Rev. Ronald Provost

February 1, 1996

TRIALS FORCE BOY TO RELIVE EPISODE \ PROVOST VICTIM SHOULDN'T GO

Author: DIANNE WILLIAMSON, Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

When the Rev. Ronald Provost was sentenced in 1993 for taking seminude photographs of a young boy, the child's parents told the court of the "tremendous stress" the case has placed on the family.

"Little boys belong outside playing with their friends, not in a courthouse dealing with sexual abuse," according to the victim impact statement of the boy's mother.
Yet three years later, the same boy was once again in a court of law, compelled to take part in yet another well-publicized trial. This time, though, the civil proceedings were orchestrated by the boy's parents and their lawyer, who were seeking monetary damages. And while the grown-ups in this case may have believed they were pursuing justice, some of the testimony made you wonder who, if anyone, was looking out for the boy's best interests.

Both cases - the criminal trial and subsequent civil matter - stemmed from photographs taken of the then 10-year-old Barre boy by Provost in the locker room of a Gardner swimming pool in 1992. If you saw the pictures, you saw a boy in a bathing suit who was clowning around and showing off - mooning the priest, flexing his muscles, sticking out his middle finger, and basically hamming it up.

IGNORANCE WAS BLISS

Father Provost would later tell police that he had taken a number of photographs over the years of boys with their buttocks exposed and that he sometimes used the pictures for sexual stimulation.

The boy knew nothing of this until his mother later told him what Provost would have done with the pictures (Provost never even developed the film; that was done by police). In an interview with police a few days after the photo session, the boy was asked if Provost ever took pictures of him in his bathing trunks.
"Ya," he replied. "But I don't think there's anything wrong with that, is there?"

Asked if Father Ron ever did anything to make him feel uncomfortable, the boy replied, "No."

The boy didn't think he needed any therapy until his parents told him he did. And the therapy began a month after the boy's father filed a civil suit in 1993 in Worcester Superior Court, seeking financial compensation from Provost, retired Bishop Timothy J. Harrington, and the Diocese of Worcester.

THERAPISTS, LAWYER

His first therapist met with the boy seven to 10 times, from June through October of 1993, before determining the youth had no further need of counseling. A year later, the family's lawyer, Nathaniel Pitnof, met with Worcester psychologist Robert M. Barresi. Before Barresi even saw his future client, he estimated the boy would need about $15,000 worth of therapy - the precise figure he later testified to in court.

Barresi would also testify at the civil trial that the boy suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of being photographed in his underwear ("the abusive photography session," Barresi called it). He recited a laundry list of symptoms exhibited by the boy, including clinical depression, denial, anxiety, emotional "numbing," distrust of others, poor self-image, increased irritability, repeated intrusive thoughts, loss of social relationships and recreational activities, diminished energy, loss of religious convictions, over-vigilance, immaturity and difficulty concentrating and sleeping.

Bills for the sessions, which ranged from $125 to $150, were sent to Pitnof. Barresi testified that it was his understanding that his fees would be paid from any judgment that might be awarded in the case, or that the payments would be extended over a period of time.

Under cross-examination by Provost's lawyer, Louis P. Aloise, Barresi said he spent 30 to 40 hours preparing the initial evaluation that included his diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. Only four to six hours of that time were spent interviewing the boy, he said.

Barresi was so involved in the civil case that he even proposed trial strategy. In a letter to Pitnof admitted as evidence, Barresi suggested Pitnof try to show that innocent physical contact by Provost - such as putting his arm around the boy's shoulder - could be made to look improper or sexual in nature.

On Monday, a Worcester Superior Court jury refused to award any monetary damages to the boy, although it did agree that Provost's negligence contributed to the boy's emotional distress.

NEW TRIAL?

Aloise, naturally, was pleased with the outcome.

"If the boy was injured, it was occasioned by the aftermath of the incident, not by what Father Provost did," he said. "Obviously, he shouldn't have taken those pictures. It was criminally and morally wrong. But any emotional distress came from the criminal prosecution and the actions of Barresi and the boy's parents, who kept telling him he must have a problem."

Pitnof said he will file a motion for a new trial. Asked if the most recent trial was in the boy's best interest, he said, "It was intended to give closure to him, to let him know the system worked."

