Inky, Rolling Stone Ignore Detective Walsh Bombshell

The Sounds of Silence

By Ralph Cipriano
for BigTrial.net

If you want a perfect illustration of what's wrong with the media, let's talk about The Philadelphia Inquirer and Rolling Stone, and their stubborn refusal to deal with how they blew to hell the "Billy Doe" fake rape spree story.

Last Tuesday on this blog, we printed a news story about a 12-page affidavit filed in Common Pleas Court by retired Detective Joe Walsh. We also printed a verbatim copy of the affidavit. In the document, Walsh, the D.A.'s lead detective on the Philly archdiocese sex abuse scandal, detailed one lie after another that he caught Billy Doe/Danny Gallagher telling. And then Walsh wrote that he concluded three times that Gallagher wasn't telling the truth when he claimed he was raped as a 10 and 11 year-old altar boy in separate attacks by two priests and a schoolteacher.



In his affidavit, Walsh also detailed the numerous times he told the prosecutor in the case, former Assistant District Attorney Mariana Sorensen, that Gallagher wasn't a credible witness, and that the evidence in the case contradicted Gallagher's allegations of abuse. None of this material, of course, was ever turned over to the defense, in violation of federal law. The entire 12-page affidavit is a textbook example of prosecutorial misconduct that may not only get the schoolteacher out of jail, but it may blow out of the water any possible retrial of Msgr. William J. Lynn. And it came straight from the mouth of a retired detective, who has nothing to gain by saying any of this, except, of course, to clear his conscience. In the news business, that's what we call a reliable source.

But what's been the response of the Inquirer, which in the past seven years has printed 59 fake Billy Doe got raped stories? And Rolling Stone, which printed a long Sabrina Rubin Erdely fake gang rape story in 2011 on altar boy Billy? Cue Simon and Garfunkel singing The Sounds of Silence.

Although the Inquirer has had the Walsh affidavit since last Wednesday, they've decided they'll continue to pretend that it's just not happening.

Last week, Amy Buckman, the Inquirer's spokesperson, wrote in an email, "Thanks for the alert," after I forwarded her my blog post about the Walsh affidavit, as well as a copy of the affidavit.

At least one Inky reporter, columnist Christine Flowers, gets it. On her radio show Sunday night on WPHT, where I was a guest, Flowers, a lawyer herself, compared the Lynn case to the infamous Scottsboro Boys case of the 1930s. In that case, nine African-American teenagers were falsely accused and railroaded in Alabama for allegedly raping a couple of white women.

Of course, none of it was true. Flowers may be right. One day, we may look at the Catholic witch hunts conducted under Seth Williams, and view them in the same way we now view the racism that pervaded the Scottsboro Boys trials back in 1930s Alabama.

Because it's only in an atmosphere of extreme prejudice where you don't need evidence to convict people, just false witnesses telling phony stories about rape that fit the prejudices of the day.

Meanwhile, back at the Inquirer, Buckman and other editors have not responded to subsequent requests for comment on their continued slumber through the complete unraveling of the Billy Doe
story.

As I have noted on this blog before, the Inquirer's posture in any major case coming out of the courts is to blindly side with the prosecutors. The Inky playbook: print allegations as proven facts, convict the defendants pre-trial in the press as already guilty, and along the way, forever taint the jury pool.

The problem when you're functioning as press agents for the prosecution, however, is what happens if they get it wrong? That's precisely what's happened with the Billy Doe case. The prosecutors were also bad actors. If you believe the Walsh affidavit, the prosecutors were guilty of intentional misconduct by putting a star witness on the stand that they knew wasn't credible.

This story should matter because Gallagher's testimony sent four men to jail, one of whom died there. It also generated sensational headlines for the past seven years about a vicious rape spree that according to Detective Walsh never really happened.

In the Inquirer's defense, the Inky newsroom right now is preoccupied with an ongoing game of musical chairs. All 200 journalists in the newsroom are in the process of re-applying for their own jobs, which have been posted.

It's the same game the newspaper played back in March with top editors. Everybody changes seats, and then shakes hands on the new, improved Inquirer. That's what they do over at the Inky, rather than write about what might be going on with Detective Walsh. Play musical chairs.

At least the Inky has a spokesperson who fields my questions and occasionally responds. Over at Rolling Stone, where they've already had to retract one Sabrina Rubin Erdely fake gang rape story, I never even get a response, no matter how many times I email their editors.

In the old days, newspapers used to have ombudsmen who would investigate readers' complaints, and when they screwed up, the ombudsman would write about why. But now they can continue to pretend they're infallible.

Meanwhile, public trust in journalism is at an all-time low. It's sad to see the Inky and Rolling Stone doing their part to keep it there.