Our good friend JoAnn Wypijewski has written a wonderful article about the recent disgraceful ruling by the cadre of Martha Coakley fans who make up the Supreme Judicial Court here in repressed-memory land.

This is a must read. Pass it on!

-Bob Chatelle

A week ago today, the Massachusetts Supreme Court, in the Paul Shanley case, ruled that the theory of repressed memory has scientific validity in Massachusetts.

Today I was sent a link to this disturbing news story.

I don’t know for sure that the Indiana judge had read the Massachusetts decision, but I would put money on it.

Thus the floodgates have been opened, not just here in Massachusetts but all over the country.

One can only hope that eventually the U.S. Supreme Court will put an end to the nonsense.

-Bob Chatelle

You might find interesting this article by Jean Mercer on the Psychology Today website.

-Bob Chatelle

Press accounts of the Shanley case have been mentioning an amicus that was submitted by 100 prominent and extremely well-credentialed scientists. You can read the brief for yourself by going here.

I am pleased that four members of the Advisory Board of my organization, the National Center for Reason and Justice, signed on to this clear and comprehensive brief.

-Bob Chatelle

When I first heard the unfortunate news about Senator Kennedy’s terminal illness, my blood ran cold at the thought of his being succeeded by Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.

I fear that Coakley is going to be hard to stop. She will be the only woman in a crowded race, and she is likely to have the enthusiastic support of the Boston Globe, which does its best to influence electoral politics in Massachusetts.

The media is making much of her “stellar” record in the Middlesex District Attorney’s office. Let’s look at that record.

First, there is the case of Ray and Shirley Souza. These were the Lowell grandparents falsely accused and convicted of molesting their own grandchildren. The case was spurred by a daughter who was victimized by a recovered-memory “therapist.” The testimony was manufactured by the same discredited methods used in the other high-profile cases of the day. Ray Souza is now deceased, but Shirley — a very fine woman — is saddled with living her life out as a registered sex offender.

Coakley was also the prosecutor in the case of Louise Woodward — the nanny accused of murdering a child in her care. There was no reliable medical evidence supporting this. Woodward was convicted, but the judge changed the verdict to manslaughter, sentenced her to time served, and released her to return to her native England.

Then there was the Fells Acres case.  The Amirault family was falsely accused and wrongly convicted of abusing children at the daycare school that they ran. This was one of the classic daycare cases, along with the McMartin case, Bernard Baran, the Little Rascals, and many others. While Coakley was not one of the original prosecutors, she fought the appeals tooth and nail. And when Gerald Amirault was pursuing a commutation, she orchestrated a disinformation campaign against the Amiraults.

Coakley and the Middlesex County DA’s office also did their best to derail at least one wrongfully convicted inmate’s efforts to prove his innocence via DNA evidence, at first denying that such evidence existed, then trying to impede access to it.  Once the evidence was obtained. and the inmate’s innocence was established, Coakley still tried (and failed) to strike a face-saving deal in which the exoneree would admit to a nonexistent measure of guilt.

And then there is the case of Paul Shanley The media campaign against Shanley was so successful that few consider his innocence a possibility. But innocent he is. I attended that trial. There was no evidence against him, other than the testimony of a sociopath who had collected a huge settlement from the church and who claimed to have massively repressed for decades all memory of terrible abuse that had occurred weekly for years.  There is no scientific evidence to support the theory of massive repression. I refer you to Dr. Richard McNally’s excellent book on the subject, Remembering Trauma.

I believe that Coakley is driven more by ambition than ideology. But her willingness to sacrifice the lives of innocent people in order to further her political goals is most troubling. If Massachusetts voters wish to honor Ted Kennedy’s legacy, they should send someone else to replace him.

-Bob Chatelle

I have just posted some important documents in the Father Paul Shanley case on the website of the National Center for Reason and Justice .

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will be hearing arguments in the case in early September.

-Bob

Here is a link to a video: http://bravenewfilms.org/blog/?p=69443

-Bob Chatelle

The Nation has just published a terrific article on the Father Paul Shanley case, by our good friend, JoAnn Wypijewski.

I urge you all to read it and pass it on: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090316/wypijewski

-Bob Chatelle

This morning I learned that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has granted a direct review of the Paul Shanley case. Here is a copy of the petition.

To learn more about the Shanley case, read my previous post, which is my account of the trial, and visit this link.

It will be interesting to see whether the SJC confronts or ducks the issue of whether repressed-memory testimony can be considered reliable in Massachusetts.

-Bob Chatelle

Four years ago, my parnter Jim D’Entremont and I attended the trial of Father Paul Shanley. At the time, I sent a few reports to my old FOJ mailing list. I would like to repost those reports here:

My Comments on the Shanley Trial

After the jury went out, but before the guilty verdict came in, I sent the following message to the people on my mailing list:

After Shanley’s conviction, I sent this follow-up message:

I sent this email after attending the sentencing hearing:

Dear Friend of Justice,

I was anticipating this morning’s Shanley hearing with so much dread, that I
got next to no sleep last night. (Ditto for Jim.) It was, if anything, even
worse than I had imagined.

As you probably heard by now, Shanley was sentenced to 12-15 years. He is
74. But even if he were 24, I wouldn’t expect him to live terribly long in a
Massachusetts prison. Were he to actually survive this sentence, the
Middlesex DA’s office could incarcerate him from one-day-to-life as a
“sexually dangerous person.” And if he were to avoid this fate, he would
serve ten years probation during which he would have to undergone “therapy.”

This morning, I was given permission to reveal something that I have known
for a very long time.

