WORCESTER, MA - A convicted sex offender who alleged he was sexually abused by a priest as a child was released from custody yesterday after a trial to determine whether he was to be committed as a sexually dangerous person.
District Attorney John J. Conte filed a petition in Worcester Superior Court seeking to have Neil W. Sweeney Jr., 38, of Worcester, committed to the Massachusetts Treatment Center for sex offenders in Bridgewater for one day to life as a sexually dangerous person.
After a jury-waived trial that ended yesterday, Judge Elizabeth M. Fahey found that prosecutors failed to meet their burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Sweeney was sexually dangerous, as that term is defined under the law. It was the obligation of Assistant District Attorney Peter J. Pratt to prove that Mr. Sweeney had a past conviction for a sexual offense and suffered from a mental abnormality or personality disorder that made him likely to commit another sex crime if not confined to a secure facility.
Court records show that in 1995 Mr. Sweeney pleaded guilty in Worcester Superior Court to two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child. He was sentenced to 18 months in the House of Correction with five years of probation to follow.
The 18-month jail term was later reduced to one year. After his release from custody, Mr. Sweeney fled to California and violated the terms of his probation by failing to report to his probation officer and to undergo counseling for his sex offenses, court records show.
In 2001, he was arrested in California as a fugitive from justice and was returned to Massachusetts, where he received a jail sentence of 2½ years for violating his probation.
Conflicting psychological reports were introduced into evidence during the trial that concluded yesterday. Psychologist Frederic Krell offered the opinion that Mr. Sweeney is sexually dangerous while another psychologist, Leonard A. Bard, said there was no evidence suggesting Mr. Sweeney was likely to commit another sex crime if released.
Mr. Sweeney had complained to officials of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester that as a child he had been abused by a priest.
Monsignor Thomas J. Sullivan, diocesan chancellor, and Frances Nugent, social worker in the diocese's Office of Healing and Prevention, testified during the trial that the diocese would pay for Mr. Sweeney's counseling if he were released.
In issuing her findings yesterday, Judge Fahey said she believed Mr. Sweeney to be a pedophile with a personality disorder, but was not satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that he would commit another sex crime if not confined.
The judge noted that Mr. Sweeney had undergone "fairly extensive treatment" and said she accepted as credible Ms. Nugent's testimony that 90 percent of sex offenders who undergo treatment that addresses both their crimes and their victimization do not offend again.
I can't see where Mass. gets off calling anyone a sex offender anymore. Is there any part of the Mass. State Constitution that would preclude Richard Gere from marrying his pet gerbil?
Mass. should apologize to Sweeney. That would be logically consistent with the proclivatives of it's state supreme court.
Is this one of the judges featured on O'Reilly's recurring bad judge segments on the Factor?
The name sounds familiar.
Here's what happened when another Massachusetts sex offender was released from prison. Was watching the trial on the Court TV channel before being bumped by the Michael Jackson fiasco.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/719400/posts Woman slain at Route 24 rest stop - Murderer one of 17,000 unregistered Massachusetts Sex offenders
Boston Globe ^ | July 19, 2002 | Francie Latour and Emily Ramshaw
Posted on 07/20/2002 5:15 AM EDT by Cincinatus' Wife
BRIDGEWATER - On the other side of the bathroom door, she would find cars, lights, people, the highway - safety, if Alexandra Zapp could dodge the man blocking the way out with his body, and a knife.
The man had seen her pull in to the rest stop off Route 24, prosecutors said, wearing flip-flops and clutching her wallet and keys as she headed for the ladies' room in the early morning hours yesterday. He had pulled the knife and he had waited for her. Zapp opened the door to her attacker, and what police say happened next surprised no one who knew the fiery athlete: She began to struggle.
Zapp weighed less than 100 pounds, but she was strong. Prosecutors said she fought savagely against Paul J. Leahy, biting and head-butting her way out of his grip. Then, already bloody and still cornered by the stalls, she tried to reason with her killer: If he let her go, she would tell others that Leahy had rescued her from another attacker.
Her pleas failed: Moments later, the struggle began again, and shortly before dawn it ended with her death.
In a random killing already raising new questions about the state's sex offender registry, Leahy, 39, of East Bridgewater, was charged with murder, kidnapping, armed robbery, and armed assault. Within hours of the murder, Bridgewater police officials revealed that they had known about Leahy for years. He is a convicted rapist with a criminal record stretching back 19 years. But a backlog in the classification of sex offenders in the state prevented his name from being registered.
Police said Zapp, who was heading home to Newport, R.I., was stabbed repeatedly in the neck, chest, hands, and shoulders after she bolted for the door hoping to escape. In details they said came from Leahy's own vivid statements to police, prosecutors said Zapp threw herself to the floor, trying desperately to kick Leahy as he overpowered her.
