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong" (1 Cor. 1:27 RSV)
It's ironic because Archbishop Apuron was the most powerful man on Guam. More powerful than any government official because he could not be voted out of office. In fact, this is why he often bragged: "No one can get me." And he was right!
Also, he was not subject to any open government law that would permit us to view records. And of course, there was the centuries of fear inculcated into the Catholic faithful that kept so many from "speaking against the priest."
By contrast, I had no position, no money, no power, no authority, no pulpit, no newspaper, no radio station - all of things Apuron had. And I had everything to lose and nothing to gain. And when we look at the people who finally did bring the house down on Apuron, we see that it was the elderly and infirm who kept up their rosaries and their signs, Sunday after Sunday, walking and walking.
So at least Mr. Chen is right about something. God really DID chose the "weak...to shame the strong."
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