BOSTON (MA)
WCVB - ABC 5 [Boston MA]
September 14, 2026
By Imani Clement
Charleston, Maine – A former Massachusetts priest who was convicted of sexually abusing an altar boy died Friday afternoon at a Maine correctional facility, according to a statement from the Maine Department of Corrections.
Ronald Paquin, 83, was a defrocked priest from Massachusetts, serving a 16-year sentence for sexually abusing an altar boy during trips to Maine in the 1980s.
He had previously served more than 10 years in a Massachusetts prison for sexually abusing an altar boy.
“The survivors, the victims are relieved that he’s passed away because children are safer. There was no limit to his sexual abuse of children. It was awful. It was evil. It was disgusting. It was garbage,” said Mitchell Garabedian, an attorney for survivors of clergy sex abuse.
He was released in 2015 and then taken into custody in Maine, where he began serving his sentence in 2019.
Paquin served in the Boston Archdiocese at St. Monica Parish in Methuen and St. John the Evangelist in Haverhill.