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  Lawyers Deliver Opening Statements in Shanley Abuse Trial

The Associated Press, carried in Boston Herald [Cambridge MA]
January 25, 2005

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Former priest Paul Shanley told a 6-year-old boy, "If you tell, no one will believe you," before molesting him at a Newton parish in the early 1980s, a prosecutor said Tuesday.

The boy didn't tell anyone for nearly 20 years, recovering his memories of the alleged abuse only after hearing of media reports about the sex scandal in the Boston Archdiocese, Assistant District Attorney Lynn Rooney said.

"Those memories were buried deep inside," Rooney said during opening statements in Shanley's child rape trial in Middlesex Superior Court.

Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano, said the accuser made up the allegations to get in on the multimillion-dollar settlements for victims in the scandal.

The accuser repeatedly changed his story after coming forward in early 2002, Mondano said. And he said he would call expert witnesses to debunk the science behind so-called repressed memories.

"This case is, after all, about two things: old memories and really, really old memories," said Mondano, adding that the case against Shanley was "a vilification" orchestrated by "personal injury lawyers."

Rooney acknowledged that the man got $500,000 in a civil settlement with the archdiocese last year, but she said his willingness to testify publicly about being repeatedly raped by Shanley shows he is motivated by more than money.

The accuser was expected to testify on Wednesday.

Shanley, who turned 74 on Tuesday, faces three charges of raping a child and two charges of indecent assault and battery on a child. The maximum sentence would be life in prison.

He was once known as a long-haired priest in blue jeans who reached out to Boston's troubled youth in the late '60s. He was defrocked by the Vatican last year after being charged with sexually abusing boys at St. Jean's parish in Newton between 1979 and 1989.

Shanley became a lightning rod for public anger over the scandal after personnel documents were released showing church officials knew that he advocated sex between men and boys, yet they continued to transfer him from parish to parish.

The case originally involved allegations by four alleged victims, but it has since been whittled down to the one man, now 27, who says he was sexually abused by Shanley between 1983 and 1989, when he was between the ages of 6 and 12.

Rooney said the boy was taken out of religious education classes and digitally and orally raped by Shanley in the church bathroom, the pews, the rectory and in the confessional.

Shanley sometimes summoned the boy to the rectory to play cards. "The defendant would say, 'You lose, take off your clothes,"' and then molest him, Rooney said.

During her introduction, the prosecutor posted a photo of him as a curly haired 6-year-old boy on a screen in front of the jury box and repeated the priest's admonishment: "If you tell, no one will believe you."

In his opening, Mondano challenged the timing of when the alleged victim recovered his memories of the abuse.

According to Rooney, the accuser was a military police officer in Colorado when his fiancee called him in early 2002 to tell him about a Boston Globe article detailing another man's allegations against Shanley. That's when the memories of his own abuse came flooding back.

But Mondano said the man contacted lawyers in the Greenberg Traurig firm, which represented the majority of plaintiffs in an $85 million clergy sex abuse settlement with the Boston Archdiocese, "either before he recovered his memory or within minutes thereafter."

"(The accuser) had his personal injury lawyer in place," Shanley's lawyer said, adding that the man had his civil lawsuit "ready to roll" shortly after recovering his memory.

"The simple truth is that (the accuser's) story is not reliable," Mondano said.

Shanley's is one of just a handful of criminal cases that prosecutors have been able to bring to trial against priests accused of molesting young parishioners decades ago.

Most of the priests named in hundreds of civil lawsuits avoided criminal prosecution because their crimes were committed so long ago that charges were barred by the statute of limitations. But because Shanley moved out of Massachusetts, the clock stopped.

Prosecutors called several witnesses on Tuesday, including New Hampshire bishop John McCormack, who investigated allegations of sexual misconduct as a former lieutenant to Boston's Cardinal Bernard Law. McCormack testified that Shanley moved to California after leaving St. Jean's in 1990. He was arrested in San Diego in May 2002.

Security was tight for Shanley's trial, with spectators walking through a metal detector outside the courtroom, in addition to the screening at the courthouse entrance. During a recess, a Shanley supporter had a verbal confrontation with another man in the hallway and the two were separated by a court officer.

A jury of eight men and eight women is considering the case against Shanley. Four will be appointed as alternates following the testimony, which is expected to last about two weeks.