MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Herald
By Boston Herald editorial staff
Monday, September 26, 2005 - Updated: 01:44 PM EST
Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, a child rapist, is sitting in a jail cell today. Most right-minded people would agree that's exactly where he should be.
But Shanley is behind bars in large measure because of luck, and that should trouble anyone concerned about justice for victims of child rape.
Thanks to a loophole in state law, when Shanley left the Bay State in 1990 for sunny California, the statute of limitations on his crimes stopped ticking. Had he stayed in Massachusetts all that time, he probably wouldn't have faced prosecution because his accuser took years to report the crime. Lawmakers have the opportunity to right that wrong, and they should take it.
For years, child advocates have been calling for elimination of the 15-year statute of limitations in cases of child rape and certain other sex crimes – a law that has kept dozens of accused priests and others from facing criminal prosecution, since their accusers typically didn't report the crimes until adulthood.