Civil court may indeed be the proper forum for claims that the diocese ignored evidence of child molestation and pedophilia by its priests. And retired Bishop Harrington, who was absolved of blame in this matter, will likely again be forced to defend his actions in future cases that claim far more damage to alleged victims than the taking of photographs.

But, as the boy's own mother said some three years ago, a courtroom is no place for a now-14-year-old boy. He has already endured two well-publicized trials and has been subjected to far more trauma than that caused by Provost.

It's time for the grown-ups to provide the boy with the closure they claim he needs, by leaving him alone.

January 23, 1996

PRIEST TO TESTIFY IN LAWSUIT OVER PHOTOS OF BOY

Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

WORCESTER - The Rev. Ronald Provost, a Catholic priest convicted of soliciting a child to pose in a state of nudity, was expected to testify today in a civil lawsuit in which he, retired Bishop Timothy J. Harrington and the Worcester Diocese are named as defendants.

Provost's criminal conviction two years ago stemmed from a series of photographs he took of a 10-year-old Barre boy in the locker room of an indoor pool in Gardner during a Jan. 11, 1992, "swim night." Provost, known for his work organizing youth activities, took a series of photographs of the boy in various stages of undress as he was changing his clothes, according to evidence introduced at the criminal trial.

Provost was assigned to St. Joseph's Church in Barre at the time of the incident. He was sentenced to 10 years in Concord state prison on the soliciting charge and the sentence was suspended for five years with probation.

A civil lawsuit was filed on behalf of the boy by his father. The suit seeks monetary damages under an infliction of emotional distress claim against Provost and negligent supervision claims against Harrington and the diocese.

Provost, a Worcester native, served at St. Camillus and St. Bernard's in Fitchburg, among other parishes in the diocese.

The diocese removed him from priestly duties and sent him for treatment after the allegations surfaced against him.

Testimony in the civil case began Thursday in Worcester Superior Court and had been scheduled to resume yesterday.

However, James G. Reardon, one of the lawyers for Harrington and the diocese, told Judge Raymond P. Brassard yesterday that he was unable to proceed with the trial because he aggravated a recurring back condition Sunday while opening a garage door. Reardon appeared in court on crutches.

"I've taken enough medication to bring a bull to its knees," said Reardon, who moved for a mistrial. A mistrial would have necessitated trying the case over again from the beginning with a new jury.

Brassard denied the motion for a mistrial and suggested that Reardon's associate, Frank S. Puccio Jr., who has been at Reardon's side since the trial began, represent Harrington and the diocese.

January 19, 1996

TEEN TESTIFIES AGAINST PRIEST \ PHOTO SESSION BLAMED FOR LOSS OF

Author: Gary V. Murray; Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

WORCESTER - A 14-year-old Barre boy told a jury yesterday his schoolwork suffered, he spent less time with his friends, he became distrustful of strangers and he lost his faith in God after a priest took photographs of him four years ago in various stages of undress.

The teen's testimony was in connection with a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of the boy by his father against the Rev. Ronald Provost, a Roman Catholic priest; Bishop Timothy J. Harrington, now retired, and the Worcester Diocese.

The trial began Wednesday in Worcester Superior Court and is scheduled to resume Monday.

CONVICTED TWO YEARS AGO

Provost, who was known for his work organizing youth activities, was convicted two years ago on a charge of posing a child in a state of nudity. He had taken photos of the boy during a Jan. 11, 1992, "swim night" at the indoor Greenwood Memorial Pool in Gardner. Provost received a 10-year Concord State Prison sentence, which was suspended for five years with probation.

According to evidence in the criminal case, Provost told police officers investigating the 1992 incident that he had taken a number of photographs over the years of boys with their buttocks exposed and that he sometimes used the pictures for sexual stimulation.

MONETARY DAMAGES SOUGHT

The civil suit seeks monetary damages under an infliction of emotional distress claim against Provost and negligent supervision claims against Harrington and the diocese.

In his opening statement to the jury, Nathaniel D. Pitnof, the lawyer for the boy and his father, said evidence would show how the youth "had his faith in himself, his fellow man and his God taken from him" when he was 10 years old.

Lawyer James G. Reardon, representing Harrington and the diocese, said he expected the evidence to show there was no negligence on the part of his clients and "there has been no damage to this young man." Lawyer Louis P. Aloise, representing Provost, declined to make an opening statement.

