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From the National Desk
Published 4/2/2003 11:01 AM

BOSTON, April 2 (UPI) -- In what may be the first civil suit of its kind in the United States, a Roman Catholic diocese in California is suing the Boston Archdiocese over the transfer of a known pedophile priest.

A grand jury, meanwhile, was reported Wednesday unlikely to indict church leaders in Boston for enabling accused sexually abusive priests to have continued access to children.

In the suit filed Tuesday by the Diocese of San Bernardino, church officials in Boston were accused of "misrepresentations and suppression of information" by withholding details of the sexual background of the Rev. Paul Shanley.

Documents disclosed last year as a result of a series of lawsuits filed against the Archdiocese of Boston indicated church officials knew Shanley had been accused of molesting boys in the Boston area since 1967, and had even publicly advocated sex between men and boys.

However, when Shanley was transferred to San Bernardino in 1990, Boston church officials failed to make that information known and instead represented Shanley as a "priest in good standing."

Church leaders in San Bernardino said had they known of Shanley's history, he would not have been allowed to transfer there.

Shanley subsequently was accused of molesting a California teenager, resulting in a lawsuit against Shanley and the diocese.

The diocese said the purpose of the civil suit was to make sure that if the teenager were subsequently compensated, the Boston Archdiocese would be required to pay.

"We should not have to pay for Boston's mistake," diocese spokesman the Rev. Howard Lincoln told the Los Angeles Times.

Boston Archdiocese spokeswoman Donna M. Morrissey had no immediate comment on the suit.

Shanley, 71, is awaiting trial in Boston on a number of child sex charges. The Shanley case played a key factor in the December resignation of Cardinal Bernard Law as archbishop of Boston.

In another development, a grand jury in Boston reportedly has wrapped up its eight-month investigation into the clergy sex-abuse scandal, but was unlikely to return any indictments, the Boston Herald reported Wednesday.

The paper reported that victim advocates came away from a meeting this week with Attorney General Thomas Reilly with the impression indictments would be "highly unlikely."

Reilly has said publicly previously that statute of limitation laws would make it "very, very hard" to indict church leaders for transferring accused abusers from parish to parish rather than remove them.

One unidentified victim advocate said that the grand jury could issue a "good scathing report" that would inform the public about the way the church operated.

Reilly was quoted as telling the advocates that his office is "trying to decide the right communication vehicle" to make public a "whole bunch of information from the grand jury."