HARTFORD (CT)
New York Daily News
July 10, 2025
By Theresa Braine
The Archdiocese of Hartford has agreed to pay a former altar boy $2.4 million to settle his claim that a priest sexually abused him more than 100 times over a five-year period in the 1980s.
Father Adolphe Renkiewicz hand-picked the youth, an altar boy at the since-closed Saint Adalbert Church and School in Enfield, to serve at funerals and other services, according to the victim’s attorney.
“My client was an altar server, an altar boy, and he would be taken out of class to go serve a funeral, for instance,” attorney Mitchell Garabedian told WVIT on Tuesday. “After the service, my client would be abused.”
Throughout the victim’s ordeal, which he allegedly endured from ages 10 to 15, no one took note of the boy’s prolonged absences, said Garabedian, who has represented legions of clergy sexual abuse victims, most notably in the Catholic Church.
“Someone should have noticed my client was gone for a long amount of time,” Garabedian said.
“He was abused in the sacristy of the church, in the basement of the church, in the bedroom of the rectory — Father Renkiewicz’s bedroom — the office of the rectory, and in the gym of the school,” Garabedian told WTNH, praising the victim, who has maintained anonymity, for the “enormous amount of courage” it took to come forward.
Ordained in May 1956, Renkiewicz served for decades in a number of Connecticut parishes before ultimately being placed on leave and his duties curtailed. He died in 2015 at age 84.
In 2019, Renkiewicz was among 48 priests the Hartford Archdiocese identified as credibly accused of molesting minors from 1953 onward.
The Archdiocese of Hartford did not address the latest settlement directly, citing longstanding policy, but reaffirmed its commitment to “doing all that is humanly possible to ensure that this never happens again and that our churches are safe places for children and families at all times” as it “continues to apologize and work with victims of clergy sexual abuse and their families to bring them a lasting healing.”
Sexual abuse allegations in the Catholic Church date back decades, and church leaders have been forced to acknowledge their complicity. More than $5 billion has been shelled out in settlements to date.
By Theresa Braine | tbraine@nydailynews.com |