A former priest named Paul Shanley received prison time after being convicted as a child abuser. He was released from jail due to good behavior and now he is under supervised probation, which will last for a decade.
Shanley, now 86, was one of the priests who were part of the Boston Catholic Church Sex Abuse scandal. He was convicted back in 2005 after it was found out that he raped a boy for a number of times back in the 1980s. There were other victims who came forward. He served 12 years of his 12 to 15-year sentence when he was freed on Friday, NPR reported.
The charges he was convicted of included two counts of rape of a child and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child. Many wanted him to be sentenced to life in prison but he was only given 12 to 15 years. The supervised probation will last for 10 Years and he is not required to wear an electronic device.
New neighbors wary of him moving in
Shanley moved to Ware, Massachusetts after he was released and many of his neighbors are on their toes now that a child abuser is in their area. A 45-year-old mother-of-five, Leslie Mansour, said that she does not want to see Shanley out on the street at all. She noted that her kids used to go out on the streets but now that they are neighbors with Shanley, she would only let them stay in their yard because she does not want her kids to be anywhere near the convicted former priest.
Mansour, just like the other victims of Shanley, said that he belonged in jail and should have died in there.
According to Boston Herald, Shanley is a Level 3 offender under the state’s sex offender registry list. This means that he is most likely to re-offend or commit a crime of such nature again. Ware Police Chief Shawn Crevier said that they will deploy more patrols in the area in order to prevent any crime from happening regarding Shanley.
Crevier said, however, that he hopes Shanley will not cause any problem in the community.
A group that works with victims of sexual abuse called Road to Recovery held rallies against Shanley when he was released from jail and in front of the new home of the former priest. One of their signs said, “86 and still a risk.”
Victims disappointed he was released from jail
Mitchell Garabedian, one of the lawyers of the men who claimed they were sexually abused by Shanley, said that he should have been placed in a hospital instead of being released to a community where he has easy access to innocent children.
One of Shanley’s alleged victims, 59-year-old John Harris, who claimed that he was raped by the former priest in 1979 at a retreat for gay people, said that the former priest manipulated the system, the church, and the public and that is why he is very concerned about the fact that Shanley might abuse someone again.
Massachusetts authorities said that they can no longer detain him because he does not meet the “legal criteria for civil confinement as a sexually dangerous person.” Dr. Martin Kafka, a psychiatrist who worked with sex offenders throughout his career, said that although it is a fact that pedophiles have higher recidivism rates, these rates decline after 60 years old due to the lower testosterone levels.
