Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> Sex Offender Issues

Criminal Law

: Sex Offender Issues

Crisis of Faith - Carnal Knowledge

View the article here 02/25/2009 By JoAnn Wypijewski Sex panics make for bad law. It could be said that they make for bad science, too, except that what has driven some of the most notorious legal cases to emerge from such panics has been more a masquerade of science, a belief tricked out in the language of medicine and social science to distract from the mumbo jumbo at its core. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is set to be the latest arena to test that belief, taking up the admissibility of "dissociative amnesia," or "repressed memory," in a case that some powerful interests no doubt hoped was as settled as the grave. The petitioner is Paul Shanley, a once famous "street priest" who became infamous in the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church, was tried in 2005, convicted and sentenced to twelve to fifteen years in prison...continue to full post

Full post as published by Sex Offender Issues on March 05, 2009 (boomark / email).