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Thread: Are Priests EVER Found Innocent?

  1. #1
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    Are Priests EVER Found Innocent?

    When charged with child molestation? Let me just say that I think Christianity is a GREAT religion for allowing such atrocities to continue within the priesthood. It's a great fucking religion in General. Let's scare people into compliance by telling them they're going to hell, and then take them for as much money as we can...

    I HATE RELIGION!!!

    Defrocked priest Shanley guilty of child rape
    Jury unanimously validates accuser’s repressed memories

    The Associated Press Updated: 5:02 p.m. ET Feb. 7, 2005

    CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Defrocked priest Paul Shanley, the most notorious figure in the sex scandal that rocked the Boston Archdiocese, was convicted Monday of raping and fondling a boy at his church during the 1980s.

    The conviction on all four charges gives prosecutors a high-profile victory in their effort to bring pedophile priests to justice for decades of abuse at Roman Catholic parishes around the country.

    Shanley, 74, could get life in prison.

    The victim, now 27, put his head down as the verdicts were announced after a trial that turned on the reliability of what he claimed were recovered memories of the long-ago abuse. Shanley showed no emotion as he stood next to his attorneys.

    During the trial, the accuser broke down on the stand as he testified in graphic detail that Shanley pulled him out of Sunday morning catechism classes and raped and groped him in the church bathroom, the rectory, the confessional and the pews starting when he was 6.

    “It felt awful,” he testified. “He told me nobody would ever believe me if I told anybody.”

    Repressed memories
    The accuser said that he repressed his memories of the abuse but that they came flooding back three years ago, triggered by news coverage of the scandal that began in Boston and soon engulfed the church worldwide.

    Shanley, once a long-haired, jeans-wearing “street priest” who worked with Boston’s troubled youth, sat stoically for most of the trial, listening to his accuser’s testimony with the help of a hearing aid.

    The defense called just one witness — a psychologist who said that so-called recovered memories can be false, even if the accuser ardently believes they are true. A lawyer for Shanley argued that the accuser was either mistaken or concocted the story with the help of personal injury lawyers to cash in on a multimillion-dollar settlement resulting from the sex scandal.

    The man, now a firefighter in suburban Boston, was one of at least two dozen men who claimed they had been molested by Shanley. The archdiocese’s own personnel records showed that church officials knew Shanley publicly advocated sex between men and boys, yet continued to transfer him from parish to parish.

    ‘The emotions were raw’
    Prosecutors said the accuser had no financial motivation in accusing Shanley of rape in the criminal case because he received his $500,000 settlement with the archdiocese nearly a year ago. They also cited his three days on stand, during which he sobbed and begged the judge not to force him to continue testifying.

    “The emotions were raw. They were real,” prosecutor Lynn Rooney said in closing arguments.

    Shanley is one of the few priests prosecutors have been able to charge. Most of the priests accused in lawsuits avoided prosecution because the alleged crimes were committed so long ago that the statute of limitations had run out. But the clock stopped when Shanley moved out of Massachusetts.

    He was arrested in California at the height of the scandal in May 2002 and brought back to Massachusetts in handcuffs — charged with raping four boys while a priest at St. Jean’s Parish in Newton outside Boston. All four claimed they repressed memories of the abuse, then recovered them when the scandal broke.

    But the case ran into numerous problems. In July, prosecutors dropped two of the accusers in what they said was a move to strengthen their case. Then, on the day jury selection began, they dropped a third accuser because they were unable to find him after a traumatic experience on the witness stand at a hearing last fall.

    Scandal reaches back to 2002
    The clergy abuse scandal in Boston began in early 2002 when Cardinal Bernard Law acknowledged he shuffled a pedophile priest from parish to parish despite evidence the priest had molested children. That priest, John Geoghan, was convicted of assault and was later killed in prison.

    The scandal intensified later in 2002 when the church released Shanley’s 800-page personnel file. Despite church teachings, he argued for acceptance of homosexuality and pushed for gay rights. He called himself a “sexual expert” and advertised his counseling services in the alternative press.

    He resigned from parish work in 1989 and moved to California. At the time, Law, who resigned as archbishop in December 2002 at the height of the scandal, praised his “impressive record.” Boston church officials recommended him for a job in the Diocese of San Bernardino as a priest in “good standing.”

    © 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  2. #2
    Ophie Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by Gold9472
    When charged with child molestation? Let me just say that I think Christianity is a GREAT religion for allowing such atrocities to continue within the priesthood. It's a great fucking religion in General. Let's scare people into compliance by telling them they're going to hell, and then take them for as much money as we can...

    I HATE RELIGION!!!
    People who become priests have problems to begin with. Tell me, what kind of man in his right mind, takes a vow to give up sex for his entire life? It's completely unnatural, not to mention ridiculous.

  3. #3
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ophie
    People who become priests have problems to begin with. Tell me, what kind of man in his right mind, takes a vow to give up sex for his entire life? It's completely unnatural, not to mention ridiculous.
    I thought most priests never had sex, so they never knew what they were missing kind of thing....
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  4. #4
    Nowhereman Guest
    I think many are Homosexual and think they can stop the urges by joining the Priesthood. A small percentage of these gay Priest are also Pedophiles.

  5. #5
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nowhereman
    I think many are Homosexual and think they can stop the urges by joining the Priesthood. A small percentage of these gay Priest are also Pedophiles.
    It must be larger than a small percentage because we certainly hear about it enough...
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  6. #6
    Ophie Guest
    Quote Originally Posted by Nowhereman
    I think many are Homosexual and think they can stop the urges by joining the Priesthood. A small percentage of these gay Priest are also Pedophiles.
    That's what I was getting at.

  7. #7
    ScottyAH Guest
    That fuckin' scumbag better get raped in prison , tortured , then killed.

    But don't blame religion on social disorders. This is the shit that happens when you give people too much . Look at Saturday morning cartoons . now the kids have twenty 24 hour cartoon channels and saturday morning is for nothing but another day for liberals to let children go out and get in trouble.
    You let the fags get married and now the mormons want to let everybody marry more then one person. This pedophile shit isn't a church problem as much as it is a social problem

  8. #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by ^^^^^^^^
    That fuckin' scumbag better get raped in prison , tortured , then killed.

    But don't blame religion on social disorders. This is the shit that happens when you give people too much . Look at Saturday morning cartoons . now the kids have twenty 24 hour cartoon channels and saturday morning is for nothing but another day for liberals to let children go out and get in trouble.
    You let the fags get married and now the mormons want to let everybody marry more then one person. This pedophile shit isn't a church problem as much as it is a social problem
    It's a result of the fact that abstenance from sex is "unnatural" as Ophie pointed out, and because the priesthood is a safe haven for homosexuals who are ashamed of themselves...

    If the Church decreed that Priests could marry, I think that would change a lot of things.

    Remember, the Bible said "Be Fruitful & Multiply"...
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


  9. #9
    somebigguy Guest
    Those people are repressed for 50 years in some cases, then they finally snap and start screwing anything with a hole. Those priests should buy a hooker every couple of weeks like the rest of us and they'd be perfectly normal like us.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by somebigguy
    Those people are repressed for 50 years in some cases, then they finally snap and start screwing anything with a hole. Those priests should buy a hooker every couple of weeks like the rest of us and they'd be perfectly normal like us.
    Damn straight. :D
    No One Knows Everything. Only Together May We Find The Truth JG


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