PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal [Providence RI]
June 17, 2025
By Katherine Gregg
- The Rhode Island House voted to allow victims of childhood sexual abuse by priests, others to sue institutions that concealed or enabled the abuse.
- The bill would open a two-year window for victims to file lawsuits, even if the statute of limitations has expired.
- Opponents, including the Catholic Church, argue that it is difficult for institutions to defend against decades-old lawsuits due to lost evidence and unreliable memories.
- The bill now moves to the Senate, where its fate is uncertain.
Victims of childhood sexual abuse by priests and others in their Rhode Island world have scored a victory.
The R.I. House of Representatives voted 67 to 5 along party lines on Monday, June 16 to allow these victims to file civil suits, seeking damages, from people and institutions that neglected to stop the abuse they suffered as children, concealed it or transferred known offenders from one location to another.
Republican Rep. Brian Newberry raised the only arguments against the bill. He said it would open Rhode Island to the potential loss of insurance companies, no longer willing to write policies in states willing to “revive” decades old claims.
“I know this is a highly emotional issue for a lot of people and I understand why people vote for it, but it doesn’t make it a good,” said Newberry, a lawyer. “No one’s going to walk out of California or New York or Texas or Florida. But they’ll walk out of Rhode Island.”
The legislation now moves to the Senate, where it faces an uncertain fate in the closing days of the 2025 legislative session, in the face of strong opposition from the Catholic Church.
In response to a Journal inquiry, Senate spokesman Greg Pare said: “The Senate Committee is continuing its work to find answers to unresolved questions raised during the committee hearing and reviewing the cases in states whose Supreme Courts overturned their respective statutes.
“The committee will continue working with stakeholders to address the committee members’ concerns, including that the bill could call into question past judgements by the courts and that the retroactivity could potentially be unconstitutional.”
The House vote was nevertheless hailed as a victory by the group of victims that has come to the State House year after year to ask lawmakers to open the door to lawsuits for damages.
Rep. Carol McEntee’s sister, Ann Webb, 72, was among the first to go public with what her family’s parish priest did to her over a seven-year period that began when she was in kindergarten at the Sacred Heart elementary school in West Warwick.
But there were others.
“We all now know now what was done to our children by priest rapists,” said another of the victims, prominent East Greenwich physician Herbert “Hub” Brennan. “We know what the diocese of Providence has done to aid, abet and protect those rapists under their employ.”
“The only lingering question now is if we as a people, through our legislators, will hold this corporation liable for its actions,” said Brennan, who has told of being molested, repeatedly, when he was a child by the Rev. Brendan Smyth, a visiting priest and teacher at Our Lady of Mercy School and Church in East Greenwich, between 1965 and 1968.
Smyth later returned to Ireland and pleaded guilty there to 141 counts of sexual abuse. He died in prison.
The bill would not only allow suits against “non-perpetrators.” it would also open a two-year “revival window” for victims to sue for damages, even if the statute of limitations has expired.
“We have worked so hard for this bill for 8 years, and now we are very close,” said Webb, after the vote. “I will be holding my breath in hopes that it passes in the Senate later this week.”
“Even if made into law, I know it will still be an uphill battle for many of us,” she said. “Bringing a lawsuit for childhood sexual abuse is no easy task. And for those of us abused by Catholic clergy, we expect opposition, appeals, and use of the bankruptcy laws to postpone or escape financial responsibility.
“But I am confident that this law will hold up under the scrutiny of our legal system in RI. The law gives us a fighting chance to expose predators and protect children.”
How did we get here?
In 2019, state lawmakers passed legislation to give the victims of sexual abuse more time to sue the priests, teachers, coaches and others who molested them when they were children. The new law gave them 35 years to sue after reaching adulthood, which means age 53.
The new 35-year time limit only applied to civil suits against “perpetrators,” meaning those who committed the actual abuse.Against institutions, the new 35-year rule was prospective only, except in cases where the victims did not “discover” an injury or condition caused by sexual abuse they suffered as children.
In those cases, they would have seven years from the time they discovered the connection to sue.
In 2023, the Rhode Island Supreme Court ruled that the 2019 law that extended time limits for filing suit against priests who molested children did not also change the time limits for filing suit against church higher-ups who supervised the offending priests.The ruling upheld the decision of the Superior Court judge who dismissed three lawsuits against officials of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence.
The three men, who said they were sexually abused by Rhode Island priests when they were boys, said that the conduct of diocesan leaders was so egregious – actively thwarting criminal investigations, for example – that it rose to a criminal level that made them “perpetrators” under the new law.In her ruling, Superior Court Judge Netti Vogel acknowledged that the allegations the men made against the abusive priests were “hideous and appalling” and said their lawsuits against the diocese’s leaders set out a “most compelling series of acts and omissions that defy explanation.”
But she said the 2019 law did not allow retroactive suits against institutions if the deadline had already run out under the old law.
What would the new law do?
The legislation (H5909) − cosponsored by House Speaker K. Joseph Shekarchi – very specifically allows what the 2019 law did not: lawsuits for a limited period of time against those whose negligent “conduct caused or contributed to the childhood sexual abuse by another person.”The “wrongful conduct” could include: “negligence or default in supervision, hiring, employment, training, monitoring, or failure to report and/or the concealment of sexual abuse of a child.” The deadline for filing these look-back lawsuits would be June 30, 2027.
During the brief House debate, McEntee said the two-pronged bill recognizes that “these kinds of abuses are so difficult to bear the survivor, the victim is ashamed, humiliated, and they’re groomed to be quiet because there’s always a threat.”