Episcopal Church Treasurer Sentenced to Five Years for Embezzlement

Episcopal News Service. July 25, 1996 [96-1524]

(ENS) Dismissing claims of former Episcopal Church treasurer Ellen Cooke that mental illness combined with stress caused her to embezzle more than $2 million from the church, United States District Court Judge Maryanne Trump Barry departed from court guidelines, July 10, to hand Cooke a stiffer than usual sentence of five years in prison.

Cooke's attorney, Plato Cacheris, said later that Cooke will appeal the sentence, but may start her incarceration as scheduled, August 26, while the appeal is pending.

While Cacheris had argued that the sentence should be less than normally stipulated by the federal guidelines because Cooke suffered from a type of "bipolar" mental disorder, Barry called the psychiatric defense "spurious" and instead condemned Cooke's efforts to avoid responsibility.

"This defendant deliberately and meticulously, and with knowledge then and now, looted the national church over a period of years with one reason and one reason only -- to live the life of someone she was not," Barry said. Noting that she has rarely ordered a stiffer sentence than the guidelines recommend, Barry nonetheless said that the circumstances of Cooke's case "scream for an upward departure."

Cooke, who was national treasurer from 1986 until the end of 1994, pleaded guilty January 24 to tax evasion and transporting stolen money across state lines in connection with the embezzlement that occurred over the last four years of her tenure. Funds siphoned from a number of accounts went to purchase and renovate a house in Montclair, New Jersey, and a farm in Virginia, as well as to pay her children's private school tuition.

A "flagrant" abuse of trust

Asking "Is nothing sacred any more," Barry said that the crime was particularly heinous because it involved a church. A church, she said, "is different from a bank. It's different from a teller taking ten thousand bucks from the till."

Cooke, she added, was no different from a common thief. "She did not wear a mask or use a gun," she said, but did not need to because of the trust placed in her as a top official of a religious institution.

Barry said that she based her decision to raise the sentence on the loss of confidence that resulted for "an institution that performs an essential function in the care of the needy," the disruption caused in the church's ability to "support its ministry at home and abroad," and on the "flagrant" nature of the abuse of trust.

A letter from senior staff of the Episcopal Church describing the wide ranging effects of the embezzlement also contributed strongly to her sense that the damage done required a greater sentence, she said.

Saying, "I condemn this crime and the greed that caused it," Barry excoriated Cooke for her refusal to "accept responsibility for one's actions, blaming everyone and everything except oneself."

The five-year sentence, which exceeds the normal maximum suggested by the federal guidelines by 14 months, will be served at Cooke's request at the Federal Prison Camp for Women at Alderson, West Virginia, so that Cooke can be near her family in Virginia. Cooke could earn a slight reduction in her sentence through "good time," but parole is no longer permitted under the federal guidelines.

Barry ordered Cooke to present herself at the prison and to serve three years of supervised release following the imprisonment. She is also to pay $75,000 to the church in additional restitution, and may participate in a mental health program if she desires, the judge said.

For the purposes of restitution, Barry accepted the church's accounting that showed the theft totaled $2.2 million, rather than the approximately $1.5 million claimed by Cooke, but noted that "restitution can only be made according to the ability to pay." To date the church has recovered about $1.6 million of the stolen funds, including a $1 million insurance settlement, approximately $500,000 from the sale of properties owned by Cooke and her husband, Nicholas, and about $100,000 in other cash and assets claimed from the Cookes. A civil suit brought against the Cookes was settled by the church in March.

Parish looks for closure

Sitting in the same Newark, New Jersey, courtroom where she pleaded guilty, Cooke sat impassively through the two-hour hearing, rising only once to say softly, "No, your honor," when asked if she had any comment to make. She was accompanied by a few supporters, but by no members of her family. She left the immediately after the hearing without speaking, ushered out of the courtroom by court marshals.

Barbara Fondeur, junior warden at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in Montclair, New Jersey, where Nicholas Cooke served as rector during the time of the embezzlement, watched the proceedings with several other women from the parish in hopes, they said, that it would help them put the embezzlement's pain behind them.

"I think we wanted to bear witness and have final closure for the people of St. Luke's," Fondeur said. "It has been difficult for us as individuals and for us as a congregation. She was our fellow worshiper. She was our friend. This is what we had to see through."

Fondeur called the sentence fair, "when you think of the impact of the deed and the pain it has caused. She took from those who were most vulnerable."

