MASSACHUSETTS
MassLive
By Dan Glaun dglaun@masslive.com
Paul Shanley, a former Boston Archdiocese priest convicted in 2005 of raping a young boy during the 1980s, will be released from prison on Friday, according to media reports.
Shanley has completed a 12 to 15 year sentence for abusing a boy he knew from religion classes he taught in Newton. The abuse occurred between 1983 and 1989, when the child was between the ages of six and 12.
Shanley now will be set free, the Middlesex District Attorney said in a statement, which acknowledged an unfruitful attempt by prosecutors to examine whether the ex-priest could be held in custody as a danger to the general public.
“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,” the DA’s office said. “To that end we hired two qualified examiners. We are awaiting their final reports; however both doctors have informed us that they have concluded that Shanley does not satisfy the legal criteria for a petition to be filed.”
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