The Middlesex DA’s office offered Shanley a deal. If he would plead guilty
to one count, his sentence would be time served followed by two years of
probation. No further incarceration. But Shanley refused to plead to
something he did not do.

Should this plea bargain be made public, I fully expect Martha Coakley will
deny it. She did something similar in a case I was involved with a couple
years ago. Martha can lie without batting an eye.

I’m sure Shanley was offered the deal because (1) the DA’s office knew its
case against Shanley was extraordinarily weak and (2) they expected Frank
Mondano to provide a strong defense. But they were wrong about the second
point.

We were told that the hearing would start at 9, and we arrived at 8:15 to
insure getting into the courtroom. We entered the courtroom at 8:30, but
eventually were told that the hearing wouldn’t start until ten. The
courtroom quickly filled up with media and members of various
victim/survivor groups.

The mood among the latter was celebratory and almost voluptuously mean. We
overheard many charming comments during our wait. Someone accused a court
officer of “catering to the NAMBLA contingent.” One wit gathered a large
laugh by saying he’d heard that “Shanley called in sick.”

The hearing began at 10:15. Assistant DA Lynn Rooney asked for two life
terms plus ten years probation. (Which she essentially got.) She stressed
that Shanley showed, “No remorse. No resposponsibility.” (For crimes he did
not commit. I have seen Rooney use those same lines against the Amiraults.)
She stated that Paul Busa’s promising career in the Air Force had come to an
end on 2/11/02, when he suddenly “remembered” his six years of weekly abuse.

Busa’s father, Richard, began his impact statement by saying, “This verdict
is a tremendous relief and a source of satisfaction.” He talked about his
son’s “lifelong horror” and said that Shanley had “robbed my little boy of
his innocence” and “took his faith away.”  He concluded by mentioning that
he works for the Department of Correction, and that “I’ve seen a lot of evil
people, but I want you to know [Shanley] is right at the top of the list.”

Busa’s wife, Teresa, cried through her statement. She said that Paul would
get “physically ill walking through the door of the church” and described
her husband “punching a hole in our bedroom wall” with his fist. She spoke
of Paul’s recurring “stress rash” and “weeks of depression when he wouldn’t
shower or shave.” She said that Paul “will never find comfort in faith.”
Addressing Shanley, she said, “No words will ever describe my disgust for
you. You are sick to the core.”  She said she wished he would die in prison,
beg God for forgiveness and be denied, and spend eternity in hell.

After her statement, Teresa and Paul shared a tearful hug. (Indeed, there
was constant hugging going on among the victim/survivors. A friend of mine
who ended up sitting in the thick of them found himself consoled on
occasion.)

Paul Busa would not read his statement, so it was read by Assistant DA
Rooney.

Busa (via Rooney) said, “This monster must spend the rest of his life in
prison…. He ripped my character and my world apart…. He is a pedophile,
possibly the worst ever.”  Busa also falsely claimed, “He is a founding
member of NAMBLA and openly advocated sex between men and little boys.” (If
you repeat a lie often enough does it eventually become true?)

Busa also said, “I want him to die in prison, whether by natural causes or
otherwise…. However he dies, I hope it is slow and painful.”

Shanley’s lawyer, Frank Mondano, criticized the DA’s written argument for
sentencing. He pointed out that its recitation of facts were not the facts
presented at trial. He noted that Shanley had no criminal record, and that
the public outcry against him had been “fueled by half-truths and lies.” He
mentioned that public statements by the jurors indicated that they had paid
little attention to the facts. (This would have been difficult, considering
that the Commonwealth presented no reliable evidence.) Mondano pointed out
that the entire prosecution had been “geared to emotion” and that “this is
the point where emotion should be separated from the facts.”

Mondano expressed fear for Shanley’s safety in prison, and cited a recent
quote from a representative of the Massachusetts Correctional Officers who
said they could hardly protect themselves let alone the inmates.

As expected, there was no statement from Shanley. It had been Mondano’s
policy from the beginning to alone Shanley to speak to no one. I think this
hurt Shanley a great deal.

There was a recess while the judge prepared his sentence. “That Mondano. He
is a scumbag,” said a woman sitting in front of me.  “He’s just a low-level
felon,” the man to her left said supportively. The victim/survivor crowd
kept exchanging big warm hugs. Busa worked the room, laughing and joking
among his adoring supporters. For a time he hovered a few feet away from us,
accepting congratulations for his eloquent victim’s impact statement.  Jim
overheard him say, “I wrote something about the gay life, but they wouldn’t
let me keep it.”

Before passing sentence, the judge spoke of the devastation to Paul Busa
“when he first recovered his memories.”

Traumatic amnesia is now considered fact in Massachusetts courts.

I think the time has come to retire the term “recovered memory” completely.
It means too many different things to too many different people. All
memories are recovered. No memory is continuous. A continuous memory would
be with us every waking moment. The interval between retrieval of the “same”
memory can very from minutes to decades. (Actually, I doubt that any of us
ever retrieves the “same” memory in precisely identical ways. memory is
always changing.)

>From now on I will use terms such as “massive repression” and “traumatic
amnesia.” But whatever you call it, there’s no evidence indicating that it
exists.

In my opinion, it is essential that this verdict is appealed and appealed in
the most careful and professional way. This will be a hard case to win,
because this case is so politically loaded. But the effort has to be made.
Too much is at stake.

The challenge will be to keep Paul Shanley alive while the appeal is written
and argued. I fear that Paul Busa may get his wish and that Shanley will be
murdered in prison.

I have the most uneasy feeling that I have just come from an execution.

-Bob Chatelle (with Jim D’Entremont)
For a good account on the Shanley case, I recomment this article.