MASSACHUSETTS
Reuters
Scott Malone
BOSTON (Reuters) – A defrocked U.S. Roman Catholic priest who was one of the first to be convicted when the church’s worldwide sex abuse scandal was first exposed more than a decade ago is due to be released from prison, a Massachusetts prosecutor said on Tuesday.
The now 86-year-old priest, Paul Shanley, was convicted in 2005 of repeatedly raping a boy over a period of years in the 1980s and was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison.
The scandal undermined the church’s moral authority and sapped its finances as it paid out billions of dollars in settlements.
“He is now scheduled to be released from that sentence and begin 10 years of supervised probation,” Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said in a statement. “The Commonwealth is not legally permitted to seek that Shanley be confined further without expert testimony that he meets the legal criteria for civil confinement as a sexually dangerous person.”
State regulations forbid disclosing Shanley’s date of release, according to a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, who said he remains in custody at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Massachusetts.
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