Priest in Court in Abuse Case

BOSTON —  A Roman Catholic priest facing prosecution here for child rape waived extradition in San Diego on Friday, hours before the Boston archdiocese announced that it has backed out of a multimillion-dollar settlement with 86 victims of former priest John Geoghan.

Father Paul Shanley, 71, was wanted on three counts of repeatedly raping a child. He will be held without bail in San Diego until Massachusetts officials take him back to the state where the alleged crimes occurred from 1983 to 1990.

Shanley, who is expected to be arraigned in Boston early next week, has made no comment since his name surfaced in January in connection with alleged abuse by priests in the Boston archdiocese.

White-haired and looking drawn in his blue prison jumpsuit, the once-flamboyant “street priest” said only “certainly” when Superior Court Judge David Szumowski asked whether he understood his right to contest the extradition request from Massachusetts.

A law enforcement official confirmed Friday that Shanley’s alleged victim in the complaint is 24-year-old Paul Busa, who earlier this year left his job as a military policeman at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, after reading news reports about Shanley.

Busa, who also has filed a civil lawsuit against Shanley, was not available for comment.

But Middlesex County Dist. Atty. Martha Coakley said her Boston office had investigated the allegations against Shanley and found them credible. The alleged abuse, she said, took place after religious education classes at St. Jean’s Parish in Newton, Mass.

Coakley said the priest allegedly had molested children in the bathroom, the rectory and the confessional of the church.

More than 1,600 pages of archdiocese documents about Shanley turned over to lawyers in conjunction with another civil lawsuit illustrated the priest’s history of advocating sex between men and boys.

The records also showed that church officials here had known of abuse complaints against Shanley since at least 1967 but still recommended him to a parish in Southern California as a priest “in good standing.”

Similar records obtained earlier this year by the Boston Globe revealed that the archdiocese also was aware of sexual abuse complaints against Geoghan that dated back several decades.

More than 130 people have accused Geoghan of molesting them during his 30 years as a priest in the Boston area. Geoghan is serving a nine- to 10-year sentence on a single count of molesting a boy at a community swimming pool. A judge had refused to proceed with two child rape charges against Geoghan because the statute of limitations had expired.

The revelations about Geoghan--followed by sordid disclosures about Shanley--set off a worldwide crisis over pedophilia in the priesthood. Since January, hundreds of priests have been removed from their jobs in the U.S. alone.

Boston attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represents 86 alleged Geoghan victims, spent 11 months negotiating a settlement with the archdiocese, estimated at between $15 million and $40 million. A deal was struck in March, and by midweek a process had been agreed upon to determine how much the church would pay each alleged victim. Payoffs were expected to be in the range of about $400,000 apiece.

But late Thursday, Boston church officials said the deal would devastate the archdiocese financially.

Unanimously voting to reject Cardinal Bernard Law’s request to sign off on the deal, the finance council of the archdiocese refused to fund the agreement.

The council said the settlement “would consume substantially all of the resources of the archdiocese that can reasonably be made available, and therefore such an action would leave the archdiocese unable to provide a just and proportional response to other victims,” according to a statement.

The council recommended instead that the cardinal develop a mechanism to provide victims and their families with counseling.

Since the mid-1990s, the Boston archdiocese has paid an estimated $15 million to 40 other alleged Geoghan victims.

Archdiocese spokeswoman Donna M. Morrissey did not return a call Friday seeking comment. Garabedian also was unavailable.

The finance council’s action marked the first time since Law came to Boston in 1984 that the council did not give its consent to something he had supported.

David Smith, chancellor of the archdiocese, said in the statement that Law expressed “deep regret at the vote.”

Also Friday, acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift signed a bill requiring clergy to report cases of suspected abuse to state social workers.

Under the new law, clergy, congregation leaders and church youth workers will have 30 days to turn over any information about child abuse, no matter how old, to the state Department of Social Services. Violation is a misdemeanor offense that carries a fine of up to $1,000.

The law does not require clergy to report any information gained in confessions or through similar confidential channels observed by other faiths.

In signing the bill, Swift acknowledged that “unfortunately, this legislation, as we all know, comes too late for too many.”

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Mehren reported from Boston and Perry from San Diego.