Fr. Richard E. Holden

Died 3/23/1985, age 46. Named publicly as credibly accused by the Diocese on its list 7/1/2019. Allegation(s) were noted to have been received after Holden’s death. Per the RI Attorney General’s Report, Holden is the subject of allegations of the sexual abuse of five boys. Further, diocesan files show that there may have been complaints about Holden as early as the 1967, with references to “unkind rumors” about him. In 1997 a man reported to the Diocese that he was sexually abused by Holden multiple times in the 1970s when he was a high school student and Holden was assigned to St. Vincent De Paul Parish in Coventry. In 2010 another man told the Diocese that Holden sexually abused him at St. Vincent De Paul 1980-1982, beginning when he was age 14. The man said he suspected that Holden also abused his brother. The Diocese received a third allegation in 2013, from a man who said Holden “sexually approached” him and some of his friends in the early- to mid-1960s at St. Aloysius Parish in Woonsocket. In 2019 there was a fourth allegation, that Holden sexually abused a 16-year-old boy in the early 1970s at St. Vincent’s, and in 2020 a fifth man alleged sexual abuse by the priest at age 16 or 17 in 1979.