BOSTON (MA)
News Center Maine [Portland, ME]
September 13, 2026
By Nicole Dauphinee
Charleston, Maine — A former Catholic priest from Massachusetts, who was serving a 20-year sentence for gross sexual misconduct, has died in a Maine Department of Corrections prison facility.
Ronald Paquin, 83, died Friday around 4:15 p.m. at the Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, according to a release from the MDOC. His death was “attended by medical personnel,” the release stated. The Attorney General’s Office and the Medical Examiner were notified.
In 2018, a jury convicted Paquin of repeatedly assaulting an altar boy in Maine during the 1980s. He was involved in the Boston Archdiocese abuse scandal in 2002 when the Boston Globe’s Spotlight investigation exposed widespread clergy sexual abuse and cover-ups within the Archdiocese of Boston.
Paquin was sentenced in 2019 to 20 years in prison, with 16 years suspended, followed by three years of probation. Two men testified that they were altar boys when Paquin invited them on trips in the 1980s and repeatedly assaulted them. Paquin was convicted on charges involving one of the men.
Paquin previously served more than 10 years in prison in Massachusetts for sexually abusing another altar boy there. He was released in 2015. He was defrocked in 2004.