It is hard to look at the Paul Shanley of to-day—a withered, balding man of 74 at a court defendant's table—and picture the swashbuckling priest he used to be. In the 1960s and 1970s, Mr Shanley was a dark-haired crusader in jeans who ran a "street ministry" for addicts and runaways in Boston, a courageous champion of gay rights against the church hierarchy. Was he also a predator who molested and raped dozens of vulnerable boys, in decades of abuse that the archdiocese of Boston covered up? The trial of Mr Shanley, which was due to go to the jury just after The Economist went to press, has had a profound effect on Boston. It also amply illustrates the difficulties of bringing paedophilia cases-coinci-dentally, just as jury selection has begun in the highest profile paedophilia trial of all time, that of Michael Jackson in Santa Maria, California.
展开▼
