SAN DIEGO -- Paul Shanley has pleaded not guilty to three child rape charges, 10News reported.

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Taina Hernandez Reports From Boston

The 71-year-old retired Catholic priest was arraigned in a Massachusetts courtroom Tuesday morning.

The prosecution is seeking bail of $750,000. They said Shanley (pictured, left) poses a "tremendous risk of flight," and he could still face additional criminal charges.

Shanley was taken into custody last Thursday at his residence in Hillcrest on a warrant issued in Newton, Mass., which lists three counts of rape of a child with force.

The victim, now 24, was not named in the complaint. He allegedly was molested from 1983 to 1990, beginning when he was 6 years old and a student in a weekly religious education doctrine class taught by Shanley.

Middlesex County District Attorney Martha Coakley said that the man approached authorities after extensive media coverage of a lawsuit filed against the Boston Archdiocese by another alleged Shanley victim, 24-year-old Gregory Ford.

"Almost on a weekly basis, Paul Shanley would come to take not only (the latest alleged victim) but others from that class for 'talks,"' Coakley said.

The priest allegedly took the young students, all male, either to the rectory, the bathroom or the confessional.

According to Boston Archdiocesan documents made public last month, several boys accuse Shanley of sexually abusing them during the 30 years he was a working priest.

The retired priest was dismissed April 3 from the San Diego Police Retired Senior Volunteer Patrol, after local authorities learned about child abuse allegations stemming from his years in the Boston Archdiocese.

According to documents police released on April 19, Shanley listed his occupation as "retired" when he applied to be an RSVP officer. The document, dated November 1999, also listed Shanley's former occupation as "hotel director."

The documents do not mention that Shanley was a retired priest, nor do they reveal his work as a youth ministry priest on the East Coast or an assignment as an assistant priest in San Bernardino's diocese in the 1990s.

Local authorities have said they received no complaints about Shanley's activities with the RSVP unit. The duties of RSVP officers range from assisting with evidence-gathering at crime scenes to providing traffic control at accidents.

Ford's suit forced the Boston Archdiocese last month to release more than 1,600 pages of documents about Shanley. They reflect sexual-abuse complaints against him dating from 1967, when he allegedly took children to a cabin at Blue Hill, a ski mountain near Boston.

In 1977, according to the documents, Shanley was present at the organizational meeting of what later became the North American Man-Boy Love Association.

Shanley was transferred to California in 1990 and assigned to St. Ann's parish in San Bernardino. While in Southern California, he supposedly co-owned a hotel in Palm Springs that catered to gay clients.