BOSTON -- Recently discovered personnel documents pertaining to a priest accused of sexual abuse were turned over to a lawyer representing an alleged victim Thursday.

Video

Watch Kelley Tuthill's Report

NewsCenter 5's Kelley Tuthill reported that about 800 documents related to the Rev. Paul Shanley case were discovered recently. Archdiocese officials said that they would turn over the documents immediately.

"It's just embarrassing to have this happen. I think that's a fair thing to say," said the Rev. Christopher Coyne of the Boston Archdiocese. "There was no effort to hide anything. The files were discovered, and as soon as we discovered them we told Mr. [Eric] MacLeish. He's known about them since Monday. They've been copied and they will be handed over to him."

Among the documents released Thursday were Shanley's diary entries from 1972. Three years later, there was a warning about Shanley from a prominent local businessman. Also in the documents was a draft of a letter from 1979 that suggests Shanley tried to blackmail the archdiocese over events at a seminary.

Another document from 1983 is a warning from a priest about Shanley's connections to the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

The archdiocese was ordered early in April to turn over all personnel records related to Shanley. Attorney MacLeish is representing Greg Ford, 24, who claims that Shanley molested him.

MacLeish has maintained that the archdiocese knew of other allegations of assault leveled against Shanley before Ford was allegedly attacked. MacLeish said that he was upset that the new documents weren't turned over with the earlier ones.

"I'm very upset by how this happened. These records were supposed to be produced by court order on April 5," MacLeish said. "I asked today, 'How did you happen to find these documents?' They couldn't tell me.

"I'm going to be taking three depositions I think as early as next week on what records there are out there, how these documents were recovered, because if there's documents like this that are showing up, the inevitable question is what else is there?"

MacLeish said that he questioned the timing of the release of the documents.

"We're very concerned about the timing," he said. "If there's damaging information here, you could clearly draw the inference that they did not want to produce these documents until after the Vatican summit."