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	Niece Says She Fears Prison for Shanley Changes Boost Safety, State Says By John Ellement Boston Globe [Boston MA] February 13, 2005 Teresa Shanley won't be there Tuesday when her 74-year-old uncle, defrocked priest Paul R. Shanley, is sentenced for sexually abusing a Newton Sunday school student in the 1980s. But she expects he will probably be sentenced to prison, and she fears that could get him killed. She worries that her uncle is in danger of ending up like John J. Geoghan, a convicted former priest strangled inside a maximum-security prison in 2003. "No more children for you, pal," fellow inmate Joseph L. Druce allegedly told Geoghan as he tightened a noose around his neck. "I'm very concerned in light of what happened to John Geoghan," Theresa Shanley said. "If [Shanley] is sent to prison, it is the burden of the Commonwealth to keep him safe." Some who monitor the state prison system say she has reason to be concerned. "There's no question that that's a reasonable concern, particularly in light of what happened to Father Geoghan and what is generally a fairly high level of violence in the Massachusetts prison system," said Jonathan Shapiro, whose law firm is suing the state on behalf of 25 inmates at the medium-security prison in Shirley who say guards abused them in 2000. Teresa Shanley will be undergoing a major medical procedure Tuesday. Asked whether Paul Shanley would be safe given what happened to Geoghan, Kathleen M. Dennehy, commissioner of the state Department of Correction, said she couldn't specifically address the situation of one inmate, particularly someone who has not been sentenced. But Dennehy, who got the top job last March in the fallout from the Geoghan killing, said state correction officials have made key changes in the prison system. Some of those changes, she said, have been in the state's protective-custody units in Concord and at Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center in Shirley, where Geoghan was killed. Staffers in those units, for example, now share all possible information about inmates -- their crimes, lives, and medical histories, Dennehy said. She said they regularly review who's housed in protective custody, to make sure they're not putting people together who pose a danger to each other. "We designed it that way so, frankly, we would have our fingers on the pulse as to what is going on in that unit," Dennehy said. Geoghan's murder triggered a massive inquiry into the Department of Correction by a blue-ribbon commission named by Governor Mitt Romney, the ousting of the department commissioner, and the creation of an outside advisory panel to keep close watch on what happens behind prison walls. The state was criticized for putting Geoghan in the same unit with Druce, who had professed a hatred of child abusers and who authorities say devised a way to prevent correction officers from opening the cell door as he allegedly strangled the former priest. Dennehy said cell doors have since been redesigned. She also said the department will soon unveil a better classification system, which determines where inmates should serve their sentences. But others familiar with state prisons are not convinced Shanley would necessarily be safe behind bars. Leslie Walker, who closely watches the Department of Correction as head of Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, said Shanley could be targeted by inmates who consider anyone convicted of a sex crime against children to be "below the lowest of the low." "I certainly think he is a very vulnerable man because of his age, his notoriety, and his crime," Walker said. And Steve Kenneway, president of the Massachusetts Correction Officers Federated Union, said Dennehy's efforts at reform are failing, because she has not addressed a fundamental problem within the 10,000-inmate system: a lack of correction officers. "The prisons of today in Massachusetts are no safer than they were the day John Geoghan walked through the door," Kenneway said. "Conditions are more dangerous now due to severe understaffing and the continued practice of pulling officers from their posts." Kenneway pledged that officers would do everything they can to "maintain order and safety in correctional institutions throughout the Commonwealth." Since becoming commissioner, Dennehy has taken disciplinary action against some officers based on allegations made by inmates, which has soured relations between her and the 4,000-member union. But Scott Harshbarger, a former attorney general who led the governor's blue-ribbon commission and who now heads the Department of Correction advisory panel, said he believes Shanley will "absolutely" be safe if he is sentenced to prison. "This is a significantly different place," Harshbarger said. Harshbarger acknowledged that there is never a guarantee. "That doesn't mean there could not be a tragedy or a mistake," he said. "Nothing is foolproof." Asked about other priests in prison, Dennehy said they don't keep a tally. The most recent area priest to be sentenced to prison was James F. Talbot, a former teacher and athletic coach at Boston College High School. He was sentenced last month to five to seven years for raping and sexually assaulting two of his students between 1977 and 1979. Shanley, who will be sentenced in Middlesex Superior Court on Tuesday, was convicted on two counts of child rape and two counts of indecent assault and battery. He faces up to life in prison. Tuesday will be the first time Teresa Shanley has missed a court appearance by her uncle in three years. "Whatever John Geoghan did," she said, "he wasn't sentenced to death."
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