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What happened to you in a Diocese of Providence parish, school or home was not okay.

One diocese, the whole state. Woonsocket to Westerly, more than 115 parishes, the schools, a seminary, an orphanage in Greenville. On March 4, 2026 the Rhode Island Attorney General put out 284 pages on what happened inside it: 75 clergy he found credibly accused, more than 300 children, 1950 through 2011. If you were an altar server, a student, a kid in the CYO, a resident at St. Aloysius, and a priest or a brother did something you've never quite set down, then yes. This page is about you.

Question 1 of 6

Were you a kid in a parish, school or home of the Diocese of Providence? Anywhere in Rhode Island.
Roughly when? A guess is fine.
Who was it? Just the role. No names yet.
Were you 18 or older at the time?
Two quick ones.

Did you ever tell anyone at the parish, the school, the home or the Diocese?

Have you already hired a lawyer about this?

Where should a real person reach you? One call. Nothing happens unless you say so.

When is a good time to call? (your time)

Say we miss you. Okay to leave a voicemail, or text you?

You never pay a dollar. Every case is on contingency.

6 questions. Your answers are private and go to one person.

Your years were at St. Mary's in Bristol, under Father William O'Connell? There is a page about him, too.

This applies to you no matter what

The Diocese of Providence lawsuits and the Attorney General's report: what the public record says, and when

None of this is ours. It's the Rhode Island Attorney General and the State Police, the federal and state courts, the General Assembly, the Diocese's own list and statements, and the reporters who covered them, and every line links to where it came from. We don't add to it. A complaint is an allegation, a name on the Diocese's list is that list's finding, the Attorney General's findings are his, and the Diocese has not admitted liability in any pending case. One priest on this page was convicted, on his own plea, forty years ago; most of the men in the report were never charged. And because it matters for the first question above: the Attorney General's report names St. Mary's in Cranston, Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich, St. Aloysius Home, Jesus Saviour in Newport, St. Matthew in Cranston and St. Mary's in Bristol as the places with the most reported victims, and the 2026 complaints name St. Matthew's in Central Falls, St. Teresa in Pawtucket, St. Aloysius, St. Margaret's in East Providence, Our Lady of Providence Seminary, Bishop Hendricken and St. Mary's in Newport. Every other parish, school and home on this page is listed because the same Diocese ran it. No separate record on them is cited here.

1978 and 1984

Start with the one the Attorney General calls the most notorious. In 1978 a fellow priest wrote to Bishop Louis Gelineau and Auxiliary Bishop Kenneth Angell about Father William O'Connell and, in his words, a "scandal of little boys" on overnight trips. Gelineau found it "unconvincing." Angell said gather more evidence. In 1984 another priest raised the same worry; again, gather evidence, no action. O'Connell was indicted in April 1985 and in June 1986 pleaded nolo contendere in Rhode Island Superior Court to 26 counts involving two boys at St. Mary's in Bristol. One year, work-release. The report counts 23 boys, 1950 to 1985. He died in New Jersey custody in May 1996. Those are the Attorney General's findings; the conviction is stated as the plea it was. R.I. Attorney General, Report Vol. I (Mar. 4, 2026), pp. 87, 142-144.

2002

After close to a decade of suits, the Diocese settled the claims of 36 people for about $13.5 million. Then, for people whose claims were already too old to sue on, Bishop Mulvee ran two payment programs, a flat award or a small arbitration, each conditioned on a release not to sue. The Diocese shut them in 2007. In 2005 its vicar general told the Providence Journal "we may have settled with 90 victims." The Attorney General's point: scores more came forward after 2007, and there has been no program for them. R.I. Attorney General, Report Vol. I, pp. 191-192.

July 2019

The Diocese published its own List of Credibly Accused Clergy: 51 priests and deacons, living and dead, diocesan and religious order. By the time the Attorney General reported it had added four, to 55. Inclusion is the Diocese's finding, not a court's. The same month, Attorney General Peter Neronha and Bishop Thomas Tobin signed the agreement that opened the Diocese's files to the State. R.I. Attorney General, Report Vol. I, pp. 24, 83, 229-230.

