NEWPORT, R.I. — The Rhode Island Foundation awarded more than $5.2 million in grants to Newport County nonprofits in 2025, contributing to a record-setting year for the organization as it marked the largest grant-making total in its 109-year history.

Among the local organizations receiving support were Strategic Prevention Partnerships (SPP) in Portsmouth and Turning Around Ministries in Newport, both working to address urgent community needs.

SPP received $125,000 to expand its No Wrong Door initiative, a program designed to help Newport County firefighters, EMTs and police officers cope with trauma-related anxiety, PTSD and depression.

“Behind their uniforms, many First Responders face mental health challenges stemming from the high-stress nature of the job,” said Rebecca Elwell, SPP’s executive director. “From the increasing day-to-day traumatic events to large-scale incidents, critical calls are becoming more frequent.”

Turning Around Ministries received $70,000 to continue its work helping residents facing financial hardship access affordable housing, workforce development programs and long-term financial stability.

“The number of unhoused and un- or under-employed people in Newport County is increasing, and so is the number of people needing our help,” said Cheryl Robinson, the organization’s president. “Participants know we are there for them and committed for the long haul.”

Other Newport County nonprofits receiving grants include the Boys & Girls Clubs of Newport County, Newport Community School, East Bay Community Action Program, Conexion Latina Newport, Little Compton Community Center, Jamestown Community Food Pantry and the Newport County YMCA.

Statewide, the Rhode Island Foundation awarded a record $93 million to more than 2,600 nonprofit organizations in 2025, while also launching a new Five-Year Action Plan aimed at addressing some of the state’s most pressing challenges.

“Our work last year reflects what the community identified as their priorities and the areas where we could play a deeper role,” said David Cicilline, the foundation’s president and CEO.

The plan focuses on five community priorities: civic and cultural life, climate action and sustainability, education and student success, healthy and strong communities, and housing and economic mobility.

In addition to its record grant-making, the foundation raised $82 million in donations in 2025, its third-best fundraising year.

“The generosity of Rhode Islanders allows us to respond to emerging issues and invest in initiatives that strengthen communities across the state,” Cicilline said.

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Related

The Rhode Island Lottery offers multiple draw games for those aiming to win big.

Here’s a look at March 6, 2026, results for each game:

Winning Mega Millions numbers from March 6 drawing

08-19-26-38-42, Mega Ball: 24

Check Mega Millions payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Numbers numbers from March 6 drawing

Midday: 8-6-2-3

Evening: 1-8-7-4

Check Numbers payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Wild Money numbers from March 6 drawing

02-08-16-26-32, Extra: 24

Check Wild Money payouts and previous drawings here.

Winning Millionaire for Life numbers from March 6 drawing

04-10-29-48-50, Bonus: 03

Check Millionaire for Life payouts and previous drawings here.

Feeling lucky? Explore the latest lottery news & results

Are you a winner? Here’s how to claim your prize

• Prizes less than $600 can be claimed at any Rhode Island Lottery Retailer. Prizes of $600 and above must be claimed at Lottery Headquarters, 1425 Pontiac Ave., Cranston, Rhode Island 02920.
• Mega Millions and Powerball jackpot winners can decide on cash or annuity payment within 60 days after becoming entitled to the prize. The annuitized prize shall be paid in 30 graduated annual installments.
• Winners of the Millionaire for Life top prize of $1,000,000 a year for life and second prize of $100,000 a year for life can decide to collect the prize for a minimum of 20 years or take a lump sum cash payment.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The sound of the school nurse’s office door opening. Light reflecting off a stained-glass window. Tearful outbursts and fear of getting on the school bus.

For many survivors of clergy abuse, memories like these linger for decades.

A report released this week by the Rhode Island attorney general detailed decades of abuse inside the state’s Catholic Diocese of Providence, identifying 75 clergy members who sexually abused more than 300 children since 1950. The investigation drew on thousands of church records and years of interviews with victims and witnesses. Officials said the true number of victims is likely much higher.

But survivors say the numbers capture only part of the story. Behind each case, they say, are childhood fragments that resurface years later — along with the long struggle to understand what happened.

Many survivors spent decades searching for answers and pressing authorities to investigate. Now some are speaking publicly about what they endured and what they hope will come next: broader support for survivors, help from the church to pay for therapy and counseling, and accountability from Catholic leaders.

From survivor to advocate

“I can still hear the click of the hardware in that metal door opening to this very day,” said Dr. Herbert “Hub” Brennan, an internal medicine doctor who lives and works in his hometown of East Greenwich, Rhode Island, where he grew up in a devoutly Catholic family.

