Paul Shanley, priest at center of sex scandal, dead at 89

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Paul Shanley, priest at center of sex scandal, dead at 89

November 6, 2020

WARE, Mass. (AP) — A former Roman Catholic street priest who played a pivotal role in the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Archdiocese of Boston has died, authorities said Friday. Paul Shanley was 89.

Police in Ware, a town in west-central Massachusetts where Shanley was living since his release from prison in 2017, confirmed his death but did not say how he died. WFXT-TV, Boston’s Fox News affiliate, said he died of heart failure on Oct. 28.

Shanley was a popular priest who counseled gay and troubled youths in the 1960s and 1970s. In 2005, he was convicted of raping a boy at a Newton church in the 1980s and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Shanley’s release in July 2017 triggered a firestorm of protests from some of his victims, who alleged he sexually abused them as children.

Shanley was a notorious figure in the clergy sex abuse scandal that exploded in Boston in 2002, after The Boston Globe revealed that dozens of priests had molested and raped children for decades while church supervisors covered it up and shuffled abusive priests from parish to parish.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/sex-scandals-boston-paul-shanley-massachusetts-sexual-abuse-by-clergy-876cf932cade13a56254ed0aa11548e2


FILE - This undated identification photo released Friday, July 28, 2017, via the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board website shows former Roman Catholic priest Paul Shanley, an inmate at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater, Mass. Shanley, who played a pivotal role in the sexual abuse scandal that rocked the Archdiocese of Boston died Friday, Nov. 6, 2020, authorities said. He was 89. (Massachusetts Sex Offender Registry Board via AP, File)

[louis-t]

1. I guess we're really cleaning house this weekend.