Nicholas Cooke, who resigned from the priesthood, has not been charged with criminal or ecclesiastical misconduct.

Cooke will appeal sentence

While Cacheris declined to comment on the arguments he would use to support Cooke's appeal, he indicated at the time of the sentencing that Barry's dismissal of the psychiatric defense might be one of several grounds. He called Cooke a "fundamentally good person" who has done "many commendable things in her life." Unfortunately, he said, "she suffers from this illness."

In a memorandum to the court, he said that Cooke's psychiatrist diagnosed her as having an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder as well as suffering "periods of hypomanic behavior and periods of depressive symptoms." She "cracked," Cacheris said, under the high stress of serving in a position for which she was not qualified during a time when she carried the personal burdens of suffering a miscarriage, failing in vitro fertilization, and coping with her parents' serious illnesses.

But Barry agreed with Assistant United States Attorney Robert Ernst who called the defense ploy "a charade," and who stressed a second psychiatrist's observation that Cooke was able to function quite rationally and competently throughout the four years of the embezzlement. Her claim to have forgotten the specific events of her embezzlement because of the personality disorder, he said, in particular was "selective" and a "carefully calculated" fabrication.

"I am absolutely convinced that the defendant did not suffer from a significantly reduced mental capacity when she committed the crime she committed," Barry said. "She performed every task very well, including embezzling $2 million."

When Cacheris tried to show evidence Cooke's personality disorder, observing that "she's a control freak," Barry snapped back, "So am I."

"She's obsessive-compulsive," added Cacheris.

"Aren't we all?" Barry answered.

A schedule for filing briefs in the appeal process and for a court hearing will be set by the United States Appeals Court in Philadelphia, Cacheris said. He said Cooke might begin her sentence as scheduled, or ask to be released on bail pending her appeal. "We are deciding that now," he said.

Staff letter plays key role

Barry read aloud most of a one-and-a-half-page letter written by seven members of the senior staff of the national church, including Presiding Bishop Edmond Browning and House of Deputies President Pamela Chinnis, to support her assessment of the harm the embezzlement caused the church's ministry. The staff members, who were invited to offer input into the sentencing process, argued against the defense efforts to have the sentence reduced to less than the guidelines suggested.

"While we have no desire for retribution or the imposition of more hurt on Mrs. Cooke's family," the staff members wrote, "it... is our collective belief that a lenient sentence would add further to the damages that we have suffered."

The financial impact has been severe as contributions to the national church have declined, and even other denominations have reported that "their contributions have suffered because of the ripple effect of Mrs. Cooke's actions," the letter stated, but "the psychic impact on our staff and organization has been more debilitating."

Former staff members who lost jobs because of the church's economic retrenchment "cannot be convinced that there is no direct correlation between her actions and the loss of their employment," the letter stated. "Beneficiaries of ministry programs that have been closed due to declining income share the same impression."

Cacheris challenged the letter as making unsubstantiated claims, but declined, after conferring with Cooke, when Barry asked if he wanted to hold a separate sentencing hearing to review the letter's statements. Cacheris later said Cooke had not wanted to endure an additional hearing.

Presiding Bishop sees end of painful chapter

Following the sentence, Browning noted that "the judge herself recognized the enormity of the tragedy of this embezzlement and its effects over these last 18 months on our church." Since the theft was discovered, he said, the task of national staff, as stewards of church funds, "has been restitution of what has been stolen, the restoration of confidence, and the assurance of a financial operation of soundness and integrity."

Browning added, "As members of a faith community, we have faced the equally difficult task of coming again and again to our knowledge of sin, repentance, redemption and healing." As the day of sentencing marks "the end of an enormously painful chapter, may it mark as well a beginning characterized by our knowledge that all is possible in Christ," he said. "My prayers are with Ellen Cooke and her family."

When Cooke's case came under the jurisdiction of the federal courts, Chinnis noted, "it was removed completely from any influence or control by the Episcopal Church, though there were many who wondered why the leadership of the church could not hasten a decision in this case." Now, she said, "for good or ill, the legal justice system has spoken."

Fortunately, Chinnis said, the church has managed to recover most of the monies that were taken "so the damage to our evangelism and outreach programs will not be permanent." A new financial team, she stressed, "has restored integrity within our system" and helped develop "additional means to minimize our future vulnerability."

She added, "We can only pray that God will bring healing to all who have been affected by these acts and that we can move on to do the work God has given us to do."

[thumbnail: Former National Treasurer...]