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  No Verdict Yet in Mass. Priest Abuse Case

Associated Press, carried in Guardian [Cambridge MA]
February 4, 2005

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) - A jury deliberated for seven hours Friday without reaching a verdict on child rape charges against defrocked priest Paul Shanley.

The jury is to resume deliberations Monday.

Shanley's accuser, now a 27-year-old firefighter in a Boston suburb, testified that the priest began molesting him while he was in the second grade, taking him out of religious education classes for discipline and raping him in the confessional.

The man says his repressed memories of the alleged abuse were recovered when he heard media reports about the clergy sex abuse crisis in Boston in 2002.

The defense disputed the idea of recovered memories and says the man made up the allegations to get in on a settlement against the Boston Archdiocese over the sex scandal.

Shanley, 74, faces up to life in prison if convicted. The jury began deliberating

 
 

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