Shanley trial may hinge on 1 accuser

The criminal case against defrocked priest Paul R. Shanley, perhaps the most notorious of all Catholic clergy involved in the sexual abuse scandal, will soon hinge only on the allegations of a single accuser, according to Shanley's lawyer, Frank Mondano.

Mondano said he told a Middlesex Superior Court judge last week that prosecutors said they will drop charges stemming from the accusations of one of the four original alleged victims. The victim would be the third dropped from the case.

Prosecutors said yesterday that charges from two accusers still stand and declined to comment further.

The latest alleged victim expected to be dropped from the case is a former Newton man in his mid-30s, identified in court papers only as Male No. 4, who has battled substance abuse and homelessness, according to a lawyer familiar with the case. Although some of the victims' names have been published in the past, a judge ordered yesterday that those names not be released.

The victim missed a recent court hearing in which he was scheduled to testify.

The case against Shanley, which came to symbolize the worst conduct by abusive priests and the most egregious attempts by church officials to cover it up, illustrates the practical and legal difficulties of prosecuting alleged sex crimes that involve behavior decades ago.

In most cases, priests accused of sexual misconduct have not been prosecuted because the statute of limitations passed long before their victims came forward. The charges against Shanley were allowed to stand because he moved to California in 1990, legally stopping the clock on the statute of limitations.

Emily LaGrassa, a spokeswoman for Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley, declined to comment on Mondano's statements or whether a decision had been made to drop a third person from the case.

By yesterday, Shanley still faced six counts of child rape and four counts of indecent assault and battery on a child under 14 based on his alleged abuse of two victims, she said.

"At this time the charges pertaining to [the two alleged victims] are still standing," she said. "We're not going to say anything else."

Shanley was initially charged with 10 counts of child rape and six counts of indecent assault and battery. Mondano said yesterday that the prosecution's case, in addition to shrinking continually over the past year, also relies on the controversial theory of repressed and recovered memories.

"There are significant issues about the story told by the remaining witness," he said.

Shanley, who has been free on $300,000 bail while he awaits trial, was defrocked last year. His trial is tentatively scheduled to start Jan. 18.

He was arrested in San Diego in 2002 after four men alleged that he molested them repeatedly between 1979 and 1989, when they were altar boys at St. Jean the Evangelist Parish in Newton.

In July, Coakley's office dropped charges involving two of the alleged victims. At the time, Coakley said that the move was an attempt to strengthen the case against Shanley by simplifying it.

Recently, however, the reliability of one of the two remaining accusers and whether the man could withstand the pressure and emotional turmoil of a trial were both called into question.

Middlesex County prosecutor Lynn Rooney said during a hearing in October that Male No. 4 became ill and vomited after he was aggressively questioned that month by Mondano about his admitted history of drug and alcohol abuse, how he came to recall the alleged abuse, and his contention that he was also sexually abused by a baby sitter.

The accuser failed to show up the next day for continued questioning by Mondano, and prosecutors were unable to locate him, Rooney said.

The lone remaining accuser said in his separate civil lawsuit against the Boston Archdiocese that Shanley repeatedly molested him from 1983 to 1989, beginning when he was 6 years old. The accuser said he began to remember the abuse in February 2002, after he read a newspaper story.

His lawyer, Robert Sherman of the Boston law firm Greenberg Traurig, did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Other lawyers at Greenberg Traurig who represented Shanley accusers in civil lawsuits against the archdiocese that were settled last April for an undisclosed amount, separate from the historic $85 million settlement between the church and more than 500 alleged abuse victims, also did not return telephone calls seeking comment yesterday.

Advocates for victims of clergy abuse said yesterday that the news of the dwindling charges against Shanley has alarmed survivors.

"Shanley symbolizes the worst of the worst," said Ann Hagan Webb, New England cocoordinator of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests.

"He went after the most vulnerable victims and did it throughout his life, and he seems to be remorseless," she said.

If Shanley is acquitted, she said, "there will be some major disappointments and major anger going on in the survivor community."

Joseph Oteri, a veteran Boston defense lawyer, said yesterday that Shanley can still be convicted if the lone remaining accuser makes an emotional connection with the jury.

But he cautioned that prosecutors now have little or no margin for error.

"In any case, if they [prosecutors] can cement it with two or three witness who saw the same thing, there is a good chance of a conviction," Oteri said.

Mondano said Shanley continues to deny that he ever raped anyone. Shanley, now 73, was a self-described street priest during the 1960s and '70s, when he developed a ministry helping troubled youths. Internal church records showed that church officials were aware of sexual abuse complaints against Shanley as early as 1967 and knew he advocated sex between men and boys, but they continued to transfer him from parish to parish.