''She walked into that restroom, and she never came out alive,'' said Assistant District Attorney Frank Middleton, describing in a Brockton courtroom yesterday the brutal struggle that unfolded as Leahy, an employee of the Burger King at the service stop on Route 24 southbound in Bridgewater, allegedly stabbed the 30-year-old Zapp to death.
''Anybody willing to do what he did to an innocent woman is nothing else than a cold-blooded killer,'' said Plymouth District Attorney Timothy Cruz.
Help came within seconds of the stabbing, but there would be no rescue. At about 4:20 a.m., an off-duty State Police officer who had stopped for gas heard thuds and groans through the wall as he entered the adjoining men's room.
Still in uniform, Lieutenant Stephen O'Reilly dipped his boot into the blood he saw coming from the women's room, according to a State Police spokesman. It was still wet, and as O'Reilly approached the door with his gun drawn, he could hear the sound of running water.
When he opened the door, prosecutors said, O'Reilly found Leahy standing by a sink and holding Zapp's wallet. All around him, O'Reilly told police, bloody streaks covered the restroom walls. Steps away, behind the second-to-last bathroom stall, O'Reilly said, he saw the lower half of Zapp's body.
''`I lost it, I lost it,''' O'Reilly told police Leahy said to him, moments before a lifeless Zapp was rushed to Morton Hospital in Taunton. At 5:40 a.m., just over an hour after her Volvo pulled into the side entrance of the Burger King, Zapp was pronounced dead.
A court-appointed lawyer for Leahy, Frank Spillane, said he would have no comment on the charges until Leahy's court appearance Aug. 8.
Calling the crime heinous, Middleton asked that Leahy be held without bail. As the prosecutor recounted the details of the killing for 15 minutes yesterday, Leahy never lifted his head. He kept his head down as Middleton described Leahy's lengthy criminal record, which began at age 18.
It began with motor vehicle violations, but the crimes quickly turned violent, and then sexual, after Leahy was convicted in 1984 of entering the home of a 13-year-old Brockton girl, forcing her into a bathroom at knifepoint, and assaulting her.
Then, after a short stint in the Plymouth County House of Correction, Leahy walked into a Brockton pizza shop, forced a woman into a back room, and raped her. He served 13 years of a 15-year sentence for the charge. By 2000, he was back in court again, this time charged with accosting a minor and asking her to perform oral sex. He served six months in county jail, and sometime later he began working at the Burger King on Route 24.
As a convicted rapist, Leahy would be a candidate for the state's sex offender registry. But because of legal challenges, the registry board was blocked from processing cases until last year. As a result, only 1,000 of 18,000 offenders have been registered.
Officials at Burger King would not comment on Leahy's employment or whether they conducted a routine background check before hiring him. In a statement, the fast-food chain said only that it was saddened by the crime and was working with authorities in the investigation.
In Newport, at Papers, the stationery store where Zapp worked part time, friends and customers gathered to grieve and express shock at Zapp's murder.
''We can't comprehend that it happened, even now,'' said Judith Carroll, who owns the store. ''It should not have happened to her.''
To Zapp's friends, she was known as Ally, a confessed daddy's girl whose personality towered over her diminutive size. From horseback riding to sailing - in which she was certified to instruct - she had a voracious appetite for life, according to her friends.
''She was so full of energy and a nonstop talker. She was always telling us stories,'' said Carroll. ''An elegant lady with a bubbly personality. She commanded an audience. She had so much charisma, people were just attracted to her.''
An animal lover, Zapp cared for her coworkers' pets when they were out of town. She had been working at Papers for about 18 months. Absorbing the loss yesterday, Carroll embraced customers as they rushed into the store.
Recalling Zapp's athletic physique and ease at hoisting heavy boxes through the store, Carroll and employees imagined aloud that she put up a gutsy fight before succumbing to her attacker. ''Ally was not a naive young lady,'' Carroll said. ''She was strong physically and mentally.''
Zapp was a keelboat training coordinator at USA Sailing Association in Portsmouth. Monday was her last day in that post.
''We are greatly saddened to announce that former US SAILING Keelboat coordinator and caring friend Ally Zapp was murdered early this morning,'' the organization said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. ''On behalf of the entire US SAILING family, we express our sincerest condolences to her family and friends.''
Corey Dade of the Globe Staff and Globe correspondent Todd Wright contributed to this report. Material from the Associated Press was used.
This story ran on page A1 of the Boston Globe on 7/19/2002. © Copyright 2002 Globe Newspaper Company.