Providence Catholic bishop promises to list abusive priests

By Brian Amaral
Newport Daily News
December 22, 2018

https://bit.ly/2SiGjn4

Bishop of Providence Thomas J. Tobin said that in his 13 years at the diocese, he has publicly removed five priests over accusations os sexual abuse.

Lawyers, victims skeptical about promised list of abusive priests

An announcement Friday that the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence would release the names of priests credibly accused of sexual abuse was met with questions and some skepticism from victims, advocates and lawyers who have battled the church.

“How do we know whether they’re giving us names that aren’t already known to the public and police?” said Carl DeLuca, a Rhode Island lawyer who represented children abused by Providence diocese priests. “It’s kind of a question of faith. The history is not such that they’re really entitled to that kind of faith.”

On Friday, Bishop Thomas J. Tobin said in a WPRI Newsmakers interview that the diocese would release the names of credibly accused priests sometime in the next year, following in the steps of other dioceses in the country.

He told WPRI’s Tim White and Ted Nesi in the interview released Friday that he did not expect many people would be surprised at the priests on the list, because most of them will have already been publicized. Tobin defined “credible” as allegations where “it seems like it could have happened and probably did happen,” but did not say how far back in the files the church would go.

“The first focus has to be on the victims themselves,” Tobin said.

The diocese did not respond to The Providence Journal’s request for an interview on Saturday. Tobin said he has removed five priests over credible allegations in his 13 years as bishop.

Timothy Conlon, a lawyer who represented people abused by Providence diocese priests when they were children, said he’d need to see the names released before knowing whether the diocese was breaking with what he sees as its history of hiding the truth.

He battled for a decade to get information, not just about abusive priests, but about others in the church who swept it under the rug. The diocese fought “tooth and nail” to conceal the truth, Conlon said. Now, he believes it should not only release the names of abusive priests — alive and dead — but the names of people who let it happen.

If done right, the release of abusive priests’ names in the Providence diocese would help victims, Conlon said. It would provide validation to victims and could start conversations by people, perhaps now in middle age, who never came forward.

“The release of that name can be very empowering for the victim and the victim’s family to then have a dialogue about what happened,” Conlon said.

Conlon said that if the diocese fully released the names of abusive priests, alive and dead, it would be “certainly in triple digits.”

For David Silipigni, who said he was abused by a priest while at the St. Aloysius Home orphanage in Smithfield from 1969 to 1971, releasing names could make a difference: He still does not know the identity of the priest who he says sexually assaulted him.

Silipigni remains skeptical — even angry — after viewing Tobin’s interview. He said the church should open up its files to the Journal reporter who wrote about his story of survival.

“All they’re doing is blowing smoke, as usual,” he said.

State Rep. Carol Hagan McEntee is pushing for legislation that would extend the statute of limitations on filing a lawsuit over childhood sexual abuse from seven years to 35.

McEntee said she has heard from other people at St. Aloysius who were abused, and also said she does not believe the list will tell the public exactly what the church knows about abuse in the ranks of priests.

“I just don’t think they’re going to give us anything we don’t already know about,” she said.

McEntee was inspired to introduce the legislation by her sister, Ann Hagan Webb, who was abused by a priest from kindergarten to seventh grade in West Warwick.

Webb — who said her advocacy is a much more important part of her story now than the abuse she suffered as a child — pointed to the example of Illinois, where a state attorney general’s investigation found that the Catholic Church withheld the names of some 500 abusive priests.

“Maybe he’ll open up an investigation of the Diocese of Providence,” she said of the incoming attorney general, Peter Neronha. “It seems every time they look, they find a lot.”

Neronha said earlier this month that an investigation similar to one in Pennsylvania, which found more than 1,000 victims of abusive priests, would be worthwhile in Rhode Island, according to WJAR.