Paul Shanley, Pervert Priest

By Theresa Marie Moreau

First Published in New Oxford Review

Ed. Note: Theresa Marie Moreau flew from her home in Los Angeles to Cambridge, Mass., to cover the criminal trial of Paul Shanley. This article contains graphic descriptions of sexual depravity and will probably cause you to lose your appetite. You are hereby forewarned: If you don’t like to read such accounts, DO NOT READ THIS ARTICLE. We are printing it because priestly pederasty — which certain people, especially bishops, like to gloss over — must be known for the horror it is.

"If you tell, no one will believe you," Father Paul Shanley whispers the warning as he kneels before his 6-year-old parishioner. The boy stands still. He dares not move as his pants are unzipped and pulled down around his ankles by the consecrated hands of the 52-year-old beloved priest. The reverend father caresses, rubs then grasps, in his not-so-holy fist, the boy’s immature body.

"This is how it’s supposed to be done," Shanley says, then wraps his lips around the boy’s penis.

A faucet drips. The sick sweetness of urinal deodorant fills the air in the bathroom hidden in the basement of St. Jean L’Evangeliste Church in Newton, Massachusetts. Shanley switches off the bathroom’s overhead bulb.

Darkness overcomes the light.

On the witness stand, remembering the assaults proves too much for Paul Busa, now a 27-year-old firefighter in Newton, his hometown. The former military police officer, with a hair-trigger temper who disdains any shadow of authority, chokes on the sobs, buried inside more than twenty years before. Over three days in January, for almost fourteen hours in the Middlesex County Superior Court, Busa recounts with difficulty the rapes and molestation he suffered from 1983 to 1989, from the age of 6 to 12, at the blessed hands of Shanley.

Busa hides his hawk-like eyes with the heels of his hands. Furiously he whips his fingers across his eyes to wipe away the tears that overflow onto his cheeks. He pulls at his flesh. His face reddens, then darkens to a deep crimson. As he gulps for air, his barrel chest heaves under the freshly ironed button-down, off-white shirt. His neck bulges above the brown, knotted-too-tight tie. He runs his hands over his military-style buzz-cut, then frisks, repeatedly, his palms up and down his thighs.

In her line of questioning Busa, Assistant District Attorney Lynn Rooney lays the groundwork for the commonwealth’s case against Shanley. He faces four charges: two counts of rape of a minor under the age of 16 and two counts of indecent assault and battery of a minor under the age of 14. Rooney already has a track record. She is the same prosecutor who won the case against the Rev. John Geoghan, convicted in January 2002 of indecent assault against a 10-year-old boy after fondling him in a public swimming pool.

Rooney guides Busa—the sole remaining witness against Shanley—through the landmines that mark the years of abuse: a bathroom in an isolated corner of St. Jean’s basement, "special duties," the confessional, the rectory. The three others also named in the indictment have fallen, one by one, off the case. Emotionally fragile as a result of the abuse they allegedly suffered under Shanley, they cannot face him.

All is quiet in Courtroom 8B. Busa regains his composure. Rooney begins questioning him about the special duties—the distribution of religious pamphlets in the pews between masses. On the monitor behind Busa, an image pops up. It’s the layout of the first floor of St. Jean’s, razed a few years ago to make way for a tract of pastel-painted condominiums.

Another click. On the monitor flashes a zoomed-in, close-up image of a few rows of pews that fill the screen. Where, Rooney wants to know, did Shanley and Busa sit after completing special duties? With a yard-long wooden pointer Busa picks up from below the monitor, he traces with the tip a circle around the first two rows on the right side.

There, Busa explains, there is where Shanley sat down beside him.

What happened when Shanley sat beside you? Rooney questions.

At the defense table, Shanley, a lefty, jots down notes on a yellow legal pad as the prosecutor questions the witness.

"He’d put his right arm around me and touch me with this left hand on my penis," Busa stammers. "He called that ‘special duties.’ When we were good kids, we got to do that."

"If you tell, no one will believe you," Shanley warned Busa.

Then there was the confessional.

Where was the confessional? Rooney asks.

With the stick still clutched in his hand, Busa points to a box of lines filling the right-hand corner of the screen.

"I used to go to confession, but I didn’t make any confessions," Busa notes sarcastically, explaining that on the pretense of rehearsing him for his first confession, Shanley frequently removed the boy from Sunday school Confraternity of Christian Doctrine class. Once in the reconciliation room, Busa dropped to his knees on the kneeler behind the large chair in which Shanley sat. But the priest always insisted Busa sit in a small chair across from him, face to face.

What would happen? Rooney questions.

"He started undressing me," Busa says, describing how Shanley would then also undress and stand with him in front of an old-fashioned flip-style mirror positioned in the corner of the confessional.

What did he do to you in that confessional? the prosecutor pushes.

Busa breathes deeply, face reddens. With his hand across his face, his eyes hidden behind his fingers, he blurts, "He used to stick his finger in me."