March 4, 2026

Six years, eight months and 250,000 pages later, the Attorney General and the State Police published, and one sentence of his carried the news: "Rather than report complaints of child sexual abuse to civil authorities, bishops and other senior officials withheld those complaints and instead sent accused priests to different parishes, or to 'treatment,' before ultimately returning them to active service." Behind it, the counting. Seventy-five clergy he found credibly accused; 61 were the Diocese's own priests or deacons, 13 came from religious orders, one was visiting. More than 300 children between 1950 and 2011, most of it, he says, in the sixties and seventies. As for where: 21 of the reported victims were at St. Mary's in Cranston, more than anywhere else, then 17 at Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich, 15 at St. Aloysius Home, 8 each at Jesus Saviour in Newport and St. Matthew in Cranston, and 7 at St. Mary's in Bristol. Then the finding under all of it. Thirteen of the men, at least, went on to abuse more than 40 children after the Diocese already had some notice about them, and 119 complaints never got passed to the police at all. Criminal charges came out of the investigation too, four, all against former priests: Edward Kelley died in 2022 and his case was dismissed, and John Petrocelli, James Silva and Kevin Fisette are awaiting trial in Superior Court, presumed innocent, under dockets P1-2020-3184A, P1-2021-3378A and P1-2022-1857A. The Diocese's answer, in its words: the report "does not have the force of law but rather offers untested perspectives of the Attorney General." R.I. Attorney General, press release, Mar. 4, 2026.

June 11, 2026

Governor McKee signed H 7200 Sub A / S 2616 Sub A. The old deadline, 35 years from the act or seven from discovery with the clock starting at 18, stays. The new part is one subsection, (a)(3), and it does one thing: a claim for childhood sexual abuse that "would be time barred", and that includes the negligent supervision, hiring, failure-to-report and concealment claims you'd bring against the institution rather than the man, is "revived and shall be commenced by no later than June 30, 2028." Effective date, July 1, 2026, three weeks after the signing. There's a severability clause tucked in as well, which matters more here than it usually would; if a court knocks out one piece, the rest of the act stays standing. 2026 H 7200 Substitute A, as enacted.

July 1, 2026

Day one. Thirty-three complaints in Superior Court and one in federal court, most of the state filings by Decof, Mega & Quinn, naming the Diocese along with St. Margaret's in East Providence, Our Lady of Providence Seminary and St. Matthew's in Central Falls, conduct back to 1958. Then the one federal case, brought by a man who lives in Georgia these days. He says Father Roland Lepire abused him in the rectory at St. Matthew's in 1980 or 1981, when he'd have been 10 or 11; the caption reads John Doe v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence, a Corporation Sole, and Saint Matthew's Church of Central Falls, D.R.I. No. 1:26-cv-00433. It pleads four counts, negligence, negligent hiring, negligent supervision and retention, premises liability, and, more to the point, a 1979 note from Bishop Angell that Lepire "be transferred at once" and "not be reassigned in the Woonsocket area," and that the Diocese then sent him to Central Falls. Herman Law Group with Grant & Eisenhofer. An allegation, every word, and the Diocese has not answered it. Complaint, Doe v. Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence, D.R.I. 1:26-cv-00433 (RECAP).

July 13, 2026

More than 40 suits in two weeks, and the Providence Journal reported that every one goes to a single Superior Court judge, Richard A. Licht, on a mass-tort calendar set up in 2025. He can pick bellwether cases, test trials, to show both sides what a jury does with these facts. Providence Journal, via SNAP.

July 29 to August 26, 2026

Five former altar boys at St. Teresa of the Child Jesus in Pawtucket sued the Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence and the parish in Providence County Superior Court over Father Armand Ventre, dead since 1999; the filing firm gives the number PC-2026-04200 and says the complaint asks for punitive damages. The same week the Globe counted six men suing over St. Aloysius Home, and more than 50 suits in all. On July 31 the Diocese said what it will argue: "The retroactive authorization of half-century old claims abandons the prevailing principles of due process enshrined in the Rhode Island Constitution." On August 26 the Globe told those five men's story, boys of 9 to 13 from Prospect Heights, now in their sixties, five of the 70 clients at their firm, and reported that the Diocese "has not yet responded to any of the lawsuits." No bankruptcy petition as of September 13, 2026; in July the Diocese said its parish planning "has nothing to do with bankruptcy or lawsuits." If any of that changes, this line changes. Boston Globe, Aug. 26, 2026.

