Jury starts deliberating in criminal trial of laicized priest Shanley

Published: 2005-02-04

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (CNS) -- Testimony in the child rape trial of laicized priest Paul R. Shanley ended Feb. 3 with the jury left to decide the validity of his 27-year-old accuser's recall of alleged criminal events reportedly involving Shanley in the 1980s. The 74-year-old Shanley, a main figure in the child sex abuse scandal that first rocked the Boston Archdiocese in 2002 and subsequently the entire U.S. church, could face life imprisonment if convicted on two counts of raping a child and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child. The accuser, who asked that his name not be used during the trial, testified that he had been repeatedly raped and molested in the 1980s but repressed his memories of these events until the clergy sex abuse scandal revived them. There were four men accusing Shanley when prosecutors indicted him in 2002, but the prosecution dropped the cases involving three as they either refused to testify or could not be found. The lone accuser received $500,000 from the Boston Archdiocese last year to settle his civil suit involving Shanley.

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