A Court First: Diocese vs. Diocese

The Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino sued the Archdiocese of Boston on Tuesday, charging that Boston officials hid the history of sexual molestation by former priest Paul Shanley when he moved to California.

The suit, filed in San Bernardino County Superior Court, is believed to mark the first time one U.S. Catholic diocese has sued another, according to both dioceses. As such, it is a further indication of how the sex abuse scandal has moved through the Catholic Church, overturning long-established customs. A spokesman for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in Washington called the suit, at the least, a historic “rarity.”

The suit accuses Catholic officials in Boston of engaging in “misrepresentations and suppression of information” as well as “active misconduct and negligence” in hiding the background of Shanley, who has been accused of molestations of boys going back to 1967. Shanley, 71, is free on bail awaiting trial in Boston on charges of child rape, indecent assault and battery.

Shanley came to San Bernardino in 1990 and has been accused in a civil suit of assaulting at least one teenage boy while there.

In that suit, Kevin English, 30, has sought damages from both dioceses, claiming he was abused since he was 17. San Bernardino officials say that, so far, they have not turned up evidence to corroborate English’s claims but that a settlement could nonetheless cost upward of $12 million. That would be enough to push the diocese “to the brink of bankruptcy,” said Father Howard Lincoln, spokesman for the diocese.

The suit aims to ensure that whatever English is paid comes from Boston, not San Bernardino. “We should not have to pay for Boston’s mistake,” Lincoln said. Although the Roman Catholic Church is a worldwide organization with an international hierarchy, each diocese is legally treated as a separate entity with its own assets and income.

In Boston, Donna M. Morrissey, spokeswoman for the archdiocese, said officials had not seen the suit and would not comment. Asked if any other diocese had sued the Boston archdiocese, she said, “It’s the first time I’ve head of it happening.”

Others said the case shows that internal fractures among the nation’s bishops, which have until now been confined to closed-door meetings, increasingly are becoming public.

The suit “shows how deeply the church has been affected” by the sex abuse scandal, said Father Thomas Rausch, chairman of the theology department at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. The scandal is eroding “the communion that unites the dioceses together as one church in the United States,” he said.

Accusations that dioceses moved problem priests around the country -- often not warning the receiving diocese -- have been a hallmark of the scandal. Because of that, the San Bernardino suit could be imitated by other dioceses now that the tradition of settling disputes within the church has been breached.

Under the church’s internal rules, known as canon law, a diocese has recourse to church courts to resolve disputes with other dioceses. Those proceedings would be private. The decision to file a suit in civil court makes a very public statement, said Riverside attorney William Light, who represents English.

“I tend to think ... the reason they chose this one was to put them in a better light publicly,” Light said. The abuse English suffered was “extremely reprehensible,” he added. If the case went to trial, “we think a jury would agree with us and award substantial sums to compensate Kevin for the things he had to endure, literally at the hands of Father Shanley” and those who let Shanley work with minors.

Lincoln said the suit was “intended to be a serious message” from Bishop Gerald R. Barnes to the Boston archdiocese.

“We feel our position is very strong, and we hope that Boston resolves this matter and indemnifies us,” he said.

“The church teaches us to treat each other with love, dignity and respect,” Lincoln said. “That means allowing members of the church to take responsibility for their actions.”

While the idea of one diocese suing another is unusual, the legal question in the case is fairly common, said Stephen Barnett, a professor of law at UC Berkeley. In a 1997 case, the California Supreme Court ruled that four school districts could be sued for recommending an employee who was known to have been accused of sexual misconduct.

An employer can be liable if letters of recommendation amounted to an “affirmative misrepresentation presenting a foreseeable and substantial risk of physical harm to a third person,” the court held.

In the Shanley case, the Most Rev. Robert J. Banks, who was the auxiliary bishop of Boston at the time, sent a letter dated Jan. 15, 1990, to the San Bernardino diocese saying Shanley was “a priest in good standing.” Banks is now bishop of Green Bay, Wis.

Documents that have been released in other suits against the Boston archdiocese show that church officials there knew Shanley had a history of sexual abuse and that he had, at one point, advocated sex between men and boys.

The revelation that the archdiocese withheld information about Shanley’s sexual history was a key factor that led to the resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law as archbishop of Boston in December. Before he resigned, Law apologized to Bishop Barnes of San Bernardino for the Shanley affair.

The San Bernardino diocese would not have permitted Shanley to serve in the diocese had it known the truth about him, officials of the diocese say.

The suit comes as Catholic dioceses across the country, including the Los Angeles archdiocese, are facing millions of dollars in sexual abuse claims and impatience and outrage among the general public.

Lincoln said the San Bernardino diocese, which serves a rapidly growing population and has relatively small financial reserves, is living from “paycheck to paycheck.”

“This lawsuit ... would have a devastating impact on our ability to provide for one of the fastest growing faith communities in the nation,” Lincoln said.

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Times staff writer Maura Dolan contributed to this story.