A 284-page report by Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha documents decades of child sexual abuse within the Catholic Church, identifying 75 clergy accused of abusing more than 300 victims and accusing church leaders of repeatedly shielding priests from accountability.
The Attorney General of Rhode Island, Peter F. Neronha has published a 284-page report in which he laid out the child sexual abuse in Rhode Island’s Catholic Churches, documenting dozens of priests involving hundreds of victims.
Neronha laid out failure by the Diocese of Providence to remove priests or bring in law enforcement in response to accusations. Instead of the removal the priests, investigators moved them to new parishes internally
What did the report say?
The report was released on March 4, identifying about 75 credibly accused clergy who allegedly abused more than 300 victims between 1950 and 2011.
The diocese transferred at least 30 accused priests to new jobs at least five times each, Neronha said in a news conference on Wednesday.
“So much hurt and harm could have been avoided” had the diocese removed the priests from their duties, he said. “Nothing explains it, nothing justifies it.”
Many of the reports were published earlier, but the new report represented the most thorough accounting to date of both the crimes and their cover-up by church leaders.
The review began in 2019, which focused on giving abuse survivors a complete picture of the scope of crime committed in the state.
Failure of Diocese of Providence
The roster of abusive priests in the report includes 20 names that the diocese had not previously included on its own list of credibly accused priests, the attorney general said. Even before the report came out, the state investigation resulted in four prosecutions of current or former priests, three of whom were awaiting trial, he added.
The diocese also clarified that the report documents “historical cases of abuse from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and which have been previously documented, already subject to civil and criminal litigation, and well-publicised in the media.”
In a statement responding to the report, the Diocese of Providence acknowledged “serious missteps” in its handling earlier cases of abuse, but it said that longstanding protections instituted since then have proven “overwhelmingly effective.”
“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,” the statement said. “They are not.”
Steps taken to counter child abuse
Responding to the report, the Diocese of Providence acknowledged the steps taken to counter the child abuse that was ongoing for several years.
“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,” the statement said. “They are not.”
In a press statement that accompanied the report, Neronha said, “The Diocese would have you believe that this report is historical; that child sexual abuse by clergy members is a thing of the past and not worth drudging up. To that I say: the pain that survivors and their families suffer knows no statute of limitations, and history always has something to teach us.”
He said clergy sexual abuse “in the Diocese of Providence occurred on an abhorrent, staggering scale” and that the “Diocese of Providence engaged in a well-worn pattern of protecting the reputation of the Church and its priests over the welfare of children.”
Bishop apologised
Bishop of Providence Bruce Lewandowski apologised to those he called the “victim-survivors.”
He apologized “for the failures of church personnel and others in past decades to protect them and keep them safe.”
Lewandowski said “extreme sadness and feelings of intense shame weighed heavily” on him as he read the report on “the tragic, historical scandal of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic clergy.”
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