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June 16, 2008

Diocese faces another suit alleging child abuse by priest

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Providence is facing yet another lawsuit alleging child molestation by a former priest.

Jeffery Thomas, 47, a contractor from Massachusetts, alleges in a civil lawsuit filed today that he was molested by the Rev. Brendan Smyth when Thomas was a second grader at Our Lady of Mercy School in East Greenwich during the 1960s.

The suit alleges that the diocese as well as Smyth’s supervisors in the order of Norbortine Fathers should have known, if they didn’t already, that Smyth was a pedophile and a danger to children.

"They have known about this guy and [his] pedophile behavior for five decades," Thomas’ lawyer, Jeffrey R. Anderson, said this afternoon.

"This isn’t about Brendan Smith," who died in an Irish prison in 1997, "but the ones he answered to," said Anderson. Those supervisors "could have controlled him and they chose not to. This suit is about…those who allowed the crimes to continue."

Smyth, who left Rhode Island in 1968, was sentenced to four years in a Belfast prison after admitting in 1994 that he molested five girls and three boys in Belfast over a 24-year period. The sexual assaults figured prominently in the collapse last fall of Ireland's coalition government.

Anderson said the diocese had received at least one complaint about Smyth prior to the alleged attacks on Thomas.

A spokesman for the diocese said he would comment after he had read the complaint filed today.

-- Journal staff writer Tom Mooney

Posted by Brandie Jefferson  at 2:57 PM | Permalink

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