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	Ex-Priest's Rape Trial Hangs on Recovered Memories Defense Plans to Call Only One Witness TheBostonChannel.com [Boston MA] February 2, 2005 BOSTON -- At the height of the Boston Archdiocese sex scandal, Paul Shanley was brought back to Massachusetts in handcuffs, accused of raping four boys while he was a priest at a suburban parish in the 1980s. But as Shanley's trial winds down this week, there is only one accuser left, and prosecutors are fighting to convince a jury the man's recovered memories are for real. "It all hinges on the credibility of this one victim," said Michael Cassidy, an associate professor at Boston College Law School. In a sign of the central importance of recovered memory to the case, the defense plans to call only one witness: a research psychologist who has challenged the science behind recovered memories. The trial is one of the few criminal cases that prosecutors have been able to bring against priests accused of molesting youngsters decades ago. Most of the priests avoided prosecution because the statute of limitations on their alleged crimes had run out. But when Shanley moved away from Massachusetts, the clock stopped, allowing authorities to arrest him in California in 2002. Shanley emerged as one of the most notorious figures in the scandal after archdiocese personnel records showed that church officials knew he advocated sex between men and boys, and continued to transfer him from parish to parish. He was charged with molesting four boys between 1979 and 1989 at St. Jean's parish in Newton after removing them from religious classes. All four men said they had repressed their memories of the abuse and recovered them only after the scandal broke in Boston in January 2002. But in July, prosecutors dropped two of the accusers in what they said was a move to strengthen their case. Then, on the day jury selection began, they dropped a third victim because they were unable to find him after he testified at a traumatic hearing last fall. That left only one accuser. Shanley, 74, no longer resembles the youthful, charismatic priest known for his long hair and ministry to troubled youngsters. He sat stoically last week, listening to his accuser's testimony with the help of a hearing aid. His lawyer argues the accuser is motivated by money. The man settled his lawsuit with the archdiocese last year for $500,000. One rape charge against Shanley related to oral sex was dismissed at the end of the prosecution's case because the accuser's testimony did not support it; the former priest still is charged with two counts and faces life in prison if convicted. Cassidy said prosecutors will have an uphill battle convincing the jury that the accuser's recovered memories are genuine. "They need to make a jury believe there is really such a thing as repressed memories," he said. "They also have to argue to the jury that the memory is accurate. If the memory is affected by the trauma, how can you be sure it's accurate?" The man, now 27, spent more than 10 hours over three days on the witness stand last week, enduring sometimes-graphic questioning by Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano, as he described being raped in the church bathroom, rectory and confessional starting when he was 6. He broke down and sobbed when Mondano grilled him about the alleged rapes, prompting the judge to call a recess. The man later begged the judge not to force him to return for more questioning, but he showed up the next day and finished, with sometimes flippant retorts to Mondano's questions. Some legal observers said Mondano's aggressive cross-examination of the victim is bound to backfire. "When Mondano started talking about how the victim's mother was a drunk, his father used to beat him, he had a horrible childhood and nobody loved him, not only did that give the jury instant sympathy toward the victim, it came across as completely gratuitous," said Wendy Murphy, a former prosecutor who now teaches at the New England School of Law. "It's very likely that if a jury feels bad for this guy that they are going to say, 'What can we do for him?' They feel bad and they want to make him feel better."
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