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January 29, 2005
Wife of accuser testifies in ex-priest's abuse trial
Jan. 29, 2005 [Associated Press]
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - The wife of a man who has accused defrocked priest Paul Shanley of raping him as a child testified Friday that he had night sweats and curled up in the fetal position on the floor after recovering memories of the abuse.
The woman took the witness stand after her husband finished more than 10 hours of testimony over three days, much of it under grueling and graphic cross-examination by Shanley's attorney.
The man returned to the stand Friday morning despite begging the judge a day earlier to spare him further questioning. That had raised the possibility that the case would collapse, because he is the lone accuser of Shanley, 74, one of the central figures in the Boston Archdiocese's clergy sex-abuse scandal. Three other accusers were dropped from the case by prosecutors.
The accuser, now a 27-year-old firefighter, says Shanley raped and molested him at a Newton parish beginning when he was 6. He says he didn't remember the abuse until early 2002, when he heard a friend's account of being abused as a boy by Shanley.
His wife testified that he became distraught during a phone conversation when she told him about a newspaper article in which the friend told of the alleged abuse. She was living near Boston at the time, and her then-boyfriend was serving at an Air Force base in Colorado.
"He said he was going to be sick, he had to go, he couldn't talk," she said.
She said he returned to Massachusetts four days later. On the first night of his visit, she said, he became upset again.
"He woke up. He was very agitated and restless. He had soaked the sheets with sweat," she said, her voice cracking. "He got on the floor, curled up in a ball. He shook."
"I tried to hold him, but he wouldn't let me," she said.
Earlier, Shanley's attorney Frank Mondano grilled the accuser about his troubled childhood, his abuse of alcohol and steroids, his gambling habit and his motivation for coming forward.
Mondano has said that the man made up his story to cash in on the multimillion-dollar settlements to victims of the Boston scandal. He has also said he will call expert witnesses to debunk the science behind repressed memories.
The trial is expected to resume Monday.
Posted by Nancy at January 29, 2005 07:35 PM