Brennan was sexually abused in elementary school by the Rev. Brendan Smyth, an Irish priest who arrived in the community in the 1960s. Brennan was an altar server at Our Lady of Mercy Parish when the abuse began in the church sacristy.

Brennan says a nun would pull him from class and send him to wait in the principal’s office until Smyth arrived and led him into the nurse’s room.

“They say that rape is one of the few crimes where the victim feels the shame,” Brennan said. “But the shame is enormous. And then the secrecy that follows to hide that shame gets in the way of healing.”

Brennan confronted it years later when a newspaper arrived on his doorstep in 1995. The headline about Smyth’s arrest in Ireland read: “Diocese has no complaints against jailed priest.”

Smyth was later convicted of assaulting children at least 100 times over four decades.

When Brennan later tried to discuss the abuse with a parish priest, he said he was assured there had been no complaints, only to learn later the priest had been Smyth’s roommate.

The revelation pushed Brennan to seek accountability. He later worked with attorney Mitchell Garabedian and settled in Massachusetts Superior Court.

“I needed to make sure that others knew exactly what was going on in this diocese — if it happened to others, who was responsible and how they were hiding it,” Brennan said.

The report released this week felt like a culmination of that effort, he said: “That allowed me to switch from survivor-victim to advocate.”

Breaking the ‘wall of secrecy’

For Claude Leboeuf, amber light streaming through stained-glass windows still triggers painful memories.

Leboeuf, who was abused by a priest as a child in neighboring Massachusetts and now advocates for victims in Rhode Island, called the report an important step toward dismantling what he calls the church’s “wall of secrecy.”

Leboeuf said his memories resurfaced only a few years ago, prompting him to pursue legal action and speak publicly about what happened to him.

“There’s a need to do something for these people — something real: money, tuition, therapy,” he said. “The effects are real; they last a long, long time.”

In a video statement, Bishop of Providence Bruce Lewandowski said the report describes a “tragic history” of abuse that caused lasting harm to victims and their families. He said he felt “extreme sadness” and “intense shame” while reading it and apologized to survivors for church leaders’ past failures to protect children. Lewandowski said the diocese has since implemented safeguards aimed at responding quickly to allegations and preventing abuse.

Leboeuf rejects that framing.

“It’s not old history. It’s justice denied for more than 60 years for some people,” he said. “These are people who brought their complaints to the diocese as kids in the 1960s, and they were ignored, ridiculed, even punished.”

Fighting to be believed

Ann Hagan Webb remembers the dread she felt before the school bus arrived each morning. Webb was only a kindergartner when her parish priest began sexually abusing her at school in Rhode Island.

The abuse took place between 1957 and 1965, during which Webb — who was abused from the age of 5 to 12 — remembers tearful outbursts before school, sometimes needing to be pulled onto the bus.

It wasn’t until decades later, at 40, that Webb turned to therapy to help process the memories. But when she was ready to report the abuse, Webb was met with hostility.

Initially, she asked only for compensation to cover her therapy bills. Still, she was met with skepticism, with leaders at the Diocese of Providence demanding her medical records and questioning the veracity of her claims.

Webb turned to advocacy, becoming known as a force for survivors of clergy abuse. In 2019, she helped convince the Rhode Island Legislature to enact legislation dubbed “Annie’s Law,” which allows child sexual abusers to be held civilly accountable to victims.

The advocacy has been exhausting, Webb said, and she still faces stigma when speaking publicly. Her abuse is often overlooked, she says, because many assume clergy abuse affected only boys.

“For 32 years, the diocese has called me not credible. I can’t tell you what that feels like,” Webb said.

The release of the attorney general’s investigation has renewed her hope that change and justice are still on the horizon.

“It feels like vindication,” she said.

“I hope the public demands their church be different,” she added.

A long-coming reckoning

The Rhode Island investigation comes at a time when examining possible clergy abuse is no longer unusual.

The shift is a far cry from 2002, when The Boston Globe exposed the Boston Archdiocese’s practice of moving abusive priests between parishes without warning parents or police, prompting investigations around the world.

That reckoning took decades longer in Rhode Island. With one of the highest Catholic populations per capita in the country — nearly 40% — the Diocese of Providence maintained secrecy around clergy abuse even as accusations and lawsuits surfaced over the years.

Attorney Tim Conlon, who has long represented sex abuse victims in Rhode Island, said that when he first filed suits against the Diocese of Providence, many people were unwilling to believe such allegations could be true in their own parishes. At one point in the late 1990s, he said, even his mother questioned whether he was doing the right thing.

State law has also made it difficult for victims to seek justice, Conlon said, citing strict limits on civil suits against institutions like the Catholic Church and narrow statutes of limitations for second-degree sexual assault.

“Clearly there’s a call for reform,” Conlon said. “The magnitude of the need is well documented.”