The Diocese of Providence pushed back March 5 against a report from Rhode Island’s attorney general on past sexual abuse of children in the diocese, saying the state has mischaracterized a voluntary records review as an “investigation.” The diocese also questioned the timing of the report’s release, suggesting it may be aimed at swaying legislative debate.
According to the diocese, the report took almost seven years to be publicly released. “Any view that there is an on-going crisis within this diocese which requires urgent intervention is debunked by [this] fact,” the diocese stated.
The statement also emphasized the diocese’s commitment to transparency and its longstanding policies to protect children.
“It is long established diocesan policy to proactively and promptly inform law enforcement of complaints received and to work closely to ensure that crimes are prosecuted,” the diocese said later in the statement, after outlining four indictments of priests accused of abuse 30 or more years prior. “That cooperation occurred with each of these indictments. The Report downplays these collaborative efforts to aggrandize the results of the Attorney General’s six-plus year undertaking.”
The diocese began its statement denouncing child abuse, saying any form of it “is an abhorrent sin and a terrible crime. It is a scourge on our society wherever it occurs — in homes, schools, sports, or our religious and civic organizations. When the abuse comes at the hands of clergy who betray their God-given ministry and violate the trust placed in them, it is all the more shocking.”
The diocese underscored that the report is a result of “unprecedented and voluntary agreement to extraordinary transparency” and comes after six and a half years of responding to ongoing requests for more than 75 years of documentation.
“Despite how the Attorney General now frames this as an ‘investigation’, the report did not result from legal compulsion, criminal or civil administrative proceedings, or coercion by governmental power,” the diocese added.
The majority of the report relates cases that occurred between the 1960s and 1980s, according to the diocese.
“The report does not have the force of law but rather offers untested perspectives of the Attorney General — the bulk of which focus on historical cases of abuse from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and which have been previously documented, already subject to civil and criminal litigation, and well-publicized in the media,” it said.
The diocese said its motivation to agree to the probe was “the continued presence of child sexual abuse in so many other institutes.”
“We know the effectiveness of our efforts to protect children,” it said, “and hoped that a broader societal good could come from our experience, both the failures and the successes in the wake of a tragic but bygone era.”
While the diocese acknowledged its own past failures, it also criticized several shortcomings on part of the report.
“There were serious missteps by this diocese and church leaders generally in the early recognition and handling of this awful period,” it said. “It is certainly appropriate to critically examine the diocese’s responses to child sex abuse in many decades' past, both its early missteps and its effective responses and improvements along the way. It is equally critical to examine the current state of child sexual abuse in society more broadly. In that regard, the Attorney General’s Report fails.”
The statement relates that the diocese has implemented “wide-ranging reforms” that have been effective for responding to the issues, and has been continuing to improve and update its protections for children over the past 30 years.
“The report itself reveals no evidence of recent child sexual abuse by clergy, no credible accusations against those in ministry today, and no instances of the diocese's failure to meet its legal reporting obligations,” the diocese continued. “The report makes little effort to acknowledge these advancements or to point the way towards progress for other institutions and organizations.”
The diocese also criticized the report for presenting information from the probe in a way that could mislead readers to thinking the findings are new.
“Of course, fact and public record compel the Attorney General to concede the diocese’s improvements, but wherever change or success is acknowledged, it is done so begrudgingly,” the diocese said. “Instead, the Report masks these reforms in hundreds of pages that needlessly revisit and recount already known, already publicized detestable acts from the 1960s, 70s and 80s.
“The Report presents this 75-year history in ways that might lead the reader to conclude these issues are an ongoing diocesan problem or that these are new revelations. They are not.”
The diocese also elaborated on its concern that the timing of the report’s release was legislatively motivated.
“Teased to the media in advance of the General Assembly session (before the draft was provided to the diocese in accordance with the [2019 Memorandum of Understanding]),” the diocese said,"its intent is to bolster proposed and previously-rejected legislation that seeks to suspend long-standing statute of limitations laws for civil suits.”
“The Report's emphatic historical focus is constructed to create tailwinds for that legislation and discredit any opposition to its passage. Other states have tried this approach, and it has led dozens of other dioceses to bankruptcy,” the diocese continued. “It is important, therefore, to set the record straight. This is not to deny or diminish the inexcusable suffering inflicted on victims at the time of the abuse or in the very long years that followed. However, this diocese has implemented long-standing and successful practices.”
The diocesan statement then examined and clarified several points made in the AG’s report. The full statement can be read here.