Year after year, these victims of child molestation tell their stories to lawmakers. Why?

PROVIDENCE – It's not easy for any one of them to dredge up these dirty secrets from childhood.

Dr. Herbert "Hub" Brennan was near tears – his voice quaking – as he, for the seventh year in a row, told a panel of legislators and the Capitol TV audience the painful secret he did not even tell his wife until they'd been married for 15 years.

The secret? He was molested repeatedly as a child by the Rev. Brendan Smyth, a visiting priest, counselor and teacher at Our Lady of Mercy School and Church in East Greenwich between 1965 and 1968. Smyth later returned to Ireland and pleaded guilty there to 141 counts of sexual abuse. He died in prison.

Brennan told of how he was pulled out of his third-grade class by the nuns and put in the principal's office at Smyth's instruction.

"I can still hear the click of the metal hardware on the door as the door opened," Brennan told lawmakers. "He would take me across the hall into the nurse's station and rape me. [Then] he'd send me back. I'd be sent back to my classroom, expected to learn and ... to be a normal child, adult and human being."

Victims relive the trauma year after year

A 66-year-old respected East Greenwich doctor, Brennan is one of a now-familiar troupe of victims of pedophile priests and other trusted elders who have come to the State House in person, or who write in testimony year after year to recount what happened to them.

The focus of their testimony is a bill to remove a legal obstacle to the filing of civil suits against molesters and the institutions that allegedly knew about them but did nothing to stop the sexual abuse of children in their care.

Their aim is to convince lawmakers to eliminate any statute of limitations whatsoever on these cases.

They had moderate success in 2019 when legislators extended the statute of limitations on lawsuits against the perpetrators of child sexual abuse for up to 35 years after the victim's 18th birthday (or age 53). However, that move did not retroactively apply to non-perpetrators, whom victims call "the Big Culprits."

Now, the victims – "Hub" Brennan, Ann Hagan Webb, Kathryn Robb, Claude LeBoeuf, Dennis Laprade, Mary Banks, Pasco Troia, Helen McGonigle Hyde, Michelle Ross (sister of the late David Ross), Robert Houllahan – return to the State House yet again. And someone new has joined them.

Former student who says coach Aaron Thomas touched them inappropriately joins other victims

On a recent Tuesday, they were joined for the first time by 39-year-old Michael Cesaro, who identified himself as one of the students inappropriately touched by Aaron Thomas, the former North Kingstown coach facing child molestation charges after being accused of subjecting school athletes to "naked fat tests."

Cesaro's account did not go as far back as many of the others who spoke.

But he alleged that, starting at 15 years old, he was "coerced" into getting naked in front of Aaron Thomas "during school hours and on school property."

Cesaro testified that the "calculated level of grooming" convinced him and "hundreds of other boys" that there was nothing inappropriate happening.

"It wasn't until I had grown, matured and had a family of my own that I was able to process what had happened to me," he said.

He said he told the North Kingstown Police Department "what I had endured all those years past. I asked my brother to join me knowing that he had also participated in the testing program, but he declined ... He was still ashamed."

"There are no limits on when or how long the impacts of sexual child sexual abuse can be felt," Cesaro implored lawmakers. "Accordingly, there should be no limits on justice for those that suffer at the hands of the abusers. For me, my brother, and ... the thousands of other victims that require more time to find the strength to address their past, I beg that you pass this amendment."

Why come back year after year?

In a quavering voice, Brennan told the legislators how difficult it is for him to tell his story year after year, and why he does it – to try to convey to legislators why it often takes decades, long after the state's current statute of limitations has expired, for child sex-abuse victims to acknowledge the effects of what happened to them.

The "first thing we've got to get by is the enormous shame," he said. "This crime – committed by another – is one of the few, very few, that bring shame by the victim themselves."

More: RI Supreme Court rules in favor of diocese, says they are not perpetrators of abuse

Robert Houllahan

Brennan's words were echoed by Robert Houllahan, who was one of three alleged child sex-abuse victims who tested the reach of the most recent 2019 state law extending the time limit for filing suits.

They sued former Roman Catholic Bishop Thomas Tobin, two of his predecessors and the operators of the schools they attended, alleging they knew but "ignored, concealed and/or pretended to be unaware that priests were sexually abusing children in order to protect the reputation of the Roman Catholic Church."

Last June, the state Supreme Court sided with the diocese. It ruled that the alleged personal injuries took place during a period when Rhode Island had a three-year statute of limitations, and the extended lookback period created by the 2019 law applied only to perpetrators, meaning "those accused of committing child sexual abuse."

"It's not about me," said Brennan. "Please just, if you can, imagine your child. Imagine your grandchild being sent off to school, being sent off to the hospital with your trust and they're raped ... and they don't say anything to you."

"My parents died without knowing what had happened to me," he said.

Who opposes the amendment?

With an anticipated hearing on the matching House version of the bill later this month, resistance has come from the Rhode Island Catholic Conference, the insurance industry, the American Tort Reform Association and the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU, which called it "a dangerous precedent for the due-process rights of civil defendants."

"Statutes of limitation serve an important purpose," wrote the ACLU's Steven Brown. "They ensure that evidence is relatively fresh and they recognize that as time passes, it becomes much harder for a person to mount a defense."

This article originally appeared on The Providence Journal: Child sex abuse victims of RI's Catholic priests tell their stories