(CNN) A defrocked US Roman Catholic priest is set for release from prison 12 years after his conviction on child rape charges, a Massachusetts prosecutor said Tuesday. 
 
 Paul Shanley was among the first clergymen to stand trial after the Boston Globe's Spotlight team unearthed allegations against priests of serial child sexual abuse and coverups by the Boston Archdiocese. 
 
 The scandal reverberated through the church, exposing similar allegations worldwide that compromised its moral authority and led to years of multimillion-dollar settlements. 
 
 Shanley was 74 years old when a Middlesex County jury convicted him in 2005 of repeatedly raping a boy from his parish in the 1980s. His victim, who was 27 years old during the trial, testified that Shanley regularly pulled him out of Sunday catechism class for what he called "special duties" and molested him in various rooms of St. John the Evangelist, a defunct parish in the Boston suburb of Newton. After one day of cross-examination from Shanley's lawyer, who tried to cast doubt on the victim's recollections and credibility, the victim begged the judge to not make him return to the stand. 
 
 Prosecutors asked for a life sentence on two counts each of child rape and indecent assault and battery, but Shanley received 12 to 15 years. 
 
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 Paul R. Shanley , a former “street priest” who became one of the most notorious figures in the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse scandal, is set to be released from prison as early as this week after serving 12 years behind bars for raping a Sunday school student in the early 1980s. 
 
 Middlesex prosecutors said they had hoped to keep the 86-year-old defrocked priest behind bars even after his sentence was completed by having him declared a “sexually dangerous person.” But two doctors who examined Shanley found that he did not meet the required criteria, prosecutors said. 
 
 “We are awaiting their final reports,” Middlesex District Attorney Marian T. Ryan’s office said in a statement Tuesday. “However, both doctors have informed us that they have concluded that Shanley does not satisfy the legal criteria for a petition to be filed.” 
 
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 Shanley was accused of abusing roughly two dozen victims over several decades, many of them troubled adolescents who came to him for counseling when he ran a “ministry for alienated youth” in Boston in the 1960s and ’70s. 
 
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 Prosecutors and prison officials would not say when Shanley will be released from Old Colony Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison in Bridgewater where he is serving his sentence. But victims’ attorneys said they were told it would be this week, most likely on Friday. 
 
 Carmen L. Durso, a victims’ attorney, said Shanley is serving the minimum required of his 12 to 15 year sentence because he earned time for good behavior behind bars. 
 
 Durso, who represented many of Shanley’s alleged victims in civil claims against the Catholic Church, said he was outraged that the doctors who examined Shanley did not find him to be sexually dangerous. 
 
 “If Paul Shanley is not a continuing threat, then nobody is,” Durso said. 
 
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 After he is released, Shanley will be monitored by the state Probation Department for the next 10 years and has been ordered to have no contact with children under the age of 16, the district attorney’s office said. He will have to register as a sex offender. 
 
 Rodney Ford, whose son, Gregory, was allegedly molested by Shanley in the 1990s, said he was disappointed, angry, and upset that Shanley will not be held behind bars under the state’s civil commitment law for sexually dangerous persons. 
 
 “People need to know this is a monster who is going to be let out of prison, and age and frailty don’t mean anything,” said Ford, whose son said he was abused by Shanley between the ages of 6 and 11. “It’s about power and control for Paul Shanley.’’ 
 
 Ford said he plans to speak at a press conference with Shanley’s victims and their attorneys at Durso’s office on Wednesday. 
 
 “It’s a sad day for many victims,” said Mitchell Garabedian, who represented Shanley’s victims in civil claims against the church. “Father Shanley has ruined their lives from sexually abusing them, and they feel not only did Father Shanley get away with sexually abusing them, but the supervisors of Father Shanley got away with allowing him to do it.” 
 
 Globe Staff/File 1969 Early in his ministry, Father Paul Shanley built a reputation at such churches as St. Francis of Assissi in Braintree for his activism and antiestablishment viewpoints. 
 
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 The Archdiocese of Boston released a statement Tuesday, saying, “Paul Shanley’s crimes against children were reprehensible. No young person should ever have to experience such violations of their safety and dignity. We continue to assure all victims of abuse of our prayers and our concern.” 
 
 Shanley’s rose to prominence in the 1970s as denim-clad, shaggy-haired counterculture figure, well known for criticizing the church’s stance on homosexuality. But his victims said counseling sessions with the former priest often resulted in coerced sex at his apartment in Back Bay. 
 
