An Act of Journalism

[Timothy]

The Boston Gob finally did their job.  This is possibly the replacement for Fat Teddy from Chappaquiddick....

When Martha Coakley was the Middlesex district attorney, her office prosecuted the Rev. John J. Geoghan based on an allegation that he squeezed the buttocks of a 10-year-old boy a single time at a public swimming pool. The highly publicized 2002 conviction won Coakley widespread praise for bringing the first successful criminal case against the widely accused pedophile, a priest many had called “Father Jack.’’
 
But seven years earlier, Coakley, then the head of the Middlesex child abuse unit, had Geoghan in her sights and took a dramatically different approach. Back then, three grade-school brothers told investigators that Geoghan had inappropriately touched them during numerous visits to their Waltham home, and had made lewd telephone calls to them. Rather than prosecute, Coakley agreed to grant Geoghan a year of probation in a closed-door proceeding that received no media attention at all.

Because of the deal, Geoghan faced no formal charges and no criminal record.

In sanctioning the 1995 probation agreement, Coakley, now the front-runner in a special election for the United States Senate, never pressed the Boston Archdiocese for any prior complaints against Geoghan. It’s not clear that the archdiocese would have readily obliged, but it was holding in its files thousands of pages of documents detailing abuse complaints against Geoghan made by dozens of victims dating back to the 1960s.

Coakley, in a lengthy interview last week, said she handled the case appropriately, pressing the best case possible given the specific contact described by the three young brothers. She also said she successfully negotiated specific terms of Geoghan’s pretrial probation - a routine way of expediting minor criminal cases - requiring Geoghan to undergo psychiatric testing and be barred from unsupervised contact with children for a year.

“None of the boys disclosed any touching that was basically an indecent assault and battery,’’ Coakley said. Coakley also said she did not believe she could have won a conviction in the case on anything more serious than the charge of making harassing telephone calls, a misdemeanor.

In a previously unreported 1996 letter written by Coakley to the boys’ mother, a copy of which was obtained recently by the Globe, Coakley recounted details of videotaped interviews that investigators conducted with the boys. In those interviews, the boys described several instances of touching, including one where Geoghan soaped up one of the brothers in the shower.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/11/23/coakley_details_her_role_in_1995_probation_deal_for_geoghan/

[tombogan03884]

 Geoghan. Isn't he the one that got killed in prison ? the guards let another inmate beat him, they didn't try to stop him until he produced a razor blade and was going to cut the Ex priests balls off.
His defense ? "For the first time in my life I did what society WANTED me to do"
    He got another life sentence and the guards got fired

[Timothy]

Yup, strangled and stomped to death in his cell!  Could not have happened to a nicer guy!

[twyacht]

Rotting in Hell for Eternity, still seems like not enough.  Prison Justice at least got him off this planet.

[Timothy]

He got better than he deserved but the point is, the Attorney General, Martha Coakley LET HIM GO and she's the frontrunner to replace Teddy Kennedy.....

She should be recalled as AG and never allowed to sit a moment in the US Senate!

But that my friends, will never happen!

This whole Boston Archdiosese issue is the reason my wife left the Catholic church years ago!

[Sponsor]

[tombogan03884]

Dude, it's Mass, you expect some one who ISN'T a Dem Party hack ?
Hasn't happened in the last 200 years, don't get your hopes up for the next 200.

[Timothy]

Dude, it's Mass, you expect some one who ISN'T a Dem Party hack ?
Hasn't happened in the last 200 years, don't get your hopes up for the next 200.

Baby steps Tom.....

[twyacht]

Baby steps with a Gadsden flag and an upheaval.

Mass. used to be part of the original 13 colonies, too bad they forgot.

[tombogan03884]

Mass has always been like that.
In the build up to the Revolution the Adams's and Hancock's and others roused the "rabble", the Free blacks, small farmers, women, and others who could not vote because of the "Property requirement" to give numbers and weight to their protests.
Then when it came time to pass a state Constitution the set the property requirement higher than it had been under the Crown disenfranchising even more people.
When Abigail Adams pushed her husband for women's equality he laughed at her.

[CJS3]

He got better than he deserved but the point is, the Attorney General, Martha Coakley LET HIM GO and she's the frontrunner to replace Teddy Kennedy.....

Of course she's the frontrunner, it's Massachusetts.