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  'I Want Him to Die in Prison': Shanley Gets 12-15 Years

By Marie Szaniszlo
Boston Herald [Cambridge MA]
February 16, 2005

A Middlesex Superior Court judge yesterday sentenced a defrocked priest at the center of the Boston archdiocese's sex abuse scandal to 12 to 15 years in prison for raping a Sunday school student in the 1980s at a Newton parish.

"I want him to die in prison, whether it's of natural causes or otherwise. However he dies, I hope it's slow and painful," the man said in a victim impact statement read in court by First Assistant District Attorney Lynn Rooney.

Paul Shanley, 74, stood impassively in his gray suit and glasses, his feet shackled, as Judge Stephen Neel read the sentence, saying, "It is difficult to imagine a more egregious misuse of trust or authority."

As the defendant shuffled out, a man shouted, "Goodbye," and the rest of the courtroom burst into applause.

With time off for good behavior, Shanley could be eligible for parole in about seven years. But District Attorney Martha Coakley said she would ask a judge to declare him a "sexually dangerous person" to keep him locked up indefinitely.

At Rooney's request, Neel took into account his indictments on charges of molesting three other boys, including Greg Ford, at St. Jean's parish, even though those charges were eventually dropped.

"My son has been in hell for 21 years," said Ford's father, Rodney.

Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano, said the entire trial had been "profoundly distorted" by emotion, and expressed concern for his client's safety, given the prison murder of John Geoghan, another defrocked priest convicted of molesting a boy.

Some of the most wrenching descriptions of the crime's toll came from the victim's wife, who recalled watching him sink into a depression so deep that he barely ate, slept or showered for weeks at a time; who recalled washing blood and pulling plaster from his hand after he punched a hole in their bedroom wall; who recalled waiting outside a wedding, a christening and a funeral because he felt sick at the thought of walking through the church doors.

"I live day to day, hoping that I will not lose my husband," she said, "hoping that he will not slip back into the silent sadness he has battled these past three years."

 
 

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