Outrage as ex-priest convicted of raping boy released from prison

BRIDGEWATER, Mass. -- A notorious figure in the Boston Roman Catholic priest sex abuse scandal was released from prison Friday morning after completing a 12-year sentence for the rape of a boy in the 1980s.

Massachusetts prison officials say Paul Shanley, 86, was released from the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater on Friday. They did not provide an exact time.

The state's sex offender registry lists Shanley as a Level 3 offender, meaning he is most likely to re-offend. The registry says Shanley will be living in an apartment in Ware, a town of about 10,000 residents about 65 miles west of Boston. 

Shanley will be on probation for 10 years and has been ordered to have no contact with children under 16 years old, reports CBS Boston.

Shanley's lawyer says he's served his time and is not dangerous. Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan's office hired two psychiatric experts to evaluate Shanley to see if he should continue to be held after completing his sentence, reports CBS Boston. Both experts told prosecutors that he does not meet the legal criteria for civil confinement as a sexually dangerous person. 

But lawyer Carmen Durso, who represents dozens of men who allege that Shanley sexually abused them as children, contests that finding.  

Durso said he was told by prosecutors that the experts cited his advanced age as one reason he is no longer dangerous.

"We believe that he continues to pose a threat," Durso said. "If Paul Shanley doesn't qualify as a sexually dangerous person, then nobody will qualify."

Shanley was a "street priest" who ministered to alienated youth in the 1960s and '70s. Decades later, dozens of men came forward and said Shanley had molested or raped them. He was defrocked by the Vatican and was convicted of raping a boy at a Newton parish.

Abuse victims say they're concerned Shanley, who isn't required to wear an electronic monitoring device, will not have enough supervision.

"Paul Shanley should be in a hospital being treated and not in the outside world where he can easily gain access to innocent children," said Mitchell Garabedian, another lawyer who along with Durso represents the men who said they were abused by Shanley.

On Wednesday, two of the men who accused Shanley appeared at a news conference with their lawyers and victim advocates to warn the public about Shanley's release and to ask for help in monitoring him.

John Harris said he was a 21-year-old struggling with his decision to reveal his homosexuality in 1979 when someone suggested he go see Shanley for counseling.

"He raped me under the pretense of helping me," Harris said.

Denis O'Connor said he was 14 when Shanley sodomized him in the late 1960s.

"If he's released, we've got more children that will be abused," O'Connor said.

A protest was planned outside the Bridgewater prison Friday.  

Robert Shaw Jr., an attorney who represented Shanley in his appeal, said Shanley is now "extremely frail."

"The fact that certain persons in our community are calling for the harassment and tracking of Paul Shanley by the public strikes me as an issue for law enforcement," he said. "It's outrageous. It's deeply disturbing. We don't permit vigilantism in this country. Stalking and harassment are crimes."

State law prohibits people from using information in the sex offender registry to harass people.  

The clergy sex abuse scandal 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.

The Archdiocese of Boston, the fourth-largest archdiocese in the country, with more than 1.8 million Catholics, called Shanley's crimes against children "reprehensible." Spokesman Terrence Donilon said Shanley will not receive any kind of financial support or benefits from the archdiocese.