We checked this on September 13, 2026, and the newest thing in it is from July 29 to August 26, 2026. When something new gets filed or decided, it goes in here within 72 hours, with the link.

Who can be held responsible in a Diocese of Providence lawsuit

Not the priest, or not only him. The defendant in the complaints above is the Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence, a corporation sole, which is the Diocese's legal name in a courtroom. One corporation, one member, the sitting bishop, at One Cathedral Square. It ordained these men, assigned them, moved them from Cranston to Central Falls to Newport, kept their files, and, so the Attorney General found and the complaints allege, kept what was in the files to itself. The theory isn't complicated. Put an adult in charge of children and you have to watch him. When a kid says something, or a fellow priest does, you have to act. The Attorney General says that for most of sixty years the Diocese didn't; the first complaint it documented passing to civil authorities was in 1989. Where the record shows what the Diocese knew, the case is against the institution.

There's a wrinkle, and it's why the first question names places. The Diocese is 178 separate corporations: parishes, schools, agencies. St. Matthew's in Central Falls was served on its own registered agent. St. Aloysius Home was run by the Rhode Island Catholic Orphan Asylum Corporation, though the Diocese owned the land and the Bishop was its president, and in 1999 the Supreme Court let the Bishop's corporation out of the St. Aloysius cases on exactly that distinction. So a complaint names the Diocese and the parish or home both, and a lawyer works out who answers for what. So tell us the place, even if you're hazy on the year; a lawyer will ask that before almost anything else.

And the Diocese is still here. Not in bankruptcy, and saying it will argue the new law is unconstitutional. It settled 36 claims in 2002 and dozens more through 2007. Two things a lawyer will want early: whether you took a payment then, because those came with a release, and whether you were under 18 at the time, because that decides which law applies. The pages for St. Aloysius Home and for Father O'Connell sit under this one; use whichever fits.

Your deadline: the Rhode Island statute of limitations for childhood sexual abuse claims against the Diocese

Under 18 at the time? Then the law that matters is R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-1-51, and it gives you 35 years from the act or seven years from the day you understood what it did to you, whichever is later, with nothing starting to count until your 18th birthday. Plainly: abused as a child in Rhode Island, you have until you're 53 at the very least. And since 2019 the same section reaches past the priest to the Diocese, by name: negligent supervision, hiring, training, monitoring, failure to report, concealment. Anyone whose years in a parish were 1991 or later is inside that clock on its own, no revival needed.

If it was earlier than that, and the old deadline already ran, there's the newer law. It revives expired childhood claims, the ones against the Diocese included, so long as the case is filed by June 30, 2028; that's H 7200 Sub A / S 2616 Sub A, which Governor McKee signed June 11, 2026 and which has been in force since July 1. June 30, 2028 is a real date, and the one date on this page with an end. Now the honest sentence. In 1996, in Kelly v. Marcantonio, the Rhode Island Supreme Court said the state constitution's due process clause doesn't allow a law to revive a claim that was already time-barred; in 2023 it read the 2019 law as reaching only perpetrators and left the constitutional question alone. The Diocese says it will make that argument against the 2026 law. As of September 13, 2026 it hasn't filed it in any of the 50-plus cases and no court has ruled. A lawyer will tell you what that means for a case filed now; what we can tell you is that the question is there, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

If you were 18 or older at the time: then § 9-1-51, the children's statute, isn't yours, and the rule that is, three years for injury to the person under § 9-1-14(b), starts on a date a lawyer has to work out, not us, along with whether anything paused it. Seminarians, young adults in a parish job, a 19-year-old at a hospital chaplaincy: answer the questions anyway and say so on the call.

