Boston priest found guilty of child rape

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, the most notorious figure in the sex scandal that rocked the Boston Archdiocese, was convicted Monday of raping and fondling a boy at his Roman Catholic church during the 1980s.\nThe conviction on all four charges gives prosecutors a high-profile victory in their effort to bring pedophile priests to justice for decades of abuse at parishes around the country.\nShanley, 74, could get life in prison for two counts each of child rape and indecent assault and battery on a child when he is sentenced Feb. 15. His bail was revoked, and he was immediately taken to jail.\nThe victim, now 27, put his head down and sobbed as the verdicts were announced after a trial that turned on the reliability of what he claimed were recovered memories of the long-ago abuse. Shanley showed no emotion as he stood next to his attorneys.\n"There are no winners today. There are only losers," his niece, Teresa Shanley, said as her uncle was led from the courtroom. "We're no closer to finding out the truth about this scandal or finding out what happened."\nDuring the trial, the accuser broke down on the stand as he testified in graphic detail that Shanley pulled him out of Sunday morning catechism classes and raped and groped him in the church bathroom, the rectory, the confessional and the pews starting when he was 6.\n"It felt awful," he testified. "He told me nobody would ever believe me if I told anybody."\nThe accuser said he repressed his memories of the abuse, but they came flooding back three years ago, triggered by news coverage of the scandal that began in Boston, and soon engulfed the church worldwide.\nShanley, once a long-haired, jeans-wearing "street priest" who worked with Boston's troubled youth, sat stoically for most of the trial, listening to his accuser's testimony with the help of a hearing aid.\nThe defense called just one witness: a psychologist who said so-called recovered memories can be false, even if the accuser ardently believes they are true. A lawyer for Shanley argued the accuser was either mistaken or concocted the story with the help of personal injury lawyers to cash in on a multimillion-dollar settlement resulting from the sex scandal.\nThe accuser, now a firefighter in suburban Boston, was one of at least two dozen men who claimed they had been molested by Shanley. The archdiocese's own personnel records showed church officials knew Shanley publicly advocated sex between men and boys yet continued to transfer him from parish to parish.\nProsecutors said the accuser had no financial motivation in accusing Shanley of rape in the criminal case because he received his $500,000 settlement with the archdiocese nearly a year ago. They also cited his three days on the stand, during which he sobbed and begged the judge not to force him to continue testifying.\n"The emotions were raw. They were real," prosecutor Lynn Rooney said in closing arguments.\nVictims' advocates said they were gratified by the verdict.\n"This shows that when survivors find the strength to speak up, sometimes, sometimes, kids are protected and justice can happen," said David Clohessy, the national director of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests. "When survivors stay silent, nothing changes"