Coakley made deal in 1995 priest case - Did not prosecute in boys' complaint

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http://www.boston.com/yourtown/waltham/articles/2009/11/23/coakley_details_her_role_in_1995_probation_deal_for_geoghan/
"I agonized over every one of those cases," said Martha Coakley of her
work as head of the Child Abuse Prosecution Unit

By Michael Rezendes Globe Staff / November 23, 2009

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....

Mitchell Garabedian, the attorney who represented the mother of the
Waltham boys, said news of the lawsuit was a catalyst. Within two
years, he said, he found himself representing more than 50 of
Geoghan's victims, and would ultimately represent 145 of them.
http://www.boston.com/yourtown/waltham/articles/2009/11/23/coakley_details_her_role_in_1995_probation_deal_for_geoghan/