(Greg Wayland, NECN: Boston, Mass.) - Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, 77, is seeking a new trial based on a challenge to the theory of repressed memories. Advocates for clergy sex abuse victims are outraged.

Shanley was in Suffolk Superior Court Thursday for a hearing on his motion to dismiss. His new lawyer argued that the theory of repressed memories was "junk science."

Shanley's accuser testified that Shanley repeatedly pulled him out of catechism class and raped and fondled him, beginning when he was 6 years old. He said he recovered memories of the abuse in 2002, when the news media began reporting on the clergy abuse scandal in the Boston Archdiocese.