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CNN Live At Daybreak

Former Catholic Priest Paul Shanley Being Held at San Diego County Jail This Morning

Aired May 03, 2002 - 06:05   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CAROL COSTELLO, CNN ANCHOR: Former Catholic priest, Paul Shanley, is being held at the San Diego County Jail this morning, pending an extradition hearing that will take place later today. Shanley was arrested on charges of raping a young boy while serving in a suburban Boston parish.

As CNN's Frank Buckley reports, Shanley hid his past very well.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRANK BUCKLEY, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The Paul Shanley arrested in San Diego was by all outward appearances a well-regarded senior citizen police volunteer, who lived in this apartment complex. But there was another life before San Diego, here in Palm Springs, California, where in the early '90s, he was a co-owner with another man, who identified himself as an ex-priest, of this building, which was back then the Cabana Club, a bed and breakfast inn popular with gay men.

John Kendrick and Carter Poust (ph) are co-owners are co-owners of a gay men's resort in the same neighborhood. They were surprised to learn that Shanley was once a priest.

JOHN KENDRICK, RESORT OWNER: It just never occurred to me that -- I thought he was the friend of an ex-priest, but it never occurred to me that he might have been a priest himself.

BUCKLEY: Until Shanley's name surfaced in connection with the priest abuse scandal in Boston, his fellow residents at the apartment complex in San Diego had no idea either.

MEL LEE, APARTMENT MANAGER: He paid his rent on time and never created any disturbances and was always helpful to the tenants. In fact, he saved the life of one of our tenants.

BUCKLEY: Samuel Goldberg's life. He collapsed one day, and Shanley got an ambulance there quickly.

SAMUEL GOLDBERG, NEIGHBOR: He was a very courteous, very affable gentleman, very alert, intelligent, never knew that he was a priest.

BUCKLEY: In San Diego, Shanley was a volunteer with the San Diego Police Department, and police didn't know about Shanley's past either. In his application, he listed himself as retired and a former hotel director.

DAVE COHEN, SAN DIEGO POLICE: Mr. Shanley apparently did an outstanding job for us. There were no complaints that we are aware of whatsoever from anybody he came in contact with or with whom he might have worked.

BUCKLEY: Among those who did know that Shanley was a priest, officials at the Diocese of San Bernardino, California. Shanley began serving here as a part-time supply priest in 1990, performing the occasional mass. What San Bernardino Diocese officials didn't know was what Boston church officials had known for years, that there were allegations of child molestation against Shanley. Still, Boston church officials said in a letter to the San Bernardino Diocese that Shanley was a priest in good standing.

REV. HOWARD, LINCOLN, DIOCESE OF SAN BERNARDINO: We were deceived, that this was wrong and we are very disappointed that we did not receive the truth of the background of Father Shanley. He would never have served in our diocese had we known this.

BUCKLEY (on camera): Paul Shanley's background in Boston now well-known in California, where Friday Shanley is expected to appear in court to begin the process of returning to Boston to face his past.

Frank Buckley, CNN, Los Angeles.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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