CAMBRIDGE (MA)
Guardian
Wednesday January 26, 2005 6:31 PM
By DENISE LAVOIE
AP Legal Affairs Writer
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - A woman who taught Catholic education classes at Paul Shanley's parish testified Wednesday in the former priest's child rape trial that she couldn't remember him pulling students from her classroom.
Prosecutors have said Shanley's modus operandi was to take boys from the classes, saying he needed discipline them, then sexually abuse them in the church bathroom, the pews, the rectory and the confessional.
Prosecution witness Ann Marie Rousseau, a member of St. Jean's parish for 32 years, taught Shanley's accuser, a now 27-year-old man who says Shanley repeatedly raped him between 1983 and 1989, when he was between the ages of 6 and 12.
Asked by prosecutor Lynn Rooney whether she had to discipline the children, Rousseau said there was a lot of ``high-energy boy behavior'' in the class.
Under questioning by Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano, Rousseau said she would call the director of the education program, not Shanley, if she couldn't handle the discipline on her own. She said Shanley never pulled students from her class, but she also wasn't the only person who taught Shanley's accuser at St. Jean's.
Posted by kshaw at January 26, 2005 01:06 PM