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	Shanley Accuser to Testify Today Abuse Trial Begins for Former Priest By Shelley Murphy and Joanna Weiss Boston Globe [Cambridge MA] January 26, 2005 He was adored by his parishioners, revered in the Boston area, a prosecutor acknowledged yesterday. But to a 6-year-old Newton Sunday school student in 1983, the Rev. Paul R. Shanley represented a dark and terrible threat: a man who would pull him from class and rape him in the rectory or bathroom or confessional, admonishing him that "if you tell, no one will believe you." "Everybody loved him; he was the heart and soul of St. Jean's Parish," Assistant Middlesex District Attorney Lynn C. Rooney said of Shanley yesterday in the opening arguments of the defrocked priest's child rape trial. "But there was another side to Father Paul." But Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano, said the stories about Shanley's abuse were "orchestrated by the personal injury lawyers in this court." Mondano contended that Shanley's accuser made up the allegations to get in on the multimillion-dollar settlements for victims in the Boston Archdiocese's clergy sex abuse scandal. Opening arguments in yesterday's long-anticipated trial centered on the victim's accounts of abuse, which he says stemmed from memories he had repressed until a few years ago, and the defense's challenges to his credibility. The Boston Globe does not name victims of sexual abuse without their consent. The alleged victim is expected to take the stand today. Rooney told jurors that the victim, now 27, suddenly remembered the sexual abuse he had suffered as a child in February 2002, after learning of the Globe stories that detailed Shanley's alleged molestation of a Sunday school classmate. She acknowledged that the man received $500,000 in a civil settlement with the archdiocese last year, but said his willingness to testify shows he is motivated by more than money. Mondano said the alleged victim repeatedly changed his story after coming forward in 2002 and said he would call expert witnesses to debunk the science behind "repressed memories." "This case is, after all, about two things: old memories and really, really old memories," he said. In the sex abuse scandal that rocked the Archdiocese of Boston in recent years, the accusations against Shanley, 74, are among the most dramatic. More than a dozen accused Shanley of abusing them in the 1960s and 1970s, and internal church records showed that church officials were aware of sexual abuse complaints against him as early as 1967. He was initially charged with 10 counts of child rape and six counts of indecent assault and battery. But a case that began with four accusers now has only one, after three withdrew. And the trial began as an understated effort, in a half-empty courtroom filled mostly with reporters, plus a few victims' advocates and Shanley supporters. At one point, Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley quietly slipped into the back of the courtroom to watch. Shanley, dressed in a loose-fitting gray suit and equipped with a hearing aid, looked a far cry from the charismatic priest with dark, wavy hair who had a high public profile and led a street ministry for troubled youth. After dramatic opening arguments, much of the day was taken up with the prosecution's methodical attempt to establish that Shanley lived outside Massachusetts from 1990 to 2002. Unlike some other priests accused in the sex abuse scandal, Shanley can be prosecuted because he left Massachusetts for California, stopping the clock on the criminal 15-year statute of limitations. Later, a woman who taught the victim in Sunday school testified that Shanley would occasionally pull the victim out of class if he misbehaved. Of Shanley, she said, "he seemed to get along with everybody, especially with the kids. You could go to him for anything and talk to him." And at the end of the day, the victim's father took the stand and choked up as Rooney showed him photographs of his son as a young child: a dark-haired boy with a broad smile, taking a batter's stance in Little League, lined up to receive his first Holy Communion. During cross-examination, Mondano asked about the victim's troubled relationship with his mother, his frustrations in the Air Force, and his troubled father-son relationship. Kevin O'Toole and Marjorie Mahoney said they left the courtroom feeling discouraged. They had come to represent their older brother, who died in 1988. Their brother had said he was molested by Shanley in Stoneham in the 1960s. "It's not talking about Shanley's character at all. It's talking about dates and times," said O'Toole, who said he feared losing faith in the justice system. Bill Gately, coordinator of the New England chapter of SNAP, the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests, said the outcome of Shanley's trial could affect future trials that stem from the clergy abuse scandal. "I see it as a barometer of sorts, as to how people will respond," Gately said. "If he is found guilty, it will strengthen people's desire to go public."
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