SAN LUIS OBISPO, Mar. 22 — Charles “Tex” Watson, former disciple of Charles Manson, has become the senior inmate serving in the Protestant chapel of the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo, acting as its minister, counseling inmates and receiving special privileges.

Inmates complained during prison interviews last week that Watson, 41, convicted of the 1969 killings of actress Sharon Tate and seven others, has ordered administrative discipline against inmates who object to his teachings and his running of the church.

Acting with Watson as a minister and counselor in the medium-security prison is Bruce Davis, also a Manson clan member convicted of killings that were inspired by Manson and his cult at Spahn Ranch near Chatsworth.

“The Manson family has just been transferred from Spahn Ranch to San Luis Obispo,” said Deputy District Attorney Steven Kay, who prosecuted Davis for the 1969 killings of musician Gary Hinman and ranch hand Donald “Shorty” Shea.

“Watson and Davis participated in the Shea murder together,” Kay said in an interview. “Now Davis and Watson are together, day after day, and get these special privileges of working in the chapel. The civilian chaplain is hardly ever there.”

The Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office said Watson’s role at the chapel will be a key issue at his next parole hearing, scheduled for April 2.

The Rev. Stanley L.H. McGuire, civilian chaplain at the prison since 1967, has been accused by inmates of allowing Watson and his group of followers to take over the Plazaview Chapel and ignoring complaints about their behavior.

McGuire, a full-time state employee, refused to be interviewed. But after a series of Daily News interviews with inmates last week, McGuire asked staff members to compute his retirement benefits, prison officials said Friday.

One inmate complained that McGuire was absent seven months in the last year.

But Larry Kamien, program director and public information officer for the prison, responded, “We don’t have time clocks.”

He added that he believes McGuire works a 40-hour week and that Watson, Davis and the others fill in during the chaplain’s off hours.

Kay, who has attended parole hearings for Manson and his followers for the past 15 years, said Watson and Davis “are the wrong two people to be running the Protestant chapel.”

Kay said, “The Manson family was a quasireligious group. The Helter Skelter Revolution (Manson’s philosophy of a race war) was based on Revelations 9 and 10 of the Bible.”

Kay said his complaints to prison officials over the past two years have been ignored.

“They (prison officials) don’t say anything. Nobody seems to pay much attention to it,” he said.

But Kay said he plans to bring those complaints up before the Board of Prison Terms at next month’s parole hearing.

Watson also heads Abounding Love Ministries, through which he gets donations from inside and outside the prison for audio tapes of his sermons and a newsletter that he publishes from prison.

Kay, noting the acronym for the ministry is ALMS, said Watson “makes a lot of money at that. That’s been an issue at the parole hearings before.”

Prison officials dismiss inmates’ complaints as stemming from the jealousy and personality clashes among rivals in the prison. They say their interpretation of the rules allows inmates to preach and counsel other inmates.

“It is our policy that inmates can, in the presence of a minister, conduct portions of services,” said Bob Gore, assistant director of the California Department of Corrections in Sacramento. “It is a gray area. We don’t like to get in the way of religious freedom.”

Kamien said of the chapel work done by the two former Manson followers, “The worst we would be doing is not following our own policies.

“We had for years tried to keep the Manson people separated. We had limited ability to do that, so they eventually started coming together.”

Manson and three women followers — Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Leslie Van Houten — were convicted of Tate murders and sentenced to death in 1971. Watson, extradited from Texas, was tried separately, convicted and sentenced to death.

Others convicted of clan-related killings were Davis, Bobby Beausoleil, also incarcerated in the Men’s Colony, and Steve “Clem” Grogan, paroled from the Men’s Colony last year.

In 1972, the Supreme Court revoked the death penalty and later that year, Watson was sent to the Men’s Colony. By the time he became active in the chapel program, McGuire had started an inmate-run church, Watson wrote in his book, “Will You Die for Me?” that was published six years later.

“Prisoners were deacons, counselors, preachers, liturgists and teachers,” he said in the autobiography he wrote with Chaplain Ray Hoekstra. “As part of my responsibilities as a student chaplain, I preach several times each month, celebrate the Communion, baptize and lead in worship in our more structured Sunday morning services.”

By B.J. PALERMO