MASSACHUSETTS
Telegram & Gazette
By Elaine Thompson
Telegram & Gazette Staff
Posted Aug 6, 2017
WARE – Many of the 23 registered Level 3 sex offenders who live in Ware rent from another Level 3 sex offender who owns several properties and plans to provide a home for other offenders who need help.
Joel Pentlarge, 67, a disbarred attorney and former town official, declined to say how many of his tenants are Level 3 sex offenders, the category considered the highest risk of reoffending.
“Not enough,” he said during a recent interview in a basement apartment in his four-unit complex at 14 Park St. that also serves as his office. Another Level 3 sex offender lists the unit as his secondary place of residence.
Mr. Pentlarge, a 1968 graduate of Doherty Memorial High School in Worcester, has served on the Ware Conservation Commission, Zoning Board of Appeals and on the board of directors of a local social service agency. He was imprisoned for three years after pleading guilty in 2000 to the statutory rape of four boys, ages 12 to 15. …
Mr. Pentlarge’s effort to help sex offenders was recently in the spotlight when his latest tenant, high-profile child rapist Paul R. Shanley, moved into an apartment that Mr. Pentlarge owns at 31 Pulaski St. Mr. Shanley had been incarcerated for 12 years for repeatedly raping a boy at a Newton parish in the 1980s. The former street priest was at the center of the Roman Catholic priest sex abuse scandal and was defrocked.
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