Posted on 04/08/2002 10:32:32 AM PDT by Mike Fieschko
Bombshell details of sexual abuse revealed in documents
by Tom Mashberg
Monday, April 8, 2002
The Archdiocese of Boston was obsessed with preventing ``negative publicity'' when it allowed a known child rapist to remain a priest in Massachusetts, New York and California during the 1980s and 1990s, explosive new church documents show.
The documents also show that the priest, Rev. Paul R. Shanley, spoke in favor of sex between men and boys at a 1978 meeting in Boston where the ``Man Boy Lovers of North America,'' which later became the North American Man-Boy Love Association, or Nambla, was founded. Shanley is now 71 and was last known to be living in San Diego.
The documents also reveal the following:
Shanley admitted openly and repeatedly to raping and sodomizing minors when confronted by church supervisors under two Boston archbishops, Humberto Cardinal Medeiros and Bernard Cardinal Law. Nonetheless, he received glowing referrals to ministries in San Bernadino, Calif., and New York City.
Internal reports from physicians who treated Shanley wrote in notes to the church that Shanley ``admits to substance of complaints - sexual activity with 4 adolescent males .. over the years,'' according to one memo dated March 3, 1994. The memo goes on to describe ``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 allegations of child rape.
Shanley defended ``man-boy sex'' publicly in his role as a ``street priest'' as early as 1970, and openly associated with members of the pro-pederasty group that became known as Nambla.
At the December 1978 convention that led to the founding of the 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, according to the church documents. ``The `cure' does far more damage.''
The ``man-boy'' conference and Shanley's quotations were reported in a gay weekly in February 1979. Medeiros received a letter complaining about it on April 9. On April 12, the cardinal informed Shanley that he was being transfered to St. Jean's Parish in Newton - where multiple plaintiffs allege he raped them, including Gregory Ford, 24, of Newton, who is currently pursuing criminal charges against Shanley.
When the Archdiocese of Boston finally ousted Shanley from St. Jean's in 1990, it moved him to the Diocese of San Bernardino, California without informing anyone there of Shanley's past history.
Shanley asked the current bishop of Brooklyn, William F. Murphy, to keep his whereabouts secret in 1997 after one of Shanley's former victims began to pursue the priest, apparently for revenge. Murphy, who was chief personnel delegate to Law at the time, promised in a letter to Shanley, who he knew to be a pedophile, ``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. ``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 Stephen's relentless harassment.''
Law sent a letter to the late John Cardinal O'Connor of New York in 1997 relating to Shanley's work at Leo House, a transient residence for troubled teens and men. In it, he spoke glowingly of the priest despite Shanley's long history of child abuse, and said he ``would not object'' to Shanley taking the job of executive director.
``Two conflicting issues arise in considering Father Shanley for the post,'' Law wrote. ``The first is that he has done good work and is surrounded by a competent staff that is aware of his situation. Opposing this is the likelihood that the role of executive director will bring with it greater notoriety. That could draw publicity to him, Leo House and the church.''
Ford's lawyer Eric MacLeish said today the documents are disturbing.
``We're finally beginning to see the full scope of Paul Shanley's abuse in Massachusetts,'' MacLeish said. ``An outrageous pattern is evident here. Archdiocese officials at the highest level knew full well of Shanley's misconduct. There's no evidence that they gave one whit of concern for the victims; rather they went to outstanding lengths to keep Shanley's past hidden.''
The archdiocese surrendered more than 500 personal documents to MacLeish and the Ford family on Friday following an order issued Wednesday by Superior Court Judge Leila Kern.
MacLeish said the documents also spell out Shanley's belief that all sexual acts including bestiality and incest were not harmful to people.
The Fords are suing the Archdiocese for the sexual abuse Shanley allegedly committed against Gregory Ford, now 24, while he was a boy at St. John's Parish in Newton.
