Church secretary gets 9 months for embezzlement Brunswick woman, 56, took $516,000

PORTLAND — A Brunswick woman who embezzled $516,000 from the Roman Catholic church where she had been a trusted employee for 25 years was sentenced Friday in Superior Court to nine months and a day in jail.

Justice Paul Fritzsche ordered Muriel Fournier to report Wednesday to begin her sentence. The aggregated theft charge to which she pleaded guilty last May carried a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison.

Fournier, 56, addressed the court briefly, expressing sorrow for what she termed a betrayal of her fellow parishioners at St. John the Baptist Church.

“I am very sorry for the anguish I have caused,” she said. “I hope some day that the parish and my family will find it in their hearts to forgive me.”

Eighteen relatives accompanied Fournier to the courthouse and several of them spoke on her behalf. Her daughter, Doris Mapes, a former nun from Cleveland, said her mother’s crime was the result of her inability to withstand the demands put upon her by her son, Michael.

“She didn’t know how to say `no.’ ” Mapes said. “It was beyond her power to stand up to her only son. He was demanding and manipulative (and) lazy.”

“I don’t agree with what she did, but a bad deed does not make a bad person,” Mapes said.

Michael Fournier, 28, and Shelley Ann Cook, 25, were indicted in July on aggregated theft charges for allegedly receiving most of the stolen money in order to finance an extravagant lifestyle. The couple remain free on bail and a prosecutor said they are expected to stand trial in September or October.

District Attorney Paul Aranson had recommended that Muriel Fournier be given no more than a year in jail, while her family members asked the judge that she be treated with leniency.

Her sentence also includes four years’ probation, with the requirements that she apologize to the parish, pay restitution and put in a minimum of 1,000 hours of community service.

Her lawyer, Joseph Field, said she already has begun volunteer work at a local hospital. Restitution was set in an amount of either $40 a week or 10 percent of the combined income of Muriel Fournier and her husband, whichever is larger.

Investigators said the embezzlement from one of Maine’s largest Catholic parishes took place over an 18-month period in which Fournier, who worked as parish secretary, cashed bogus checks and stole from church bank accounts.

The thefts came to light after the pastor, the Rev. Kenneth Thibodeau, confronted Fournier in January after he found discrepancies in financial records.