The following article was posted on Cornwall Frehold Standard [USA] on 12 June 2008
After reading Claude McIntosh's nice article (Coffee Break June 7) about Father Gary Ostler I was compelled to share some facts about Father Gary being slander on a website. I was working at the Cornwall Jail at the time names of so-called sex abusers were being posted on the internet. A person involved with a website visited inmates at the jail. I was sitting 10 feet from the visit area when I heard an inmate claim he was abused by a couple of priests in the Cornwall area years before. He claimed Father Gary was one of those priests. He went back to his cell block, about 15 feet from my desk, and told the other inmates that he was going to make a lot of money as a result of his accusations. He then stated that it never happened, but who could prove it didn't. Soon after Father Gary told his parishioners that his name was on a website and that he was innocent of the false allegations. I told Father Gary and the other priest whose name was mentioned by the inmate what I had heard and that I would testify to that fact.
I know the toll that those false accusations had on Father Gary (and other innocent people). We spoke of it and the trauma it caused him. I can only imagine how I would have felt, and done, if I had been slandered on a website, as happened to numerous innocent people. I have no doubt that Father Gary was a victim of a vicious slur, and I have no doubt that it affected him dearly. I just wanted to share this with the good people of Cornwall so that they remember not to believe everything they are told without sound proof. Certainly sex abuse happened in Cornwall, there is no denying that. However, a lot of good people were falsely, and publicly, accused in the feeding frenzy of false accusations.
Father Gary was one of them and he did not deserve what it did to him.