Priest Arrested in Abuse Scandal

A Roman Catholic priest who has been the focus of some of the most shocking disclosures in a nationwide sex scandal was arrested in San Diego on Thursday on three counts of raping a child.

Father Paul Shanley, 71, will be arraigned today on charges of regularly abusing a Massachusetts boy over a seven-year period--sometimes in the church confessional. He was arrested without incident at his apartment in the Hillcrest section of San Diego.

The victim, now 24, was not named in the complaint. He allegedly was molested from 1983 to 1990, beginning when he was 6 years old and a student in a weekly religious education doctrine class taught by Shanley.

Middlesex County Dist. Atty. Martha Coakley said Thursday that the young man approached authorities earlier this week after extensive media coverage of a civil lawsuit against the Boston archdiocese by another alleged Shanley victim, 24-year-old Gregory Ford.

“Almost on a weekly basis, Paul Shanley would come to take not only [the latest alleged victim] but others from that class for ‘talks,’” Coakley said.

The priest allegedly took the young students, all male, either to the rectory, the bathroom or the confessional.

“That is where the abuse took place,” Coakley said.

The description echoes accounts offered by Ford, who also was a religious education student while Shanley was pastor at St. Jean’s parish in Newton, Mass., outside Boston.

Coakley said the priest told the victim that if he reported the abuse, no one would believe him. “He was 6 years old and fond of [Father] Shanley,” the district attorney said.

But coverage of the sex abuse trial and conviction in January of former priest John J. Geoghan--also assigned to the Boston archdiocese--brought a flood of painful memories to Ford and others who claim they were abused by Shanley. Ford’s civil suit forced the archdiocese last month to release more than 1,600 pages of documents about Shanley.

The records contained sexual abuse complaints against Shanley dating from 1967, when he allegedly took children to a cabin at Blue Hill, a ski mountain near Boston. In 1977, according to the documents, Shanley was present at the organizational meeting of what later became the North American Man-Boy Love Assn.

The flamboyant former “street priest” allegedly tried to blackmail the late Cardinal Humberto Medeiros, the records indicate. When Shanley was transferred to California in 1990, a bishop here sent a letter to St. Ann’s parish in San Bernardino praising Shanley as a priest “in good standing.”

While in Southern California, Shanley co-owned a hotel in Palm Springs that catered to gay clients.

Shanley next went to New York to work at Leo House, a residential rehabilitation facility for young people. He moved to San Diego in the late 1990s and recently was dismissed from his volunteer job with the San Diego Police Department. On his application for that position, Shanley did not mention that he was a priest but listed his occupation as “hotel director.”

Shanley’s attorney in Boston, Frank Mondano, did not return a call seeking comment.

San Diego police spokesman David Cohen said Thursday that detectives called Shanley from outside his gated apartment complex and told him they had an arrest warrant. He invited them inside and did not protest when placed in handcuffs, Cohen said.

Officials at the U.S. marshal’s office in San Diego said Shanley apparently had been moving between his own apartment and a friend’s home in the Linda Vista neighborhood.

At the Santa Fe Villas apartment complex, neighbors described Shanley as friendly and helpful but not forthcoming about his background.

None knew he is a priest. He is credited with saving a neighbor’s life by administering CPR when the man had a heart attack.

“He was very nice-looking and charismatic,” apartment manager Mel Lee said. “The majority of people who meet him like him right away. I was very shocked at this. I don’t believe any of it until it’s proven.”

Lee said Shanley introduced his male roommate, about 20 years younger than Shanley, as “my caregiver.”

Neighbor Samuel Goldberg said: “He was a very courteous, affable gentleman. I didn’t know he was a priest. I didn’t even know he was from Boston.”

No criminal charges are pending against Shanley in San Diego, officials said.

He is due to be arraigned this morning in San Diego Superior Court on a fugitive warrant requesting his extradition to Boston. Shanley is being held in isolation in county jail for his protection, authorities said.

Coakley said that the investigation into Shanley is ongoing and that other criminal charges are possible.

Each child rape count against Shanley represents not a specific incident but a type of molestation, Coakley said. In Massachusetts, a charge of child rape can include forced oral sex or digital penetration, she said.

Each count carries a potential life sentence.

Prosecution was possible, the district attorney said, because the alleged crimes took place within a 10-year statute of limitations that begins when a victim turns 16 years old.

Coakley said her office was prepared to handle a potential onslaught of such cases if numerous alleged victims step forward.

Shanley’s name was on a list of more than 80 alleged pedophile priests turned over by the archdiocese in the wake of the clerical sexual abuse crisis, Coakley said.

She said that her office had feared Shanley had fled the country, until television reporters tracked him down in San Diego early this week.

“We were pretty relieved,” Coakley said.

Late Thursday, Boston archdiocese spokeswoman Donna M. Morrissey issued a brief statement expressing hope that Shanley’s arrest “will bring some level of relief and contribute to the healing of those who have been sexually abused as children and teenagers, their families and all who suffer at this horrific time.”

In Manchester, N.H., Bishop John B. McCormack--who was responsible for supervising Shanley while in Boston--said Thursday that he wished he had paid closer attention to signs of trouble.

Also on Thursday, three lawsuits were filed in Oregon, claiming sexual abuse by four Catholic priests; three priests suspected of sexually abusing teenagers more than 20 years ago were suspended from the Roman Catholic archdiocese in Rochester, N.Y; the diocese in Joliet, Ill., agreed to comply with a judge’s order seeking documents containing allegations of sexual abuse of minors by priests; and in Hazleton, Pa., a chaplain at a Roman Catholic high school was suspended following a claim that he sexually abused a boy in 1998.

Mehren reported from Boston and Perry from San Diego.