MASSACHUSETTS
New York Times

By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE
JULY 26, 2017

BOSTON — When he was 21 and coming out as gay, John Harris was referred to a charismatic street priest, Paul Shanley, for guidance.

“He raped me, under the pretense of helping me,” Mr. Harris, now 59, recalled Wednesday. Since the episode, in 1979, Mr. Harris said he had had difficulty trusting people, which led to heavy drinking and depression so severe that he was hospitalized.

Mr. Shanley was defrocked by the Vatican in 2004 and convicted in 2005 of raping a boy repeatedly during the 1980s in a suburban parish. Sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison, he became one of the most notorious priests in the sex abuse scandal that rocked the Roman Catholic Church.

While the scandal of priests abusing children has faded somewhat from the explosive headlines of the early 2000s, the…