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April 15, 2002
Sent to California on Sick Leave, Boston Priest
Bought Racy Gay Resort
By NICK MADIGAN PALM SPRINGS, Calif., April 12 —
When Boston church officials granted the Rev. Paul
R. Shanley a medical leave 12 years ago and allowed him to move here, they saw
it as a chance for him to heal various physical ailments, primarily allergies,
in the desert air, and to do a little pastoral work if and when he was well
enough.
At his insistence, Father Shanley's Boston
superiors arranged for regular checks to be sent to him for living expenses and
medical bills, and sent laudatory letters of recommendation to their
counterparts at the Diocese of San Bernardino, carefully avoiding mention of a
swirl of accusations that he had molested more than two dozen young boys in
Massachusetts going back to 1967.
What his superiors appeared not to know, however,
was that the address to which they were sending Father Shanley's checks for most
of his time here was the Cabana Club Resort, one of the many hotels that cater
to the town's gays. Father Shanley became an owner of the hotel, along with the
Rev. John J. White, another Boston priest who was also on sick leave and
receiving money from the Boston Archdiocese. Father White was the sole owner of
a second hotel, the nearby Whispering Palms.
Neither remains in business, although the scene
they were part of is thriving, with 40 such hotels and bed-and-breakfasts,
mostly in the Warm Sands enclave. These clothing-optional places, protected from
prying eyes by walls and towering bougainvillea, do year-round business for gay
men from around the world.
Interviews with some of his acquaintances in Palm
Springs paint a picture of a man who immersed himself in the local gay scene
soon after his arrival in 1990, although most people who remember him said he
was quieter and less outgoing than Father White. On occasion, he helped out at
St. Anne Church in San Bernardino, celebrating a weekend Mass or leading youth
retreats.
"My biggest surprise was that Paul was a priest at
all," said John Kendrick, 47, co-owner of Inn Exile, a hotel that he expanded
after buying the Whispering Palms, next door, from Father White in 1994. "I
didn't know you could be a part-time priest."
The disclosures about Father Shanley, 70, who
vanished from his San Diego apartment building almost three weeks ago, have
added heat to the controversy surrounding Cardinal Bernard F. Law of Boston,
depicted in documents released on Monday as being consistently supportive of
priests like Father Shanley and John J. Geoghan.
Both were shuttled from parish to parish, even as
evidence of abuses gathered against them, without regard to whether they had
further contacts with children. Father Geoghan was later defrocked and convicted
of indecent assault. Father Shanley has not been charged with a crime, although
the Boston Archdiocese has settled at least three lawsuits against him.
Officials at the San Bernardino Diocese who were
supposedly watching over Father Shanley during his sojourn in Palm Springs said
last week they had known nothing of his activities in Warm Sands.
Kevin Rice, 46, who has lived in Palm Springs for
14 years, got to know Fathers White and Shanley after he sold them space in
Frontier News magazine for advertisements promoting the two hotels.
"I knew Jack was a priest and thought he wasn't
practicing," Mr. Rice said. "Jack introduced Shanley as someone he knew from his
days in the seminary."
Mr. Rice said that Father White "seemed to be a
little off the wall" but that Father Shanley was a "very nice guy, personable."
Father Shanley was "more of the business person," Mr. Rice said. "He had his
head on straighter. There's no question about it, he's a very charismatic man."
Having once stayed at the Whispering Palms, Mr.
Rice described the resort as "one of the friskier places." Nude sunbathing was
encouraged, and sex by the pool was permitted, he said.
The two priests sold the Cabana Club Resort for
$185,000 in 1997, three years after Father White had disposed of the Whispering
Palms for $389,000. It is not clear how much they profited from the sales of the
hotels, or at which point they stopped receiving money from the Boston
Archdiocese.
Father Shanley seemed unable to understand that he
had hurt anyone in his years as an active Roman Catholic priest, and painted
himself as a victim.
"I have done nothing wrong," he wrote in a letter
dated March 14, 1991, to Father John B. MacCormack, then a senior aide to
Cardinal Law and now bishop in Manchester, N.H. In the letter, he also wrote:
"Do the decent thing. Allow me, quietly, to retire, or put me on permanent
disability. Remove the unpredictability and my health will return. This is cruel
and unusual punishment."
Yet diocesan officials went out of their way to
help him. In 1995, they transferred Father Shanley to New York, where he became
acting director of Leo House, a guest house for students and clergy members. Two
years later, he was denied a permanent post there when one of his accusers came
forward. Then, with a longtime companion, Dale E. Lagace — who had been with him
for part of his time in both Palm Springs and New York and is 21 years his
junior — Father Shanley moved to Hillcrest, a district of San Diego favored by
gays.
Reached at her home in Maine, Mr. Lagace's mother,
Mona Stefanik Lambert, said tearfully that she had not spoken with her son in
two weeks and did not know where he was. "This is a complete surprise, all of
this," Ms. Lambert said. "I'm very hurt inside about the whole matter."
Melinda Lee, manager of the mustard-hued
three-story Santa Fe Villas building on Albatross Street, where Father Shanley
and Mr. Lagace pay $900 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, said the older man
had described the younger as his caregiver.
Santa Fe Villas is almost directly across the
street from the Florence Child Development Center, where dozens of children
frolicked today. "I've been here the longest and I haven't seen him at all,"
said a teacher, Wanda Singleton, when told that Father Shanley lived close by.
Until last week, Father Shanley was a volunteer
with the Retired Senior Volunteer Patrol, a San Diego Police Department program
that puts about 500 elderly people to work. "He had no contact with kids," said
a police officer who works with the volunteers. The department dropped Father
Shanley after the accusations against him became public.
One of the priest's elderly neighbors, Milton D.
Turner, said Father Shanley had introduced him to the voice of the British
soprano Sarah Brightman. "I know him as a perfect gentleman and a great
neighbor," Mr. Turner said.
Down in the manager's officer, Mrs. Lee said she
had no idea that Father Shanley was a priest, let alone that he had been accused
of molesting children.
"It just goes to show you — you need to check up on
people," Mrs. Lee said. "I told him once he had an ethereal quality. He thought
that was a nice compliment."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/15/national/15CALI.html?ex=1019534400&en=429822f26fe17560&ei=5038&partner=ASAHI |
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