"Where?" Rooney demands. "Where?" she asks again when Busa falters.

"My bum," he forces out.

"How did it feel?" Rooney pushes.

Busa’s face grows even darker. His breathing even more labored.

"It felt awful," he sobs.

"How many times?" she asks. "More than once?"

"More than one time."

And what did Father Paul warn that little boy so many years ago? "If you tell, no one will believe you."

Then there was the rectory, where Shanley coaxed the boy over with promises of a soda and a snack. After grabbing something from the kitchen, the two hung out and chatted, with the talk leading to a game of cards. One game in particular Shanley liked: War.

"We wouldn’t play with the normal rules," Busa says, gulping water from a plastic cup then pulling at his tie. "Every time I lost a hand, I would have to take off an article of clothing."

"Did you ever lose?" Rooney asks him.

"I always lost," he answers. "Then somehow I’d get on a winning streak, and he’d take his clothes off."

"If you tell, no one will believe you," Shanley told Busa.

Rooney ends her questioning.

It’s Frank Mondano’s turn. Shanley’s defense attorney, stands at the podium. He begins his battle to win the fight for Shanley.

Your memories of penetration, he says to Busa emphasizing the word penetration, involved two types: the mouth of the accused on your penis and the finger of the accused in your anus. Mondano stops speaking. Is this correct? he asks Busa. He looks up, removes his reading glasses and waits for an answer.

"I’m sorry," Busa responds. "I didn’t hear anything you said."

Is it true there were two types of penetration? Mondano asks, again with emphasis.

The 200-pound-plus firefighter, former semi-pro baseball player who whipped fastballs from the mound and who said the military was the best thing that ever happened to him, rapidly rubs his palms up and down his thighs then turns and whispers something to Judge Stephen Neel.

"We’ll take a five-minute recess," Neel calls as Busa, with his arms outstretched before him as if he is fighting his way through dense brush, stumbles from the witness box, nearly falling onto the floor as he rushes from the courtroom.

"Jury out! All rise!" barks a court officer, as the members of the jury file out of the courtroom. Everyone in the spectators’ gallery stands. Whispers and hushed gasps can be heard.

Once free from questioning, Busa collapses, sobbing, in a nearby stairwell, the same back stairway he uses each day to arrive and depart away from the glare of the dozen or so reporters and cameramen seeking sound bites.

Dressed in a wrinkled jacket seemingly pulled from the racks of a defunct Salvation Army, Shanley, who celebrated his 74th birthday on January 25, the first day of his criminal trial, sits at the defense table. He sips water from a plastic bottle. His face, unchanged. No emotion. His breathing, barely detectable.

Shanley’s moral support huddles together on the left side of the courtroom. His niece Teresa Shanley and longtime friend and rabid Shanley defender Paul Shannon sit near a cluster of older men, who nervously titter and giggle when they finally meet the defendant over the wall that divides the center court of debate from the spectators’ gallery. Hard to conceal is their zeal for Shanley, one of the founders of NAMBLA—North American Man Boy Love Association, which held its first meeting at the Boston Community Church December 2, 1978. A copy of a February 12, 1979 article in GaysWeek describing the event was found in the 1,666 pages that compiled Shanley’s secret personnel file.

Another note found in Shanley’s file was a 1967 letter, the first written proof of accusations against Shanley. The Rev. Arthur Chabot, of the Shrine of Our Lady of La Salette, wrote to the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston that during the sacrament of reconciliation, a young boy confessed that Shanley coerced him to masturbate him while the two stayed at Shanley’s cabin in the Blue Hills of Canton, Massachusetts, where many young boys claim to have been on the receiving end of the priest’s attentions.

Why Cardinal Humberto Medeiros then Cardinal Bernard Law—Shanley’s supervisors in the archdiocese—did nothing remains an unanswered question. And why Pope John Paul II promoted Law—who in his deposition blamed the sex abuse on the victims’ parents—to archpriest of St. Mary Major, a high-profile job at the Vatican, after the cardinal was forced to resign his position in Boston is yet another unanswered question.

Court resumes. Testimony continues. Busa stifles the sobs.

It all began on January 31, 2002, he says, when his then-girlfriend Theresa Mazzei (the two married on August 28, 2004) phoned him. That was not unusual. Since it was a long-distance romance, with Mazzei in Needham, Massachusetts, and Busa stationed at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs, Colorado, the young lovers spoke on the phone to one another every day, several times a day.

What was unusual was the topic of conversation. Had he heard about Father Paul? she asked him. The Boston Globe had a story about the priest and sex abuse allegations.

Busa’s response: Wow. I’m surprised. Father Paul was a good man.

On February 11, 2002, Mazzei phoned Busa again.

There was another story in the Boston Globe. This time the allegations lodged against Shanley were hurled by Gregory Ford, not only a childhood friend of Busa’s, but also a fellow classmate in CCD classes at St. Jean’s.

