Woman testifies that Catholic Citizenship leader assaulted her :: EDGE Boston

Woman testifies that Catholic Citizenship leader assaulted her :: EDGE Boston

by Laura Kiritsy Bay Windows Thursday Oct 18, 2007

On the second day of the trial of former Catholic Citizenship Executive Director Larry Cirignano on misdemeanor assault and battery and civil rights violation charges, Sarah Loy, the victim of the alleged assault, described her confrontation with Cirignano to the jury. She said that during a Dec. 16 rally for VoteOnMarriage.org at Worcester City Hall calling for an end to same-sex marriage she was part of a group of people protesting the rally. Holding a MassEquality sign calling for "No discrimination in the constitution," Loy walked through the crowd of VoteOnMarriage supporters, stepped in front of the podium, and turned to face the crowd."I walked through the crowd. I wanted the crowd to see the message on my sign," said Loy.She told Worcester County Assistant District Attorney Joe Quinlan that after standing there for a few seconds holding her sign, she felt a pair of hands lay a firm grip on her shoulders. She turned around to find Cirignano, who had been a speaker at the rally and who was one of the lead organizers of the signature drive for the petition to place the VoteOnMarriage constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage on a statewide ballot. She said he told her in an angry voice that, "I had to get out of here now, get out of here right now."Loy said with his hands on her shoulders Cirignano began pushing her backwards through the crowd for about five or six feet before she fell back onto the ground, landing on her side. When she looked up from the ground, Cirignano was nowhere in sight. Loy told Quinlan she was crying after the incident and told police on the scene that she wanted to press charges against Cirignano.On cross-examination Cirignano’s attorney, Michael Gilleran, tried to paint a very different picture of what happened that day. He argued that rather than pushing Loy backwards, Cirignano held her from the back and escorted her out of the crowd. He said Loy fell not because Cirignano pushed her but because she tripped on someone else’s foot."Isn’t it a fact, Ms. Loy, that Mr. Cirignano put his arm on your back and escorted you into the crowd, then you tripped on a girl’s foot ... and you fell?" asked Gilleran. He showed her a photo of a woman in a purple jacket standing in the crowd at the rally and asked her if she tripped over her foot. Loy replied that she had not.Gilleran further alleged that she was starting to pick herself up from the ground when a group of fellow same-sex marriage supporters gathered around her. At that point Gilleran claimed that she intentionally went back down to the ground and began to cry. Loy denied that this was true.Other witnesses for the prosecution corroborated Loy’s story that Cirignano had shoved her to the ground. Richard Nangle, a reporter for the Worcester Telegram and Gazette who covered the rally and wrote about the incident, testified that while he was covering the event he saw one of the speakers, who he later learned was Cirignano, approach someone in the crowd."What I saw was someone approach the person who was pushed, push her, her head hit the ground, and he immediately turned [and] ran back to the podium," said Nangle.He said he was standing about six to eight feet away from Loy when the altercation took place. He said he went up to Loy after she hit the ground and found that she was crying."She had burst into tears. She was clearly extremely upset and hurt," said Nangle.The Rev. Aaron Payson, a local Unitarian Univeralist minister who had attended the rally to demonstrate his support for same-sex marriage and his opposition to VoteOnMarriage, also testified that he witnessed Cirignano push Loy."I actually observed a woman being forced backwards through the crowd and being pushed to the ground. ... I observed [Cirignano] push her at which point she fell to the ground," said Payson.As he cross-examined each of the prosecution’s witnesses Gilleran argued that none of them were close enough to Loy to see what actually happened. In Nangle’s case he also alleged that Nangle had tried to promote the story to his own advantage, giving interviews about the incident to other papers.Gilleran called one witness, Massachusetts Family Institute President Kris Mineau, at the start of the day’s proceedings, taking him out of turn to accommodate Mineau’s travel schedule. Mineau, the lead spokesperson for VoteOnMarriage, said he was speaking at the podium during the rally when Loy walked to the front of the crowd and held up her sign towards the audience. At that point he said he saw Cirignano walk over to Loy to escort her from the crowd."I saw Mr. Cirignano come diagonally across. I don’t know particularly how he did it in terms of, he was prodding her, moving her, to get her back from the crowd. That’s all I saw," said Mineau. He said from his vantage point on the podium he could not see the