My bet is that you would find documents like this going back for centurys if you could get into the archives in the basement of the Vatican. Why do we all assume that this is a relatively recent development? The only difference between then and now is that anyone complaining then would be killed or put in prison for heresy.....
The likelihood that any housecleaning can take place from within American Catholicism is nil. Even if it happened, it would lack credibility. The CYA attitude among American Catholic clerics is too well established.
This cancer needs to be excised and any vestiges of the liberal carcinogenic theology that caused it, obliterated with the chemo and radiation therapy of fullblown vibrant zealous orthodox Catholicity.
When I look at my 9 year old son, and his innocence, an innocence hard bought by homeschooling and having given up TV 5 years ago in our home, and many other sacrifices, and I contemplate that one of these homosexual bastards could rob him of that innocence in a minute...I must say that I would literally kill the SOB. They are not capable of being changed. Capital punishment is appropriate, IMHO.
A priest writing last year summed it up. The problem can be seen in the language of the bishops, continuing to insist on being pastoral to both victim and victimizer, compared to the language of a father, who said, essentially, that "I'd kill him with a baseball bat."
Don't let anybody tell you that faithful Catholics are more interested in "protecting the church" than stopping the abuse and protecting our innocents.
We are parents. We are fed up with this. We have a deep down visceral response to this abuse, especially fathers. We also have an ingrained Catholic sense not to "cause scandal," so many have not aired their gut visceral response in public.
But it is there, and its growing violently, and it is going to be tapped into to make this, finally, the awakening of the sleeping giant that is the orthodox rank and file Catholic laity. Watch Out.
There is a huge difference today: the past fifty or so years of the advance of the homosexual agenda within the Church, including the infiltration of homosexuals throughout the ranks of the clergy.
As one who stands outside the Roman fold, I assure you there are many like myself who fervently pray that your tribe increase!
Is there anyone who is a man within Roman laity who can and will marshall the faithful in the face of these weasley shepherds? For all her laudable qualities, surely Mother Angelica isn't the best American Catholicism can do?
Real Catholics are willing to put up with the hardship of a generation of a severely shrunken number in the priesthood, if that is the price we must pay for the malfeasance of our hierarchy, and our own complacency, or at least inability to change what has been going on. Lets Roll.
See Father Elijah's thread for a further plan of action that all Catholics can initiate today: Roman Catholic Concern: Action Plan Repost ^
The article may be read by clicking here.
I'm in the Diocese of St. Petersburg, Florida, which is steadily moving closer to the center of this storm.
On Saturday, the Tampa Tribune reported that the Diocese of St. Pete has ordered all of its parishes to not talk to the media and has indicated that it will not turn over its files on abuse allegations to local prosecutors as the Diocese of New York has done.
These Bishops just don't get it. I have three beautiful little girls. Two will be attending a Catholic school this fall. If any sick Priest touched them, he would be a dead man. I will not be continuing to honor my pledge to the Bishop's Capital Campaign until he starts disclosing everything.
These idiot Bishops need to start planning their actions by asking "What would Jesus have done", not by asking their shysters how to cover their fat asses.
That's a good question. It has probably been going on for centuries. In spite of that I don't entirely blame celibacy; I blame corruption.
I've noticed that nothing gets cleaned up in the church until there is outside intervention or a massive rebellion.
The real scandal here isn't that there are some homosexuals in the Church. The real scandal is that the bishops knew about their priests raping little boys and covered it up!
If this were in a public shcool district, the teachers and adminstrators would have been arrested by now and would have benn put in jail.
This is a huge stinking crime, and every priest, bishop or cardinal involved in it should be defrocked and prosecuted as the criminals that they are.
In my opinion.
I trust this is hyperbole.Anyway, Things do get covered up. The superintendent of our local public school district procured an illegal abortion for his (minor)daughter in the 1930s. In theory, he should have gone to jail, especially since he took her out of state and she nearly died. Nothing happened. No one ever brought charges.
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