Scully plea avoids sex offender label

Beverly Citizen
December 30, 2009

http://www.wickedlocal.com/beverly/homepage/x664198573/Year-in-Review-The-Top-12-stories-of-2009
Scully plea avoids sex-offender label
The former director of the Beverly Public Library pleaded guilty in January to two counts of possessing child pornography, averting a requirement that he be required to register as a sex offender.
In exchange for the plea agreement Tom Scully was put on probation for a year and has been monitored by GPS.
Scully also agreed to not have unsupervised contact with children under 16, not possess pornography and consented to random searches of his computer.
The plea agreement also calls for Scully to continue to undergo counseling.
A charge of indecent assault and battery on a person over 14 had previously been dismissed.
Scully, 60, was arrested by Beverly police in April 2005 after the foster father of a boy whom Scully met in the library came to police reporting an “unusual relationship.” The foster father said the boy had been looking at a “questionable Web site” at the library when Scully noticed him and Scully offered the boy a “safe place” to view the Web sites in his Walnut Avenue home. Scully gave the boy several homosexual pornographic DVDs and let him use it in a spare bedroom, but he wasn’t in the room with the boy, according to the plea agreement.
Scully, who had been the library director for 19 years and was also the city’s director of community services, was arrested shortly after the accusations.