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Jury ponders alleged priest molestation case

Defendant John Geoghan was defrocked as a priest in 1998.

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (CNN) -- Jurors will continue deliberations Friday in the case of a defrocked Catholic priest accused of molesting a boy.

The case went to the jury Thursday after a psychiatrist testified the defendant, John Geoghan, admitted to having sexual fantasies about children.

"We discussed his ability to control his sexual fantasies and his sexual feelings about women and boys," said Dr. Edward Messner, Boston-based psychiatrist who said he treated Geoghan between December 1994 and July 1996.

Messner testified shortly before the prosecution and defense presented their closing arguments.

Geoghan has been charged with indecent assault and battery on a child stemming from a 1991 encounter in which a boy -- 10 at the time, but now a college junior -- said the former priest grabbed his buttocks while the two were in a pool at the Waltham Boys and Girls Club.

If convicted of the felony charge, Geoghan could be sentenced to as many as 10 years in prison.

During Thursday's proceedings, jurors in Middlesex County Superior Court heard from Archbishop Alfred C. Hughes, who serves the archdiocese of New Orleans but formerly oversaw the Boston area.

He testified that in 1991 he forbade Geoghan -- who at that time was a priest -- to go to that club after a friend of the boy's family complained to the church.

Hughes said he made that decision based on a report that Geoghan had been proselytizing at the pool there and had conversations that could be interpreted as "prurient."

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The mother of the young man also testified Thursday, saying her son told her on their walk home from the pool that day in 1991 that the priest had "touched me on the butt."

At home, she said, the son asked his mother why Geoghan did what he did. "I told him, 'I don't know,'" the mother testified.

Then, her son told her that he didn't want anybody to know about the matter and asked to be left alone.

Geoghan, she said, was a familiar figure in the neighborhood, often taking children out for ice cream and bowling.

"He used to come to the projects a lot," the mother testified.

The young man testified Wednesday.

Lawyer claims differing accounts

In closing arguments, defense attorney Geoffrey Packard said there were too many differences between the youth's account of what happened and that of his mother for the story to be believed.

He cited inconstancies in their accounts of where the boy was in the swimming pool and when that day he told his mother about the alleged incident.

He also suggested the two were motivated by greed, citing a civil lawsuit filed by the family against the Boston archdiocese.

They're "suing the Boston archdiocese, but not for money," Packard said sarcastically.

Prosecutor Lynn Rooney countered that the differences in the mother and son's accounts were only slight and said the variations underscored the truthfulness of their basic claim.

If they made the accusation to win money, she told the jury of eight men and four women, they would have made sure their stories matched in every detail and would have made a much more serious claim to generate more sympathy.

"It was wrong. It was a crime. It was indecent. He knew it and he told his mother," she said.

The defense attorney said Geoghan was helping the boy out of the pool, and that his hands were merely pushing the boy up. But Rooney said the youth "knew it was a bad touch."

Geoghan, 66, has been accused by more than 130 people of sexual abuse during his 30-year tenure in six different parishes.

His last assignment was St. Julia's parish in the wealthy Boston suburb of Weston. Geoghan was defrocked in 1998.

Boston Cardinal Bernard Law apologized last week for appointing the man parishioners knew as "Father Jack," but he defended his decision.

"However much I regret having assigned him, John Geoghan was never assigned by me to a parish without psychiatric or medical assessments indicating that such assignments were appropriate," Law said.

The Catholic Church has already paid out $10 million dollars stemming from 50 civil suits filed in connection with Geoghan. Eighty-four more suits are pending.