alleged confrontation.Asked by Gilleran whether or not he knew Cirignano to be peaceful by reputation, Mineau responded, "My knowledge of his reputation is he’s a very peaceful man."During his opening statement Quinlan said that Cirignano’s actions during the rally were a direct attack on Loy’s right to free speech."Sarah Loy decided to exercise her right of free speech, a right that all Americans enjoy, and she decided to do it in silence with a sign," said Quinlan. He said that because she exercised that right she was "grabbed, pushed, and knocked down by this defendant sitting here before you."Gilleran, during his opening statement, said that he would produce witnesses who would dispute the prosecutor’s version of events and prove Cirignano’s innocence. He held up a photo to the jury showing two women in the crowd at the rally, one in a purple coat and the other in a red jacket."They will come and tell you exactly what happened," said Gilleran.He also said the jury would learn about Cirignano’s past work as an advance man, working to set up political events. Gilleran said part of Cirignano’s training in this work involved learning to do crowd control, including a technique called "catch and release" in which a person puts his forearm onto someone else’s back to forcibly move them out of a crowd. Gilleran said Cirignano used this technique on Loy "and nothing more."The trial against Cirignano is not the only legal action springing from the incident at the December rally. Last month Shari Worthington of Worcester filed a criminal complaint against Loy for disturbing a lawful assembly. In her complaint, Worthington said she applied for the permit for the VoteOnMarriage rally on behalf of the Massachusetts Family Institute. There is a hearing scheduled for that complaint Oct. 29. Worcester County District Attorney Joe Early, Jr.’s office petitioned Worcester District Court to delay the trial against Cirignano until after that hearing on that grounds that placing Loy on the witness stand in Cirignano’s trial could force her to give testimony that would incriminate herself before the hearing on her criminal complaint; that request was denied. Loy declined to comment on the criminal complaint to Bay Windows.Judge David Despotopulos and the attorneys for both sides spent the first day of the trial, Oct. 16, hashing out a number of questions relating to how the trial would be conducted. Gilleran made a handful of motions before jury selection. He asked for the sequestration not only of witnesses but of everyone else in the courtroom, arguing that many of the attendees of the trial had close ties to the witnesses and that it was vital that they be ordered not to discuss the proceedings with witnesses outside the courtroom."Otherwise it is a back door to violation of the [sequestration] order" on the witnesses, argued Gilleran. Despotopulos rejected this motion. He also rejected a motion from Gilleran that would have kept Loy from entering the courtroom even after she had given her testimony as well as a motion that would have barred Early’s office from including evidence of Loy’s physical injury following the alleged assault.The judge also heard a request by Neil McGaraghan, an attorney for the Telegram and Gazette, that Nangle not be forced to testify at the trial. Nangle was subpoenaed to testify by Early’s office. McGaraghan argued that there were other eyewitnesses to the incident and that forcing Nangle to testify could harm his credibility as an impartial reporter, particularly if on cross-examination he was asked his personal opinion about the subject of the VoteOnMarriage rally, same-sex marriage."You then without a doubt have a supposedly neutral reporter having to reveal private feelings about the matter," said McGaraghan. (During his testimony, Nangle was not asked about his personal beliefs about civil marriage rights.)Quinlan responded that the prosecution wanted to call Nangle as a witness both because he was allegedly in closest proximity among all the eyewitnesses to the alleged incident and because he is the only eyewitness not affiliated either with Loy or with Cirignano.On the second day of the trial Despotopulos denied the Telegram and Gazette’s motion to quash the subpoena against Nangle.Since the incident Cirignano has stepped down from Catholic Citizenship and relocated to Virginia. He has told reporters, including Bay Windows, that he is leading another conservative Catholic advocacy organization, but he has not identified that organization.While Cirignano no longer resides in Massachusetts, some of his former allies in the fight against LGBT rights attended the first day of the trial to show their support. Most notably Brian Camenker, founder of the anti-LGBT group MassResistance, attended, and he chatted with Cirignano in the hallway of the courthouse during a recess. MassResistance has urged its members to support Cirignano and provided extensive information on the case, including copies of briefs, on its website.The trial is expected to wrap up on Oct. 19.