Clergy sex abuse bill passes RI Senate on unanimous vote. What’s next

• The Rhode Island Senate unanimously passed legislation to allow victims of clergy sex abuse to sue the institutions that failed to protect them.
• The bill provides a two-year window for victims to revive claims that are currently barred by expired time limits.
• This action follows the release of the attorney general’s report detailing a systematic cover-up by the Catholic Church over decades.

PROVIDENCE – Victims of clergy sex abuse scored a long-sought victory in the Rhode Island Senate on Wednesday, June 3.

Legislation to allow the victims to sue the Catholic Church – and any other institution that failed to protect them from molestation when they were children – won unanimous Senate approval and now goes to the House for final votes.

The fast action from Senate Judiciary Committee approval – to a full Senate vote – within an hour and a half was not unexpected after the announcement on Monday of a compromise backed by the Senate’s top-tier Democrats, including Senate President Valarie Lawson, Majority Leader Frank Ciccone and Senate Judiciary Chairman Matthew LaMountain.

If passed, as now appears likely, the legislation will allow the victims of sexual abuse by clergy to sue the Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence and any other entity that knew, but failed to stop – or concealed – the abuse they suffered as children at the hands of trusted elders.

The legislation would also provide the long-ago victims – many of them now in their 60s and 70s – with a two-year window to revive claims currently barred by expired time limits.

The compromise – after years of pleas and inaction – follows the long-awaited release on March 4 of 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.

His report laid bare, for the first time, the scope of more than a half century of alleged child sexual abuse by Rhode Island Catholic clergy and the breadth and depth of the alleged cover-up, which often included destroying key files or shuffling priests from parish to parish, where they would reoffend.

Sen. Mark McKenney, the lead Senate sponsor, told colleagues that the proposed new law not only states “this conduct unacceptable, but from now on, the institutions that have enabled it will be held accountable as well.”

As to whether the law would survive a legal challenge, McKenney said the Rhode Island Constitution “contains a provision that is somewhat unique in the United States: a victims’ rights clause. That provision has been largely overlooked in the debate that’s gone on about the constitutionality of this and … previous versions of this bill,” but retired U.S. District Judge William Smith drew attention to it when he testified.

He said Article 1, Section 23 “of our constitution provides that crime victims, including child sexual abuse victims, not only may receive compensation from perpetrators, but also, and this is a quote from the constitution, ‘Shall receive such other compensation as the state may provide,’ with that power ‘entirely committed to our authority as the General Assembly.’”

Co-sponsor Dawn Euer applauded “the victims and survivors, both the ones that we know of and the ones that we don’t, as well as the ones that we have lost. The strength and courage that it takes to go through what [these] people have gone through … is incredible.

“And then to be able to come up here and advocate …. for passage of this legislation over years [of] legislative turmoil and back again, it’s really incredible the strength and determination that you all have shown,” she said to the group of survivor-advocates in the Senate gallery.

“We get used to it,” she said of the process by which “the proverbial sausage is made. But for issues like this that have real impacts on people’s lives, it can be an additional trauma,” she said of the year after year of public hearings and testimony, followed by inaction.

On Wednesday, she said, the Senate sent the “strong signal that Rhode Island stands with survivors and victims.”

This story has been updated with new information.