PROVIDENCE (RI)
WJAR-TV, NBC-10 [Providence RI]
October 21, 2026
By Brian Crandall, NBC 10 News
Editor’s Note: This story discusses allegations of child molestation. Reader discretion advised.
A new lawsuit, for the first time, accuses former Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence Louis Gelineau of raping an altar boy in the 1980s at a church in Barrington.
The lawsuit filed by a “John Doe” on Friday is one of dozens filed in recent months against the Diocese of Providence after the state approved a new law in June allowing sex abuse to survivors to file new lawsuits that had previously been prevented by the statute of limitations.
Gelineau was bishop from 1972 to 1997.
He died in 2024 at the age of 96.
The clergy sex abuse scandal came at the tail end of Gelineau’s time as bishop.
Lawsuits then, and in the years since, named Gelineau as a defendant, with accusations the diocese protected pedophile priests years earlier.
But none had named Gelineau as an abuser.
And his name was not on a list of credibly accused priests released by the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office earlier this year.
In the new lawsuit, “John Doe” claims Gelineau sexually abused him twice around 1983 and 1984 at St. Luke’s in Barrington, when the altar boy would have been around the age of 12 and 13.
“The Parish quickly changed from a place where Plaintiff felt safe and accepted to an environment where he suffered repeated, horrific abuse. St. Luke’s was the center of a ring of pedophiles led by Bishop Gelineau himself,” the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit claims the altar boy was first targeted at the age of 10 by the parish priest, the Rev. Oscar Ferland, who was on the attorney general’s list of credibly accused priests.
The new lawsuit states, “Ferland started abusing Plaintiff shortly after he became an altar boy. He summoned Plaintiff into the sacristy, the rectory, and the Parish basement under the guise of Plaintiff’s altar boy duties. The abuse continued for years, and Ferland was not the only abuser.”
“When Bishop Gelineau visited the Parish, Ferland brought Plaintiff to the rectory where Bishop Gelineau joined in sexually assaulting and sodomizing him,” the lawsuit claims.
“Approximately one year later, Bishop Gelineau visited St. Luke’s a second time. On this visit, prior to mass, Bishop Gelineau requested that Plaintiff join him in Ferland’s room in the rectory. Once in the bedroom, Gelineau again sexually assaulted Plaintiff,” the lawsuit claims.
“After a lifetime of living in the shadows, filled with shame and stigma, Plaintiff now seeks justice from the Diocese and the Parish, which turned a blind eye to obvious signs of abuse when they should have stepped up to protect the Catholic children in the most Catholic state in the nation,” the suit states.
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In a statement to NBC 10 News, the Diocese of Providence writes, “Accounts of victim survivors stir emotions and anguish, remind us of real pain experienced, but also efforts over many decades for healing and reconciliation. Claims like those recently asserted, on average from 50 years ago, present many challenges for courts and litigants including lost evidence, unavailable witnesses, altered memories and the opportunity for spurious claims to enter the court system. Allegations contained in filed complaints are now in active litigation, and diocesan responses will be confined to that forum.”
In regard to allegations of protecting pedophile priests, Gelineau told NBC 10 News when he retired as bishop in 1997 that he thought actions taken when they were taken were appropriate, and he pushed back on allegations he covered up sexual abuse.
“That’s absolutely an unfounded and unjust accusation against us and we’re fighting against those accusations now,” Gelineau said in that June 1997 interview.
In 2019, the diocese acknowledged paying out more than $20 million in legal settlements.