MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Globe
By Michael Levenson GLOBE STAFF JULY 26, 2017
When John Harris was 21 and just coming out as gay, a professor at the University of Lowell referred him to a priest named Paul R. Shanley, who had started a retreat for gay people called the Exodus Center in Milton. There, he said, Shanley raped him in February 1979. He was one of scores of the priest’s alleged victims, whose lives were irreparably damaged by sexual abuse at the hands of someone they trusted.
On Wednesday, Harris stood with other alleged victims and denounced the doctors who cleared the 86-year-old defrocked priest for release from prison Friday, finding he was no longer a threat to the public after 12 years behind bars for raping a young boy at a Newton church in the early 1980s.
By turns angry, solemn, and resolved, the victims and their attorneys demanded changes in the standards used to determine whether a prisoner is a “sexually dangerous person” who can be held behind bars even after their sentence is completed. They also said they want the public to be on notice that they believe Shanley remains a dangerous predator, despite the doctors’ opinion.
“This is a guy, Shanley, who has manipulated the system, the church, and the public, and knows how to manipulate people,” Harris, 59, said calmly at a press conference at an attorney’s office in downtown Boston. “I’m concerned he’s going to abuse again.”
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