Posted on 04/09/2002 2:10:57 PM PDT by Dr. Scarpetta
Tuesday, April 9, 2002
Damning internal church documents on the Rev. Paul R. Shanley make clear that the Archdiocese of Boston knew the priest was a child rapist yet devoted large sums of money and decades of personnel resources to cover up his crimes.
The documents also show that Shanley spoke in favor of sex between men and boys at a formative 1978 meeting in Boston of the ``Man Boy Lovers of North America,'' a precursor of the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or NAMBLA.
Shanley, now 71, was last known to be living in San Diego and working as a volunteer police officer, but is believed to have fled the city as word of his sordid sexual history became public.
Released yesterday during a dramatic 2 1/2-hour presentation on live television, the records also include one unannounced bombshell:
Shanley stated in a Sept. 25, 1995, letter to one of his clerical supervisors, Rev. Brian Flatley, that he was himself ``sexually abused as a teenager and later as a seminarian'' by a priest and by the ``predecessor to one of the two cardinals who now debate my fate.''
He did not identify the cleric who allegedly abused him, but the cardinals he was referring to as debating his future were Bernard Cardinal Law and John Cardinal O'Connor.
The documents also reveal:
Shanley admitted openly to raping and sodomizing minors when confronted by church investigators under Boston's two past archbishops, Humberto Cardinal Medeiros and Law.
Despite deep concerns about his proclivities expressed by therapists and others, he received positive referrals from Cardinal Law to ministries in San Bernadino, Calif., and in New York City, where he spent the years from 1990 to 1997.
In handwritten reports from physicians who treated Shanley, the doctors told the church Shanley ``admits to substance of complaints - sexual activity with 4 adolescent males . . . over the years,'' according to a memo dated March 3, 1994. The memo also describes ``oral and anal rape'' with a youth who visited Shanley for pastoral counseling in Roxbury.
A similar memo, dated Nov. 5, 1983, also says Shanley ``doesn't dispute the substance'' of those or other allegations of child rape.
Catholic leaders in California, where Shanley served in the early 1990s, said they received no warning that Shanley had admnitted to sexual misconduct, and the documents indicate Shanley was involved in youth activities there.
At Leo House, a home for transients in Manhattan, Shanley was almost named executive director in 1997 - a move that was forestalled by John Cardinal O'Connor over fear that Shanley's past would surface and lead to bad ``notoriety'' for the Archdiocese of New York.
Shanley defended ``man-boy sex'' publicly in his role as a ``street priest'' and minister to ``sexual minorities'' as early as 1970. He openly associated with members of a pro-pederasty group founded in Boston that became known as NAMBLA in the 1980s.
At the December 1978 convention that led to the founding of the pre-NAMBLA group, Shanley publicly told the story of a boy who ``began to fall apart'' and experience ``psychic demise'' after his adult male sex partner was jailed for having sex with the youth.
``We have our convictions upside down if we are truly concerned with boys,'' Shanley said at the time, the files indicate. ``The `cure' does far more damage.''
The ``man-boy'' conference and Shanley's quotations were reported in GaysWeek in February 1979 under the headline ``Men & Boys: The Boston Conference.'' Medeiros received a letter from attorney Paul McGeady of New York City, complaining about the quotes and including the newspaper, on April 2 of that year.
Also present at the conference was one of the co-founders of NAMBLA, who goes by the pseudonym Socrates. The Herald reported Sunday that at least one Shanley accuser says he was introduced to the priest in the mid-1970s by Socrates, and that Shanley often quoted from NAMBLA-style literature while enticing boys to have sex with him.
Two years before the 1979 warning letter from McGeady, in 1977, Medeiros was also alerted by Jeanne Sweeney of Rochester, N.Y., to a speech by Shanley in which he said ``the kid is the seducer'' in sexual encounters between adults and children, and in which the priest purportedly endorsed bestiality.
On April 12, 1979, after reviewing the GaysWeek article, the cardinal told Shanley he was being transferred to St. Jean's/St. John's Parish in Newton, where many plaintiffs allege he raped them, including Gregory Ford, 24, of Newton.
Ford is currently pursuing criminal charges against Shanley, and it was his civil suit that forced the disclosure of the documents presented yesterday by MacLeish.
In November 1978, Shanley's activities as a prominent street priest who lectured openly about homosexuality and sex with minors caught the attention of the Vatican. In response to a letter from Rome, Medeiros wrote in February 1979, ``I believe that Father Shanley is a troubled priest.''
Yet just two months after that assessment, the cardinal assigned him to the Newton parish, where he was to spend the next 11 years. During that time, the files show, numerous parishioners - among them Jacqueline Gauvreau of Newton - alerted church officials that the priest was involved in sexual activity with minors.
In response to Gauvreau's repeated efforts to alert the church to Shanley, both in person and by phone, Monsignor Frederick J. Ryan - then the vice chancellor of the archdiocese and himself a longtime friend of Shanley who is also accused of sex abuse with minors - directed his staff to ``let her stay hanging on the phone.''
Referencing that citation, MacLeish said: ``If they had picked up the phone (then), Greg Ford would not have been sodomized.''
