Catholic priests in Rhode Island preyed on hundreds of children for decades, and were protected by bishops more concerned with the church’s reputation than the victims, according to a new report on clergy sexual abuse that echoes findings elsewhere.
The report, released Wednesday by Attorney General Peter Neronha, follows a multiyear investigation into the Catholic Diocese of Providence, Rhode Island.
Neronha said the full scope of the priest abuse problem in Rhode Island — the smallest U.S. state but the one with the highest Catholic population per capita, at nearly 40% — had long remained elusive. He agreed with victims who say not enough has been done to address the problem long after it was exposed in the nearby Boston diocese in 2002.
“Not until now has there been a comprehensive review of this painful chapter in our state’s history, with a view toward offering transparency, accountability, and systemic reforms that will, I hope, lessen the likelihood of future child sexual abuse, not just within the Diocese of Providence, but in our community as a whole,” Neronha wrote in the report.
Neronha, who was raised Catholic, hopes the report will spur legal reforms to boost investigative powers and help victims seek justice.
The investigation found that 75 Catholic clergy molested more than 300 victims since 1950, but officials stressed that the number of victimized children and abusive priests is likely much higher.
The diocese, in response, acknowledged the scourge of child sexual abuse — especially by clergy — but said the report reflects the church’s willingness to share internal records under a 2019 agreement with the state.
“The report presents this 75-year history in ways that might lead the reader to conclude these issues are an ongoing diocesan problem or that these are new revelations. They are not,” the statement said.
After the report was released, “Spotlight” lawyer Mitchell Garabedian said, “To trust the Diocese of Providence to now protect children after decades of abusing them is akin to trusting seasoned bank robbers to become bank tellers. It makes no sense morally or otherwise.”
Church records show the diocese transferred accused priests to new assignments without fully investigating complaints or contacting law enforcement, a practice exposed in investigations in Boston, Philadelphia and elsewhere.
And, as in other cities, the Diocese of Providence opened a “spiritual retreat-style facility” in the early 1950s for accused priests to seek treatment. Later, when the abuse was deemed a mental health problem, priests were sent to more formal treatment centers.
By the 1990s, accused priests were sometimes placed on sabbatical leave.
For example, a priest named Robert Carpentier resigned after a victim came forward in 1992 to say that he had been sexually abused as a 13-year-old victim in the 1970s. Carpentier acknowledged the abuse, was sent to a treatment center and later went on sabbatical at Boston College. He retired in 2006 and received support from the diocese until he died in 2012.
Most accused priests, the report found, avoided accountability from both law enforcement and the diocese.
Neronha’s office has charged four current and former priests with sexual abuse for allegations stemming from 2020 to 2022. Three of them are still awaiting trial. The fourth priest died after being deemed incompetent to stand trial in 2022.
Only 20 people — about a quarter of the clergy identified in the report — faced criminal charges, and just 14 were convicted. A dozen others were laicized or otherwise dismissed.
One survivor described being groomed more than a year before he was abused by the pastor of Immaculate Conception Church in Cranston in 1981. The survivor, who is not named in the report, said the late Monsignor John Allard showered him with attention.
By ninth grade, he said, the sexual abuse began in the priest’s bedroom.
“His comment to me was always, ‘You need a hug,’ and that’s something that I can hear him saying very clearly to this very day,” the survivor told officials in 2013.
While a review board deemed the abuse credible, the Vatican — at the urging of then-Providence Bishop Thomas Tobin — let Allard retire rather than be defrocked.
In at least one case, a member of the diocesan review board hearing abuse complaints was himself accused, the report says. The Rev. Francis Santilli stepped down after the complaint, but remained in active ministry even after other complaints surfaced in 2014 and 2021. He was not removed until 2022. A message left at a possible number for him on Wednesday was not immediately returned.
Neronha launched the investigation in 2019, a year after a Pennsylvania grand jury issued a landmark report that found more than 1,000 children had been abused by some 300 priests since the 1940s.
However, Rhode Island law does not allow grand jury reports to become public — a hurdle that Neronha has long tried to change. Instead, he forged an agreement with the diocese to access its trove of records on clergy sexual abuse.
The church turned over 70 years’ worth of material, including complaints from its secret archives, civil settlement records, treatment costs and other documents. Yet Neronha called the diocese’s help limited at times.
“It repeatedly refused my team’s requests for interviews of diocesan personnel responsible for overseeing the diocese’s investigations,” Neronha said in the report.
The diocese, in its response Wednesday, pushed back on that view, saying the report would not have been possible without the church’s cooperation.
“Any abuse of children is an abhorrent sin and a terrible crime,” the diocese said in a released statement. “The very existence of the Attorney General’s report is the result of the Diocese of Providence’s unprecedented and voluntary agreement to extraordinary transparency.”
