Pedophile priest Shanley released from Bridgewater prison

MASSACHUSETTS
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by NBC 10 NEWS, ASSOCIATED PRESS

BRIDGEWATER, Mass. —
A notorious figure in the Boston Roman Catholic priest sex-abuse scandal was released from prison Friday morning after completing a 12-year sentence for the rape of a boy in the 1980s.
Massachusetts prison officials said Paul Shanley, 86, was released from the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater on Friday. They did not provide an exact time.

The state’s sex offender registry lists Shanley as a Level 3 offender, meaning he is most likely to re-offend. The registry says Shanley will be living in an apartment in Ware, a town of about 10,000 residents about 30 miles west of Worcester. State law prohibits people from using information in the registry to harass people.

Abuse victims say they’re concerned Shanley, who isn’t required to wear an electronic monitoring device, will not have enough supervision.

“Paul Shanley should be in a hospital being treated and not in the outside world where he can easily gain access to innocent children,” Mitchell Garabedian, a lawyer who represented dozens of men who said they were abused by Shanley.

Shanley’s lawyer says he’s served his time and is not dangerous.

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