(OSV News) — Rhode Island’s attorney general has published a 284-page report on sexual abuse in the Diocese of Providence, capping a six-year investigation that began in 2019 through a voluntary agreement with the diocese to survey records stretching back to 1950.

Released March 4, the report identified 75 credibly accused clergy — 61 diocesan priests and deacons, 13 religious order members and one extern priest — who allegedly abused more than 300 victims between 1950 and 2011.

Criminal charges have been brought against four current and former priests, with three awaiting trial amid presumed innocence pending a final verdict.

Also included in the report were specific calls for diocesan and legal reforms to prevent and address clergy sexual abuse.

Responding to the report in a video message provided through the diocesan website, Bishop Bruce A. Lewandowski of Providence acknowledged, “What I share with you today is far from new, but each time we hear about it, the trauma and pain are made real once again for victims-survivors and their loved ones.”

“I take this opportunity to apologize to the victim-survivors of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy for the failures of Church personnel and others in past decades to protect them and keep them safe,” he said.

Separately, the diocese posted a detailed response to the report March 4, denouncing “any abuse of children” as “an abhorrent sin and a terrible crime” — while also aiming to “set the record straight” on a number of points in the report.

“Nothing in this response to the Attorney General’s Report should be viewed in any way as questioning or diminishing the real pain felt by victims or downplaying the missteps of church leaders in their very early responses to this crisis,” said the diocese.

However, it stressed that the report — although termed by the attorney general as an investigation — was the product of voluntary cooperation between Rhode Island Attorney General Peter F. Neronha and the diocese, as outlined in a 2019 memorandum of understanding initiated under Providence Bishop Thomas J. Tobin, who retired in 2023.

In fact, said the diocese, while the four indictments had been brought during the span of the memorandum of understanding, the report’s implication that they resulted solely from the attorney general’s inquiry was “misleading.”

The cases — referencing incidents alleged to have occurred between 36 and 44 years ago, with the diocese pursuing its own investigations of each accused clergy member, according to existing policy — “could have been pursued regardless” of the memorandum of understanding, said the diocese.

In three of the cases, the diocese said it had been in contact with the reporting victims and law enforcement 19 to 24 months — and, for the fourth case, almost 13 years — before the indictments.

The diocese also clarified that the report documents “historical cases of abuse from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, and which have been previously documented, already subject to civil and criminal litigation, and well-publicized in the media.”

In a press statement that accompanied the report, Neronha said, “The Diocese would have you believe that this report is historical; that child sexual abuse by clergy members is a thing of the past and not worth drudging up. To that I say: the pain that survivors and their families suffer knows no statute of limitations, and history always has something to teach us.”

Bishop Lewandowski affirmed the lifelong impact of abuse in his message, saying, “We know and understand that the effects of abuse, even from many decades past, can persist, as if the abuse occurred yesterday.”

He said the Church “failed” victims, whose “abusers betrayed their trust and robbed them of their innocence and, in some cases, destroyed their lives. Their faith in God and His Church has been shaken and even lost.”

Neronha said in his statement that clergy sexual abuse “in the Diocese of Providence occurred on an abhorrent, staggering scale” and that the “Diocese of Providence engaged in a well-worn pattern of protecting the reputation of the Church and its priests over the welfare of children.”

The diocese stressed in its statement that the report shows no “evidence of any recent child sexual abuse by clergy,” and that “longstanding” diocesan policies to ensure child safety, which predate by almost a decade those adopted in 2002 by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, are working.

“There are no credibly accused clergy in active ministry. Today’s Catholic clergy here in Rhode Island are good and holy men, serving Christ and His people with devotion and out of genuine pastoral concern,” said Bishop Lewandowski in his message, pledging at the same time to uphold safe environment protocols.

“Any view that there is an on-going crisis within this diocese which requires urgent intervention is debunked by the fact that the Report took nearly seven years to be publicly released,” said the diocese.

In addition, said the diocese, the report — which “repeatedly criticizes” the diocese’s early responses to the clerical abuse crisis, which included medical evaluation and counseling — “often applies contemporary standards, practices, and awareness to conduct that occurred nearly a half century ago,” when the methods used were commonplace, even within Rhode Island’s criminal judicial system.

The diocese said the release of the findings — which bypassed the memorandum’s provision to supply an advance draft — was timed to “sway legislative debate” in favor of lookback laws allowing civil suits, which have led several dioceses throughout the U.S. to declare bankruptcy in order to settle claims.

The attorney general recommended the diocese establish an independent survivor compensation fund, a monitoring program for credibly accused clergy and a survivors’ rights policy, while doubling down on prevention through — among other methods — nationwide background checks for all clergy and improved internal investigations policies.

Neronha also called for an expansion of the diocese’s credibly accused list, an online database for key diocesan records related to abuse, and a revised letter of understanding with his office that would “include a wider range of sexual misconduct offenses involving minors,” with reports to law enforcement within 24 to 48 hours of receipt by the diocese.

Along with those recommendations, the attorney general’s report specifically called for four legal reforms — one of which addressed the means by which the report itself was created.

In his executive summary, Neronha noted that under current Rhode Island law, grand jury investigations are strictly confidential — unlike Pennsylvania, where a landmark 2018 grand jury inquiry into clergy abuse in six dioceses there sparked a wave of state investigations, including the Rhode Island one.

With that constraint, the 2019 memorandum of understanding between Neronha’s office and the diocese was the only path for making the current findings public — but Neronha urged the adoption of a grand jury statute that would allow public reports, even if they didn’t return an indictment.

Nerohna also advised amending the state’s statute of limitations for civil claims, while increasing Rhode Island’s criminal statute of limitations for second-degree sexual assault.

In addition, he recommended clarifying Rhode Island’s mandatory reporting law “to explicitly require” reporting known or suspected abuse by clergy, religious leaders or staffers with oversight of children.

The diocese affirmed its commitment to continuing the child protection work it had undertaken three decades earlier, adding, “Results happen when everyone with an interest in protecting children works together cooperatively, without ego or agenda, but with genuine compassion and real understanding.”