Convicted Ex-Priest Challenges Memories Of Alleged Victims

By Deborah Becker
Sep 10, 2009, 11:28 AM
1 Comments

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court on Thursday hears the request for a new trial from the lawyer for defrocked priest Paul Shanley.

In asking for the new trial, Shanley’s attorney, Robert Shaw, argued that the state should not have allowed repressed memories of alleged victims as evidence during Shanley’s trial without also presenting questions about repressed memories from the scientific community.

“We believe the trial and conviction of Paul Shanley was based on evidence not generally accepted in the scientific community and was essentially a fiction,” Shaw said.

After Shanley’s 2005 conviction on charges of raping a boy in a Newton church in the 1980s, he was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison.

The alleged victim came forward in 2002, after the clergy sex abuse scandal broke.

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http://ordinaryevil.wordpress.com/ Alethea Marina-Nova

There are countless studies which prove that some people who have been traumatized as children can and do repress it. There are also confessions from abusers in repressed memory cases. Total amnesia for child sexual abuse happens in at least ten percent of victims.

According to several news sources, Church Heirarchy in the Archdiocese of Boston were aware that Rev. Paul Shanley endorsed sex between men and boys, but they promoted him within the church anyway. Cardinal Bernard Law also knew about Shanley’s deviant views on sex and young boys.

There are documents that indicate that Shanley was involved in the North American Man-Boy Love Association, also known as NAMBLA — an organization that promotes sex between men and boys.

http://www.google.com/search?q=shanley%2C+man+boy+love&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

Child sexual abusers proclaiming their innocence and “mental health experts” willing to deny an abundance of research and evidence of repressed memories is nothing new under the sun.