PROVIDENCE (RI)
Providence Journal [Providence RI]
April 30, 2026
By Katherine Gregg
Key Points
- Rhode Island lawmakers are considering a bill to allow lawsuits against the Diocese of Providence for past clergy sex abuse claims.
- The bill would allow civil lawsuits for damages and provide victims with a two-year “window” in which to revive claims that are barred currently by the statute of limitations.
- The attorney general’s recent report detailing a systematic cover-up of child abuse by the Catholic Church has intensified the debate.
- The main concern for some senators is the constitutionality of the bill, as similar laws have been overturned in other states.
They’ve heard the horrific stories of clergy sexually abusing children from the victims. They’ve had the opportunity to read Attorney General Peter Neronha’s report detailing the systematic cover-up by the Catholic Church of the sexual abuse of more than 300 Rhode Island children.
But will that be enough for Rhode Island state senators to pass the legislation the House has approved two years in a row, allowing victims to sue the Diocese of Providence for failing to protect them as children?
That question hung over a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday night, April 30, that focused heavily on legal questions. But it began on a very different note than past hearings in the Senate.
It began with Sen. Mark McKenney, the sponsor of S2616, denouncing the lengths the diocese went to conceal the abuse, and Sen. Matthew LaMountain, the committee chairman, saying Neronha’s findings “shock[ed] the conscience.”
“Each person who committed these crimes, these terrible acts, is a monster,” McKenney said. “But the organizations that allowed children to be raped or abused …. that concealed or covered up or transferred one of these monsters to a new location without giving any warning that could have protected children at the new place … those organizations are complicit and culpable.”
“Very troubling,” said LaMountain of Neronha’s report. “I mean, it seems like a systematic cover-up of generations of child abuse.”
“But my main concern running the committee is the constitutionality of this bill. Of any bill,” LaMountain said of the legislation that would allow civil lawsuits for damages and provide victims with a two-year “window” in which to revive claims that currently are barred by the statute of limitations.
Report on clergy sex abuse changes the conversation this year
The Senate was not willing to pass the bill last year. But LaMountain said Neronha’s report clearly “frames the conversation” this year.
“Obviously, we want to hold people accountable, protect children and victims of crime. And we want to make sure whatever we do, we do it once and we do it right. That’s my main concern with any legislation, especially this one,” LaMountain said.
He elaborated, describing the acts against the victims as “heinous” and saying that the perpetrators should be held accountable, “both criminally and civilly.”
“As a former prosecutor and a parent myself … if there’s a way to hold people and organizations accountable for horrible wrongs, I’m going to … do everything in my power to make sure that’s accomplished,” he told The Journal ahead of the hearing.
The question, he said, is whether the bill is constitutional, and he noted that similar legislation has been overturned in some other states. The numbers: Upheld in 15 states, ruled unconstitutional in five, according to the Children’s Justice Campaign.
But former U.S. District Judge William Smith said legislators may be focusing on the wrong issue.
“While my view is that the bill is constitutional … I emphatically believe that this is not the question this committee should be focusing on,” Smith said in written testimony.
“In our system of separated powers, it is the legislative branch that makes policy decisions … By anticipating how the Rhode Island Supreme Court might rule in a challenge to this bill, the legislature (through this Committee) would effectively abdicate its lead policy making role to the Supreme Court.”
“Especially in the fraught times we are living through – it is crucial that we not let the courts become the primary policy making institutions in our government,” said Smith, citing the “lack of effective legislative response” at the federal level “to numerous extreme decisions of the U.S. Supreme Court – as recently as [this week] with its decision on the Voting Rights Act.”
What happened at the hearing?
Victims and, in one case, the sister of a sexually-abused altar boy who died by suicide on what should have been his college graduation day in May 1997, testified in person or in writing.
“If this law had existed when David was alive, he may have had that chance. He may have felt seen, validated and empowered instead of trapped in silence and choosing a tragic irreversible ending,” Michelle Ross wrote the Senate Judiciary Committee in advance about her late brother, David Ross.
“Passing this bill means choosing truth over arbitrary deadlines. It means holding individuals and institutions accountable when they fail to protect children. It means telling survivors that their voices still matter, no matter how long it takes to speak,” she wrote.
Dr. Herbert “Hub” Brennan, who has testified before about his abuse by a visiting priest Brendan Smyth at Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich, focused this time on one of the big concerns the diocese raised in its own written testimony: “It would cost them money. They might have to declare bankruptcy.”
“Well, cry me a river,” Brennan said. “We didn’t rape and abuse 300 kids … They did.”
Deputy Attorney General Adi Goldstein said mere passage of the legislation may force “the diocese and other organizations like it to engage with victims and to settle with them and to enter into financial compensation programs … That is exactly the impact that legislation like this has had in other states.”
“The diocese is not going to do it of its own volition,” she said. “It has been driven to these types of settlements in the past because it had to.”
Others who spoke in favor of the bill included the lead House sponsor, Rep. Carol McEntee; Kathryn Robb, national director of the Children’s Justice Campaign; and Boston lawyer Mitchell Garabedian.
Garabedian was portrayed by Stanley Tucci in the Academy Award-winning film “Spotlight,” about the unraveling of decades of widespread and systematic sexual abuse by Catholic priests in the Boston area, and his ongoing role in defense of the victims.
Garabedian told The Journal:
“Decades-old murder cases in Rhode Island have no statute of limitations and can be brought at any time. Just as due process protects the rights of all parties in decades-old murder cases in Rhode Island, the rights of all parties in decades-old sexual abuse cases will be protected,” he said.
“It is time to protect children and help sexual abuse survivors try to heal.”
No one from the diocese testified in person, though former Deputy Attorney General Thomas Dickinson told the legislators the bill is unconstitutional and the Rev. Bernard Healey sent written testimony as he has before, on behalf of the Rhode Island Catholic Conference.
Healey said, in part: “The proposal to eliminate statute of limitations is so extreme that it is not surprising that Rhode Island courts have already concluded that such an application would be violative of constitutional due process.
“Over the past five years, five states have struck down similar legislation attempting to revive time-barred childhood sexual abuse claims, including New Hampshire, Maine, Colorado, Kentucky and Utah.”
This story has been updated with new information.