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  Child Rapist Wants to Live at NH Camp

By Clynton Namuo
New Hampshire Union Leader
March 24, 2009

http://www.unionleader.com/article.aspx?headline=Child+rapist+wants+to+live+at+NH+camp&articleId=243f975f-31f0-4485-9ff2-c5324310313a

MIDDLETON – A former priest who spent more than four years in prison in Massachusetts for raping an altar boy is looking to move back to his lakeside camp here, Police Chief Randy Sobel said this morning.

Sobel said he was notified yesterday afternoon by New Hampshire parole authorities that Robert V. Gale, 67, wants to transfer his parole from the Bay State and move into his home on Sunrise Lake.

State Department of Corrections spokesman Jeff Lyons confirmed parole officials on Friday received a request from Massachusetts authorities to move Gale’s parole here, but he could not say where Gale plans to live because the application is confidential.

Parole officials have 45 days to review the request and will be looking at where Gale wants to live, who he wants to live with and what else is nearby.

“If it’s a sex offender, I’d expect there’d be some level of intense supervision,” Lyons said, noting that living too close to too many children could be a disqualifying factor.

Lyons added: “If we say no, Massachusetts will have to decide what to do next.”

Just the prospect of Gale’s move north raises concerns, Sobel said, particularly because his lakeside cabin is just a few houses away from a shared beach that is filled with children when it’s warmer.

“I imagine part of his conditions would be no contact with children,” Sobel said. “It’d be tough to do that living there, especially in the summer time.”

Gale molested an altar boy at St. Jude Church in Waltham, Mass. numerous times from 1980 to 1984 when the boy was 10- to 14-years-old. Gale was convicted in of four counts of child rape in December 2004 for the assaults and served more than four years in prison before he was paroled earlier this month.

A Massachusetts parole official said that upon Gale’s release, a judge imposed special conditions that include: no unsupervised contact with children under 16 years old, no employment that would involve contact with children under 16, a requirement to register as a sex offender and sex evaluation and treatment if deemed necessary.

Gale was later defrocked.

 
 

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