The documents show that by the early 1990s Shanley was becoming aware his past was catching up with him. In 1991, when Shanley was on paid sick leave from the Boston Archdiocese, but working as a fill-in priest at St. Anne's Parish in San Bernadino, and complained to Rev. John B. McCormack about a suggestion he curtail his activities - which included running youth retreats.
``I have done nothing wrong,'' he wrote to McCormack, who is currently the embattled bishop of Manchester, N.H., and who features prominently in the Shanley papers, along with Rev. Brian Flatley. Both men are also featured prominently in the documents released two months ago concerning defrocked priest and convicted molester John J. Geoghan.
McCormack was initially troubled by Shanley, the documents suggest. ``It is clear to me that Paul Shanley is a sick person,'' he wrote, adding that he was worried about Shanley's ``free-lancing in California'' as a man of the cloth.
Despite those worries, and the ever-growing archive of troubling personnel files, Shanley found his way to Leo House in New York with the full knowledge of McCormack and Law. That assignment lasted until 1997, when Shanley was rejected for the post of director of the Catholic-run house despite Laws' written endorsement.
The files also show that by 1994, as complaints against Shanley's behavior began to pour in, Shanley and McCormack wrote to each other about creating a ``safe house'' for problem priests, and made other statements about the need for Shanley to possibly flee the country if legal troubles arose.
The documents indicate that Shanley and Ryan were close friends, and one note from Shanley to McCormack thanks McCormack for acting as a liaison between Ryan, who is accused of collecting, pornographic photos of teens, and Shanley.
``Thank you for acting as go-between with Fred Ryan,'' Shanley writes. ``Here's the latest batch.''
In 1997, Shanley, who had formally retired the year before, but despite his record has never been laicized by the church, asked Rev. William F. Murphy, Law's personnel delegate, to keep Shanley's whereabouts secret after one of his accusers began to pursue the priest, apparently for revenge.
Well aware of Shanley's reputation and dubious personal history, Murphy promised in a letter back to Shanley ``that your location will remain confidential.''
``I hope this new situation will afford you some renewed peace and security,'' Murphy wrote to Shanley in August 1997, after the priest had moved back to the San Diego area from New York.
``This can be the beginning of a new chapter in your life, one in which you do not have to live under the cloud of (deleted)'s relentless harassment.'' Murphy also lifted official archdiocese restrictions on Shanley's contact with children.
Shanley was even encouraged by Murphy to use a post office box to receive his checks from Boston, and to leave the country if there appeared to be legal problems.
Despite his checkered past, Shanley, like Geoghan, received a valedictory notes of sorts from Cardinal Law upon his retirement in 1997:
``For thirty years in assigned ministry you brought God's Word and His Love to His people and I know that that continues to be your goal despite some difficult limitations,'' Law wrote. ``This is an impressive record and all of us are truly grateful for your priestly care and ministry to all whom you have served during those years.''
MacLeish said the documents were disturbing not just for their sordid content but for the evidence they hold of the enormous financial support Shanley received over the years. ``An outrageous pattern is evident here,'' he said.
``Archdiocese officials at the highest level knew full well of Shanley's misconduct. There's no evidence they gave one whit of concern for the victims; rather they went to outstanding lengths to keep Shanley's past hidden.''
The archdiocese, in a statement, said it ``has learned from the painful experience of the inadequate polices and procedures of the past'' but said church officials were confident that current policies ``are focused in a singular way on the protection of children.''
Shanley was never defrocked. He ruined the lives of little boys for 30 years.
I agree: Cardinal Law needs to resign.
... Despite his checkered past, Shanley, like Geoghan, received a valedictory notes of sorts from Cardinal Law upon his retirement in 1997:
``For thirty years in assigned ministry you brought God's Word and His Love to His people and I know that that continues to be your goal despite some difficult limitations,'' Law wrote. ``This is an impressive record and all of us are truly grateful for your priestly care and ministry to all whom you have served during those years.''
This Cardinal Law is absolutely despicable.
He considers oral and anal rape to be bringing God's Word and God's love to his people.
Some "impressive record." Makes you wonder what kind of "interpersonal" record Law is hiding about himself.
Was.
This must be addressed.
That's possible. For Shanley it was a secret society, a homosexual haven where power and lust was the goal, not the love of Christ. He has a story to tell, and somehow it involves his superiors.
Was."
Why would abandon your desire to return to the Church based on the sins and bad judgement (maybe even criminal judgement if these stories are true) of some?
If you were a follower of Jesus and the Apostles, would you have left the fold after finding out Judas betrayed the trust placed in him by betraying Jesus? I mean, what rotten people those Apostles must be to have someone like Judas in their midst. What a lousy judge of character Jesus must have been to pick such a bum. No way would I associate with that group anymore.
I once heard a Catholic Apologist say Judas was a warning and an example provided to us that there would always be wolves in sheperds clothing within the Church...thats exactly what these priests are. That doesn't mean you should blame the Church overall, or abandon your thoughts of returning.
We could use a few good men and women, under the direction of the Spirit, to help return the Church to the upright position.
At this point, we don't know how many priests around the country in the hierarchy of the church have been involved in cover-ups. The thread is unraveling, and it may take more than a few good men and women to root out the evil that has taken place. It may take prosecutors.
God will not be mocked! Law and Shanley will receive their just punishments.
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