The Patriot Ledger
January 15, 2010
http://www.enterprisenews.com/news/x1685416953/State-high-court-denies-pedophile-priest-a-new-trial
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| Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, center, the most notorious figure in the sex scandal that rocked the Boston Archdiocese, is shown just prior to the reading of a verdict in his trial Monday, Feb. 7, 2005, at Middlesex Superior Court in Cambridge, Mass. Shanley was convicted of raping and fondling a boy at his Roman Catholic church during the 1980s. He will be sentenced next week. Photo by Mark Garfinkel, Pool |
BOSTON — The state supreme court has rejected defrocked priest Paul Shanley’s appeal for a new trial.
In a ruling issued Friday, the Supreme Judicial Court upheld a lower court judge’s ruling denying Shanley a new trial.
Shanley, one of the central figures in the clergy sex abuse scandal within the Boston Archdiocese, had challenged his conviction for repeatedly raping a boy based on an ongoing debate in the psychiatric community over the validity and reliability of repressed memories.
The former priest was convicted in 2005 after a 27-year-old man testified that Shanley used to pull him out of catechism classes in a Newton parish and rape him, beginning when he was just 6 years old. The abuse happened in the 1980s.
Shanley’s lawyer, Robert Shaw Jr., argued that Shanley deserves a new trial because the jury relied on misleading, “junk science” testimony about repressed memories by prosecution witnesses.
The victim said he did not remember the abuse for two decades, until 2002, when memories came rushing back as he saw media reports about the clergy scandal unfolding in Boston.
Shanley, now 78, was assigned to St. Francis of Assisi in Braintree from 1967-69 and to Exodus House (a Catholic retreat for “alienated youth”) in Milton from 1976-79. He was accused of abusing several children during his time at both the Braintree church and the Milton retreat, among dozens of allegations.
Shanley was known in the 1960s and 1970s as a “street priest” who reached out to Boston’s troubled youth. Internal records showed that church officials were aware of sexual abuse complaints against him as early as 1967.
Shanley, who was defrocked in 2004, is serving a 12- to 15-year prison sentence at Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater.
All told, the U.S. Roman Catholic Church has paid more than $2.6 billion in settlements and related expenses tied to the clergy sex abuse since 1950, according to the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
The victim in the Shanley case received a $500,000 settlement from the Boston archdiocese about a year before Shanley went on trial.
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