Ronald Paquin, the defrocked Catholic priest whose decades of sexual abuse against boys in Massachusetts and Maine made him one of the most infamous figures of the Boston Archdiocese scandal, has died in a Maine prison at age 83. He died at about 4:15 p.m. at Mountain View Correctional Facility in Charleston, Maine, where medical workers were present, though no cause of death has been disclosed.
The Maine Department of Corrections reported Paquin's death, and both the Maine Attorney General's Office and the Maine Medical Examiner's Office were notified, according to The Boston Globe. At the time of his death, Paquin was serving a 20-year sentence tied to his 2018 conviction on 11 counts of gross sexual misconduct involving boys assaulted during trips to Kennebunkport between 1985 and 1988. Mountain View, a minimum- to medium-security facility in Charleston, includes an Assisted Living Unit for residents with mobility and specialized health needs, according to the University of New England.
A Legal Saga That Spanned Decades and Two States
Paquin had already served more than a decade in a Massachusetts prison before Maine authorities caught up with him. He pleaded guilty in 2002 to three counts of child rape in a case involving a Haverhill altar boy and was sentenced to 12 to 15 years in state prison, per the Globe's reporting. He was released from that sentence in 2015 after Massachusetts evaluators determined he no longer met the legal criteria for sexual dangerousness, despite having admitted to abusing 14 boys, according to Bishop Accountability's account of Boston Globe reporting.
Freedom did not last long. In February 2017, Paquin was arrested in Boston following a York County grand jury indictment on 29 counts of sexual misconduct, the same Bishop Accountability report states. He was ultimately convicted in November 2018 on 11 of 24 counts of gross sexual misconduct following a trial in York County Superior Court. Maine's Supreme Judicial Court later upheld 10 of those 11 convictions in October 2020, rejecting defense arguments that the trial court had wrongly excluded a victim's criminal record and expert testimony, according to the Feeney Law Firm.
At sentencing, Justice Wayne Douglas was the sentencing judge, per the Globe. During the 2018 trial, victim Keith Townsend publicly identified himself and testified that Paquin's abuse during those 1980s Kennebunkport trips caused him decades of depression, drug abuse, and a crisis of faith. Townsend also said he hoped other victims still living in the shadows could come forward.
Reassignments, Settlements, and a Cover-Up That Became National News
Paquin was ordained in 1973 and assigned to St. Monica's Parish in Methuen before being transferred to St. John the Baptist Parish in Haverhill in 1981. He was removed from his Haverhill parish in 1990 and sent for treatment in Maryland, and the Archdiocese of Boston received 13 complaints about him between 1990 and 1996, the Globe reported. The allegations involved boys in Methuen and Haverhill.
The Archdiocese of Boston paid more than $500,000 to settle six molestation complaints involving Paquin before permanently removing him from parish duties in 2000, yet Cardinal Bernard Law reassigned him to serve as a hospital chaplain in Cambridge in 1998, according to The Boston Globe's original Spotlight-era reporting. Law's actions in the case included reassigning Paquin to serve as a hospital chaplain in Cambridge in 1998.
Paquin's case became one of the defining examples in the Globe's 2002 Spotlight investigation, which exposed systemic cover-ups of clergy abuse across the Archdiocese of Boston. Paquin's case was among those covered in the investigation.
Survivors' Attorney Reflects on Decades of Advocacy
Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented more than 25 people sexually abused by Paquin as children, said the priest's clients were abused from about 1973 to 1990. Following Paquin's death, Garabedian said survivors felt a measure of relief that he could never again harm a child or destroy an innocent life, describing him as a serial predator who targeted vulnerable parish families across Massachusetts, according to WMTW-TV.
Paquin's death closes out a legal odyssey that stretched across two states and more than two decades, from his first guilty plea in Massachusetts to his conviction and unsuccessful appeals in Maine. The Boston Globe's report on his death credited contributions from reporters John R. Ellement and Jeremiah Manion, along with material from the Associated Press.
