CAMBRIDGE (MA)
Lexington Herald-Leader
By Pam Belluck
NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - A day after he says he recovered memories that he was abused by a priest, a 27-year-old man was talking to a lawyer about pursuing a lawsuit against the Roman Catholic Church, according to testimony and documents presented yesterday in the criminal trial of the now-defrocked priest.
The testimony was brought out in the trial of Paul R. Shanley, who became a lightning rod in the clergy sexual abuse scandal in the Catholic Church that broke in Boston in early 2002. Shanley is accused of molesting the man when he was 6 to 12 years old by pulling him out of Christian doctrine classes at St. Jean's Parish in Newton and raping him.
Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano, contends that the accuser concocted his accusations to join a lawsuit with three other men against the Archdiocese of Boston. Last year, the archdiocese paid the accuser, now a suburban Boston firefighter, $500,000 to settle the case. Since then, prosecutors have dropped the other three men from the criminal case, pursuing only the 27-year-old accuser's allegations.
Yesterday, the jury heard testimony from a psychologist who examined the accuser on Feb. 12, 2002, when he was an Air Force policeman in Colorado.
Posted by kshaw at January 29, 2005 06:06 AM