 Shanley was one of the few priests implicated in the church’s pedophile priest scandal to face a criminal trial because he left Massachusetts and moved to California in about 1989, stopping the clock on the statute of limitations for sexual abuse prosecutions. 
 
 At Shanley’s trial in 2005, a 27-year-old firefighter testified that he was raped by Shanley while attending Sunday school at St. Jean’s Church in Newton from the time he was 6 until he was 9. 
 
 Shanley had been named pastor of that church in 1979, even though in 1974, according to one of Shanley’s victims, Cardinal Humberto Medeiros had been notified of Shanley’s abuse by a victim’s mother. 
 
 Shanley was convicted of two counts of rape of a child and two counts of indecent assault and battery on a child. Middlesex prosecutors asked for a life sentence, but Judge Stephen A. Neel sentenced him to 12 to 15 years behind bars. 
 
 In a statement read by a prosecutor in court, the firefighter who was raped by Shanley said he hoped the former priest would never be released. “I want him to die in prison, whether it’s of natural causes or otherwise,” his statement said. “However he dies, I hope it’s slow and painful!” 
 
 Michael Levenson can be reached at mlevenson@globe.com . Follow him on Twitter @mlevenson 

 Infamous pedophile priest Paul Shanley is scheduled to be released from prison later this week, 5 Investigates has learned, drawing outrage from priest abuse victims and their advocates, who say the now-86-year-old is still a danger to the public. 
 
 Shanley was convicted in 2005 of rape and indecent assault and battery on a person under the age of 14. The case that relied on the repressed memory of the victim, who said he was abused by Shanley between 1983 and 1989 when he was attending CCD classes at St. Jean’s Church in Newton. 
 
 Shanley was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in prison. 
 
 Some of Shanley's other alleged victims and their attorneys are planning a press conference later this week, angry that Shanley has been is being released. 
 
 They have been told by the Middlesex District Attorney’s office that prosecutors had Shanley evaluated to see if he could be held after his prison sentence as a sexually dangerous person, but that those evaluations didn’t provide the evidence needed to proceed. 
 
 "The defendant will be monitored by the probation department for the next ten years and has been ordered to have no contact with children under sixteen years of age," DA Marian Ryan said in a statement. 
 
 
 
 A spokesperson for the Massachusetts Department of Correction confirmed that Shanley is being held at the Old Colony Correctional Center in Bridgewater but said regulations prevented the DOC from providing his scheduled date of release. 
 
 "Paul Shanley's crimes against children were reprehensible. No young person should ever have to experience such violations of their safety and dignity," the Archdiocese of Boston said in a statement. "We continue to assure all victims of abuse of our prayers and our concern. Any person who has been harmed by clergy sexual abuse, and in particular those who may need additional support at this time, are encouraged to contact the Archdiocese's Office of Pastoral Support and Outreach at 617-746-5995." 
 
 
 
 5 Investigates has asked the Middlesex District Attorney's office for comment. 
 
 Father Paul Shanley shakes hands with then-Archbishop Bernard Law in an undated photo. 
 
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– A pedophile priest is scheduled to be released from prison in Massachusetts within days, drawing outrage from the families of his alleged victims who say he's a threat to children. Paul Shanley, 86, was sentenced in 2005 to 12 to 15 years in prison for the rape of a young boy at his parish in the Boston suburb of Newton between 1983 and 1989, though some two dozen others have also accused him of abuse beginning in the 1960s, report WCVB and the Boston Globe. Victims' attorneys say Shanley logged time for good behavior while behind bars and will be freed this week, likely on Friday. Prosecutors had tried to keep Shanley locked up by declaring him a "sexually dangerous person," but doctors found he didn't fit the legal criteria. Upon his release from Old Colony Correctional Facility in Bridgewater, Shanley will begin 10 years of supervised probation. He must also register as a sex offender and avoid contact with children under 16, Middlesex District Attorney Marian Ryan tells CNN. But "people need to know this is a monster who is going to be let out of prison, and age and frailty don't mean anything," says the father of one alleged victim who claims his abuse by Shanley began at just 6 years old. "We fear for the safety of children," adds a rep for the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. "Age does not cure pedophilia. Often age gives predators an advantage. People may see an old man and assume he is harmless. That is not the case."