PROVIDENCE — A Massachusetts man yesterday filed suit against the Catholic Diocese of Providence, alleging he was molested as a second grader in the late 1960s by an Irish priest who served as pastor at Our Lady of Mercy in East Greenwich.
The accused priest, the Rev. Brendan Smyth, became a notorious figure in the annals of clergy abuse before his death in prison in 1997. His admissions to assaulting numerous children in Ireland are said to have figured prominently in the collapse of the coalition government there in the 1990s.
Smyth’s cases in Ireland also included an extraordinary written acknowledgment on the part of one of his supervisors that he and others had known for decades about Father Smyth’s “problem” with children.
Yesterday, Jeff Thomas, a 47-year-old contractor, said Smyth molested and sodomized him in 1967 or 1968. The assaults, said Thomas’ lawyer, Jeffrey R. Anderson, came either before Smyth left or soon after he returned to Rhode Island from Ireland, where he had received “treatment” for his pedophilia.
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