Did Shanley Get Screwed?
The Boston Globe launched the sexual-abuse story three years ago. “Under an extraordinary cloak of secrecy,” it reported, “the Archdiocese of Boston in the last 10 years has quietly settled child molestation claims against at least 70 priests.” Shanley was the one who’d been a public figure. Go to the Globe’s elaborate Web site, “Abuse in the Catholic Church,” for more: “The Rev. Paul R. Shanley made his reputation as a Boston ‘street priest’ in the 1960s and 70s–a crusader for runaways and drifters, drug addicts, and teenagers struggling with questions about their sexual identity. But those who turned to Shanley for comfort and guidance often found themselves in the clutches of a sexual predator.”
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Busa said he was six when Shanley began to abuse him. That’s many years younger than the youths who’d allegedly had sexual encounters with Shanley back when he was a young street priest–beyond the statute of limitations. When Busa heard in 2002 that a Bible school classmate was suing the archdiocese over Shanley, he wrote in his journal, “Now that’s weird, he was such a nice guy. I never would’ve thought he’d do something like that.” A week later he wrote, “Still no memory.” Two more days later the memories came. “Tidal wave!” he wrote.
Teresa Shanley told me the state offered her uncle a deal: two and a half years of house arrest if he’d plead guilty. That would keep the 74-year-old priest out of prison–no small thing: in 2003 another convicted priest, John Geoghan, was strangled in a Massachusetts prison by a fellow inmate who later said he did it “to save the children.”
Scooped in Their Own Backyard
“We haven’t sat on it,” he insisted. “It’s a story we’re going to cover. It’s a staffing issue.” Because nobody had taken over his beat the story slipped through a crack, Kirk said, and then the Tribune found itself so far behind Feder that it couldn’t bring itself to write anything at all until it knew enough to leapfrog him.