Even before Mazzei finished, Busa began crying. He dropped the phone, then returned the receiver to its cradle without saying goodbye. He immediately telephoned Ford, who although not home at the time, soon returned the call. When the two hung up, Busa sobbed for six hours.

The trigger set off the bullet that hit him. The flood of memories in the confessional, in the rectory, in the church bathroom, in the pews after special duties shot through Busa, literally knocking him to the ground.

With only one hour until he was due at his post, Busa failed to report to duty that night. His supervisor checked in on him and took away his weapon.

Memories resurfaced. Nightmares recurred. "Am I thinking it happened to me just because it happened to my friends?" he asked himself. Even he doubted himself. He couldn’t believe it. He remembered Shanley’s warning: "If you tell, no one will believe you."

The on-base psychiatrist gave Busa a ten-day leave. Back in Massachusetts on February 15, 2002, Busa and Mazzei spend their first night together and turn in early. Busa wakes in the middle of the night. The sheets, soaked from his sweat. He rises then collapses to the floor, curls up in a ball and shakes. Mazzei attempts to put her arms around him, but he doesn’t let her. He convulses.

The convulsions finally convince him. It was true. It is true. Shanley had raped him. He didn’t think it happened to him just because it happened to his friends. It happened to him.

Unable to perform his duties in the military, on April 15, 2002, Airman Paul Busa receives an honorable discharge. Once back home, he joins the civil suit against the archdiocese.

Shanley is arrested on May 2, 2002 at his apartment on Albatross Street in San Diego, California. When he left Massachusetts in 1990 and headed west, the clock on the statute of limitations stopped ticking. This is one of the reasons he is one of the few of the accused to face criminal prosecution. Charged with abusing Busa from 1983 to 1989, Shanley pleads not guilty. The next day he is extradited to the commonwealth..

On May 3, 2004, Pope John Paul II very publicly defrocks Shanley, one of the most notorious figures of the Church sex scandals. This action, which must be invoked by a pope, is a move that is done only on extremely rare occasion.

The next day, May 4, 2004, Busa is awarded $500,000. With no conditions attached to the settlement, he decides to go ahead and testify against Shanley in the criminal case. The court never subpoenas him. The district attorney’s office lets him make the decision. It’s his life, they tell him.

For three days, nearly fourteen hours he testifies. On the end of the second day of his testimony, he breaks when the judge requests that he return the next day to conclude the questioning.

"Can I make a request of you? Please don’t make me," Busa begs, sobbing uncontrollably. Tears stream down his face. "I can’t do this again. I can’t start over again."

If Busa does not return, the case against Shanley could be dismissed.

Busa returns. The case rests completely on his testimony, the only evidence in the case. Would the jury believe him? Or would Shanley prove to be right: "If you tell, no one will believe you."

On February 7, after deliberating almost fourteen hours over three days, the jury reaches a decision. Six uniformed officers stand guard near Shanley, while several others walk in and out of the courtroom. A handful of plainclothes officers take seats in the spectators’ gallery, where many victims await Shanley’s fate. Finally, he shows the only emotion during the entire trial: He exhales deeply as he sits at the defense table.

The jury files in. Not one looks toward Shanley. The verdict: guilty on all four counts. The former beloved priest is hustled out of the courtroom—for protection. Every precaution is taken to prevent Shanley from meeting the same fate as Geoghan, who was beaten and strangled to death in prison in August 2003.

In the next few days more priests make the news. James Porter, 70, dies on February 11—still in custody. He left the priesthood in 1974, moved to Minnesota, married and had four children. He was convicted of molesting his children’s babysitter in 1987 and served four months. In 1993, he returned to Massachusetts where he pleaded guilty to molesting 28 boys and girls. His sentence: 18 to 20 years in prison. He once confessed to molesting more than 100 children.

Also on February 11, the Boston archdiocese announced the Vatican had defrocked four more priests: Robert D. Fay, Kelvin Iguabita, Bernard Lane and Robert Ward.

The following Tuesday, February 15, Shanley, shuffles into the courtroom. The chains around his ankles force him to take baby steps. Already in one week, he seems frailer, older, a feeble old man. His posture, not so straight. His hands, shaky. His face, not so confident.

When the judge pronounces the sentence: twelve to fifteen years in prison for the 74-year-old defrocked priest, spectators cheer and laugh.

"Quiet, please!" hollers a court officer.

Busa, flanked by his father and wife, leans forward and covers his face with his hands then looks heavenward, sighing, "Yes!" Next to Busa sits Ford, who shows no overt emotion.

All eyes in the courtroom are on Shanley as one of the court officers slaps the handcuffs on the 74-year-old defrocked priest. He’ll be eligible for parole in eight years. He’ll be 82. He shuffles from the court to his cell.

Despite Shanley’s repeated warning, "If you tell, no one will believe you," the jury of twelve men and women believe Busa.

Theresa Marie Moreau can be reached at TMMoreau@yahoo.com.