Father Paul Shanley headed the Ministry to Alienated Youth on the streets of Boston in the early 1970's.

Father Paul Shanley, who faces three counts of child rape involving one child, was arrested in San Diego in May 2002, on criminal charges filed in Massachusetts. The case has engulfed his then-superior, Boston Cardinal Bernard Law, and reverberated all the way to the Vatican. Cardinal Bernard Law resigned from his position.

The complaint accuses Shanley, of raping a boy inside a suburban Boston church confessional, rectory and bathroom between 1983 and 1990, when the boy was between 6 and 13.

He was indicted in June 2002 in Massachusetts on charges of raping four children between 1979 and 1989; documents released in April 2002 by the Boston archdiocese revealed that archdiocese officials repeatedly transferred him from parish to parish, despite knowing that he was a child molester.

Paul Shanley strongly denies all the charges of child rape.