Your situation still qualifies even if

Parishes, schools and homes covered

Any parish, any parish school, any diocesan high school or seminary, any home the Diocese of Providence runs or ran anywhere in Rhode Island, any year from 1950 on. The Attorney General's report counts the most reported victims at seven places, and here they are: St. Mary's Church, Cranston · Our Lady of Mercy Church, East Greenwich · St. Aloysius Home, Greenville (Smithfield), closed 1994 · Church of Jesus Saviour, Newport · St. Matthew Church, Cranston · St. Mary's Church, Bristol · Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Providence. The 2026 complaints name their own set, as defendants or as the places where it happened, and a few overlap: St. Matthew's (now Holy Spirit), Central Falls · St. Teresa of the Child Jesus, Pawtucket · St. Margaret's, East Providence · Our Lady of Providence Seminary · Bishop Hendricken High School, Warwick · St. Mary's Church and the former Cluny School, Newport. Listed because the same Diocese ran them, no separate record cited here: the other 100-odd parishes, their schools and the diocesan high schools. St. Aloysius Home has its own page (st-aloysius-home-survivors) and Father William O'Connell has his (father-william-oconnell); the Diocese is the defendant on all three. Yours isn't here? That means nobody has filed yet, or we haven't found it. It does not mean nothing happened. Answer the questions and say where.

Questions people are asking

Can I sue the Diocese of Providence?

People are. Thirty-four suits went in on July 1, 2026 alone, more than 50 by month's end, all in front of one Superior Court judge. Whether you can depends on your age at the time and when it happened, and, for anything before 1991, on the 2026 law and a court fight over it that hasn't been decided. The questions above start to sort that out; a lawyer finishes.

The priest is dead. Can I still bring a claim?

Yes. The claims that matter are against the Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence, the corporation, and it is very much still here and not in bankruptcy. Look at what's been filed: Father Lepire died in 2025, Father Ventre in 1999, Father McIntyre in 2020. The suits about them went in this summer.

What if I already took money from the Diocese?

Say so on the call, first thing. The 2002 settlement and the payment programs that ran until 2007 came with a release not to sue on that claim. It doesn't make the call pointless, but a lawyer has to see the paper before they can tell you anything, and it may close this particular door.

Rhode Island's statute of limitations on child sexual abuse: has mine run out?

Maybe not. Rhode Island's clock is longer than most people guess: R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-1-51 gives you 35 years from the act or seven from when you understood the harm, whichever is later, and it doesn't start counting until you turn 18; since a 2019 amendment it reaches the Diocese and not only the priest. And if yours did run out, the law signed June 11, 2026 reopens it, with one condition attached, that the case be filed by June 30, 2028. The Diocese says that revival is unconstitutional; no court has ruled on that yet.

How much does a sexual abuse lawyer cost?

Nothing, here. Every case is on contingency. The lawyer is paid only out of what is recovered, and if nothing is recovered you owe nothing. Not for the call, not for the review, not for the case.

How much is a Diocese of Providence settlement?

We won't put a number on this page, and be wary of anyone who does. The 2002 settlement is public, 36 people, twenty-four years ago, under a different law. Nothing filed since July 1, 2026 has been decided or settled. It depends on what happened, what the Diocese knew, and when, and a lawyer will tell you plainly after they've looked at your facts.

Who sees your form

Kerim Eravci

Kerim Eravci · Survivor Advocate · Not a lawyer

I was a victim, and I waited. Not because I didn't know what happened to me (I knew every day), but because I'd decided it was over, mine to carry, nobody's business. When I finally went looking for a lawyer, the answer came back in two words I'd never thought about: statute of limitations. My time had run out while I was busy getting through it.

What that has cost me since is a long story, and I'll tell you the whole thing in private, if you want it. The short version is the reason my name is on this page: I'm here to help people do what I wish I'd done, which is find out where you stand while the door's still open.

I'm not a lawyer. I read what you send, I call you once, on your terms, and nothing gets filed unless you say so. Ask sooner than I did.

Kerim Eravci is not an attorney. He's a survivor.

What happens next. Three steps, nothing more until you say so.

  1. You answer 6 questions. Nothing is filed. Nothing starts.
  2. A survivor calls you, once. Not a robot, not a call center. Someone who has been where you are.
  3. You decide. You find out your options. If you want to stop there, you stop there.

How this works

ME2 Survivors Alliance protects the heart. Licensed Rhode Island attorneys do the legal work. We are not lawyers and we don't pretend to be.

You never pay a dollar

Every case is on contingency. There is no charge for the call, the review, or the case. The firm is paid only out of a recovery, and if there is no recovery you owe nothing.