[Peace-discuss] Re: Response to Cockburn article on Paul Shanley

[C. G. Estabrook]

Exactly, Carol -- they're *allegations* of abuse.  Testing such
allegations is what courts are for, but the prosecutor cast all the
allegations aside as unusable except for some -- otherwise unsupported --
based on "recovered memories."  The conviction was a miscarriage of
justice, as Cockburn describes.  As in the '80s, an atmosphere of hysteria
over sexual abuse leads even many liberals to approve of these proceedings
against an unsympathetic defendant.

Of course allegations of abuse shouldn't be ignored, but they must be
dealt with justly. Cockburn recalls events from a long time ago in a town
north of Boston.  Suppose some of the defendants in the Salem trials
actually were guilty of sexual misconduct or even child abuse: would we
approve of their being condemned on the basis of "spectral evidence"?
That's about what recovered memory is.

The website you reference is from a person who has put up a couple of such
sites; he's said that they do "not attempt to determine whether the
allegations are true." There's a McCarthyite,
where-there's-smoke-there's-fire aspect to this ("I have in my hand a list
of Communists/abusers").  I'd strongly suggest that what you call this
"actual documentation regarding allegations" be read with the article
JoAnn Wypijewski published in the journal Legal Affairs last fall
<jw01292005.html>.

Cockburn says that when she "began to report on the Shanley case in 2002,
the first thing she did was read the 1,600-page diocesan file that [the
lawyer suing him] had brandished. It became clear to JoAnn that in a case
that had consumed the press, most conspicuously the Boston Globe, which
ran almost daily stories on the priest scandal for years, she seems to
have been the only reporter to have taken the trouble to look at the
church dossier. What she found in the documents were many, many pages of
Shanley's fervent defense of homosexuality as a normal human variation and
the uproar these arguments provoked in the Church ... In terms of sexual
abuse, the Church file has one complaint from the 1960s, which Shanley
denied and his superior, rightly or wrongly, determined to be baseless;
then nothing until the early 1990s, when a few accusers imputed various
abuses to the priest dating back to the 1960s or '70s. But nowhere was
there any support for the claim that Shanley was a founder of NAMBLA or
had attended a NAMBLA meeting; JoAnn, despite many discoveries about
Shanley's active sex life as a priest, found no external evidence to back
the charge ... What landed Shanley in prison was not anything in the
Church's file but the uncorroborated 'recovered memories' of one man, Paul
Busa."

"'I want him to die in prison, whether it's of natural causes or
otherwise. However he dies, I hope it's slow and painful,' declared
Shanley's accuser, Paul Busa, a 27-year-old firefighter, in a written
statement read in court.  The menacing words 'or otherwise' were no doubt
intended to evoke the fate of John Geoghan, a priest sent to a
Massachusetts prison in 2002 for fondling a 10-year-old. Although Geoghan
was being kept in 'protective custody,' he was strangled to death by a man
serving a life term for killing a gay man. There have been allegations
that prison guards were complicit in his murder. Paul Busa's father,
Richard, is a corrections officer, and other relatives, including Paul's
wife, are in Massachusetts law enforcement."

Cockburn concludes, "No facts relative to the charges intruded into the
courtroom; only emotion. Superior Court Judge Stephen Neel should have
dismissed the charges, as requested by the defense." What happened was not
justice.

--CGE


On Tue, 22 Feb 2005, carol inskeep wrote:

> I won't post further on the Shanley case, but those who want to follow
> up the Cockburn article and see the actual documentation regarding
> allegations of abuse against Paul Shanley and the way in which they
> were handled by the church hierarchy might be interested in this site,
> which includes a timeline of abuse allegations and very extensive
> links to relevant documents:
>  http://www.bishop-accountability.org/assign/Shanley-Paul-Richard.htm
>  I personally would rather that further debate about the Shanley case
> be done off-list with others who are interested.  But that's just my
> two cents...
>  cpi