PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal
July 2, 2019
By Katherine Gregg
The diocese on Monday did not include the names of at least 45 priests accused of sexual assault in Rhode Island.
Providence – “Where are the rest?”
That was the question priest-abuse victim Ann Hagan Webb posed Monday after looking at the 50 names on the list of accused pedophiles the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence made public that day.
A warrior in the successful fight to give Rhode Island’s sexual-abuse victims more time to sue, Webb knew the page number of the filing in a case titled Young V. Gelineau where the diocese told a court that the accusations in its files against “90-plus priests over a 35-year-period” would fill “100,000 to 130,000 pages of documents.”
The lawyers representing Bishop Thomas J. Tobin were seeking to convince the Rhode Island Supreme Court to relieve them of having to produce the “77-78 linear feet of documents” that Christopher Young’s lawyers were seeking “in the hopes of finding evidence of ‘cover-ups’ of alleged priest misconduct.”
In making the case why this would be hugely burdensome, the lawyers representing the bishop told the court: “The number of priests referenced in one way or another in the Diocese files was approximately 125,” but the number had since been “reduced to 95 by excluding priests who were not alleged to have committed sexual assaults.”
The math: The diocese on Monday did not include the names of at least 45 priests known to have been accused of sexual assault in Rhode Island.
Asked Tuesday why the Diocese did not name the 45 on the list of “credibly accused” priests, deacons and clergy the diocese published on its website Monday morning, spokeswoman Carolyn Cronin said: “In all prior instances where the Diocese has compiled lists of accused priests, it did so without regard to any assessment of credibility.”
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