Boston Sexual Abuse Lawyer Blog

The Boston Globe reported this week that a convicted rapist has been arrested after allegedly attacking a woman in a Wareham parking lot. Wareham police received several 911 calls around 10:15 p.m., with reports of a woman screaming for help in the Wal-Mart parking lot on Cranberry Highway.

Police said they found the 36-year-old victim "visibly shaken and crying'' when they arrived. She told police she had just gotten into her car after shopping, when a man told her she left some bags on the roof of her car.

She got out of the car, and the man grabbed her and pushed her against a van parked next to her, police said. After she started screaming, the attacker put his hand on her mouth and told her to shut up, but the victim bit his hand and kept screaming as he tried to drag her to his car.

The victim bit the man again, broke away, and ran toward the store, police said. The victim and several witnesses gave police a description of the suspect, as well as a partial license plate from his car as he drove away. Police also viewed surveillance camera footage from the store.

Police dispatchers searched the Registry of Motor Vehicles database and found that the car belonged to Lance Porter, 36, a registered Level 3 sex offender. Porter is on parole after spending 12 years in state prison for kidnapping and raping a child in May 1996, according to the sex offender registry.

Officers went to Porter's house in Wareham, and after a brief investigation Porter was arrested and charged with kidnapping, assault and battery, and attempted rape, police said. He was arraigned tomorrow in Wareham District Court.

A New Hampshire man who is a long-time MIT employee in the purchasing department is accused of possessing child sex abuse images on his computer. Joseph Pellegrino, 58, of 15 Loren Road, Salem, was arrested Tuesday on charges he possessed images that included the sexual assault of pre-pubescent children.

Pellegrino is free on $10,000 personal recognizance bail, pending arraignment Oct. 25 in Salem (NH) District Court. Pellegrino was arrested on seven state charges of possession of child sexual abuse images, all felonies.

The UMass newspaper reported this week that the University's Everywoman's Center has been awarded a state-funded grant of $149,520 over three years to continue and extend its work with teen victims of sexual assault and dating violence.

The grant was awarded by the Massachusetts Office for Victim Assistance and is segmented into annual increments of $49,840. MOVA is an independent state agency which looks to increase outreach and advocacy among adolescents who have experienced sexual or dating abuse. The Everywoman's Center will attempt to utilize the incoming grant money to provide increased support to local middle and high schools.

The Everywoman's Center offers UMass students a number of volunteer opportunities. Students may complete a 60-hour training program offered by EWC to become rape crisis counselors or violence prevention educators on campus.

Interesting piece in the Springfield paper about statutory rape as it related to the tragic Phoebe Prince suicide case. Should prosecutors be going after teenagers who have sex with other teenagers, even a year younger, or is the law intended to target the situations where there is more of an age discrepancy?

The Boston Globe reports that a Catholic priest who had been cleared of allegations of child sexual abuse is facing new ones and has been barred from any ministry.

The Rev. Thomas M. Curran, 65, was placed on administrative leave from 2002 to 2007 following the previous allegations. In 2007, he was placed in permanent disability status, which allowed him to celebrate only the sacraments with his family.

Until the new allegations, which date to the 1970s and '80s, are investigated, Curran will be barred from any ministry, including with his family, the archdiocese said in a statement. It did not disclose other details about the new allegations.

Kelly Lynch, archdiocesan spokeswoman, said church officials notified the attorney general's office and the Middlesex district attorney's office. She said the church would investigate internally.

In 2002, a prison inmate accused Curran of rape. The inmate, who was serving time for raping a young boy, alleged that the priest raped him in the 1970s and introduced him to another figure in the clergy abuse scandal, Paul M. Shanley, a former priest convicted of abuse.

Curran denied the charges, telling the Boston Globe in 2003, ''None of it is true,'' and lamenting that ''some psychopath from a prison'' would get him thrown out of the ministry. He was cleared by the archdiocese in 2007.

''This case shows, yet again, how extraordinarily flawed so-called church 'investigations' into child sex reports are,'' David Clohessy, executive director of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, said in a statement. ''Catholics, citizens and cops should be extremely skeptical when Catholic officials claim they have 'cleared' an accused pedophile priest.''

The Metrowest Daily News reported this week on a Hopkinton man recently charged with sexually assaulting a Worcester teen was barred from his work as a traveling minister in the 1970s after an earlier allegation of child abuse.

George Scandalis, 67, had been a minister for a Christian fellowship that goes by no official name but is informally known as the Two-by-Twos, the Workers, the Truth or the Christian Conventions.