CAMBRIDGE (MA)
Chicago Tribune
From Tribune news services
Published February 8, 2005
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Paul Shanley, a defrocked priest who became a focal point for the sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church, was convicted on Monday of raping and assaulting a boy when he was a parish priest in suburban Boston in the 1980s.
Shanley, 74, was one of the few priests to face criminal charges in the scandal, and his conviction came in a case in which prosecutors relied almost solely on one accuser, who said he had repressed the memory of the abuse until reading newspaper articles about Shanley a few years ago.
The panel of seven men and five women deliberated nearly 15 hours before convicting Shanley on two counts of child rape and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14.