CAMBRIDGE (MA)
Anchorage Daily News
The Associated Press
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (January 13, 2:03 pm AST) - Prosecutors asked a judge Thursday to bar the media from using photos or televised images of an alleged victim of Paul Shanley during the defrocked priest's upcoming child rape trial.
Assistant District Attorney Lynn Rooney argued that photographing the accuser would place additional stress on the man, the only one of four alleged victims remaining in the case. Two other men who also accused Shanley of raping them as children were dropped from the case, and prosecutors have said they expect to drop a third accuser.
"It will be extremely difficult to ask him to testify to those details with a camera right there," Rooney told Superior Court Judge Stephen Neel.
"He is the only one left," she said. "It is really too big a burden to place on one young man."
The man, who is now in his 20s, says Shanley raped him while he was a young boy in the 1980s. He said he did not recall the abuse until three years ago, when the clergy sex abuse scandal first erupted in Boston.
Posted by kshaw at January 14, 2005 02:02 AM