The youth, wearing a white shirt and "Star Trek" tie, testified yesterday that he began attending youth activities at St. Joseph's Church in Barre after his family moved to the town in 1990, when he was in the third grade.

Provost, who organized the activities, routinely took photographs of the children who participated, the boy testified. "Every time I saw him he had a camera in his hand."

LOCKER ROOM INCIDENT

The teen said Provost took photos of him and about a dozen other youths while they were swimming in the pool in Gardner on the night of Jan. 11, 1992. The boy, who described himself as "shy," said he later asked Provost to hold up a towel so he could change out of his wet bathing suit in the locker room without being seen by others.

After he had removed his bathing suit and put on his underpants, he said, Provost got his camera and began taking pictures of him. The youth said he started "goofing around" and "posing for the camera," exposing part of his buttocks for one photograph, flexing his muscles for another and extending his middle finger for a third.
At no point, he said, did he intentionally expose any portion of his genital area nor did he receive any prompting by Provost.

In his opening statement, Pitnof said an adult entered the locker room during the picture-taking session and asked Provost what was going on. Police were later called in to investigate, he said.

The youth said he was eventually called upon to testify before a grand jury and at Provost's trial. When asked by Pitnof how he felt about what Provost had done, the boy said he was "upset.

He's a priest. He was supposed to be staying within the law. He was breaking it," he said.

THERAPY SESSIONS

The teen said he had difficulty concentrating on his schoolwork while the criminal case was pending. He said he shunned his friends and spent most of his free time alone watching TV. He testified that he stopped attending church after the incident and "basically" no longer believes in God.

The youth also testified that he has been attending weekly therapy sessions with a psychologist for more than a year.

Under cross-examination by Aloise, the youth acknowledged that he initially resisted attending counseling sessions because he did not think they were necessary and that he never asked his parents to file a lawsuit on his behalf.

Aloise also produced school records showing that the teen achieved average or better grades since the incident.

Provost, a Worcester native, served at St. Camillus and St. Bernard's in Fitchburg, among other parishes in the diocese.

The diocese removed him from priestly duties and sent him for treatment after the allegations surfaced against him.

January 30, 1996

JURY CLEARS HARRINGTON AND DIOCESE

Author: Gary V. Murray; Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

WORCESTER - A jury yesterday rejected claims that retired Bishop Timothy J. Harrington and the Worcester Diocese were negligent in supervising a Catholic priest who four years ago took semi-nude photographs of a 10-year-old Barre boy.

The Worcester Superior Court jury did agree with a claim filed on behalf of the boy, now 14, that the Rev. Ronald D. Provost's negligence was a substantial contributing factor to the boy's emotional distress. However, the 14-member jury did not find that the boy suffered any objective "physical manifestations" of his emotional distress.

The failure to determine physical signs of emotional distress means the boy cannot recover monetary damages.

"I was disgusted by the verdict. I was appalled," the boy's mother said.

Nathaniel D. Pitnof, the lawyer who filed the suit for the boy's family, said he planned to file a motion for a new trial. Pitnof said it appeared the jury "got hung up on one of the technical legal arguments" in the case against Provost.

"It was a very tough case. There were high emotions on both sides and difficult legal issues involved," said Provost's lawyer, Louis P. Aloise. "I think that the jury quite properly applied the law."

"On behalf of Frank Puccio (co-counsel) and myself, we are tremendously pleased for the diocese and the bishop, Timothy J. Harrington," said Worcester lawyer James G. Reardon.

"I have felt from the beginning that the case was an unjust accusation against the diocese and certainly against Bishop Harrington, who just celebrated his 50th year as a priest," Reardon said, "and it gives us all a great deal of comfort to see that a jury can sift through the issues and discern the type of testimony that was offered against the diocese and the bishop and return such a fair and just verdict."

Provost took photographs of the boy in various stages of undress in a pool locker room in Gardner during a Jan. 11, 1992, "swim night" organized by the priest, then pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Barre, according to testimony.

Provost was later convicted on a criminal charge of soliciting a child to pose in a state of nudity and remains on probation. While technically still a priest, Provost is no longer allowed to perform priestly duties and works as a grave digger at St. John's Cemetery.

When questioned about the 1992 photographs, Provost told police he had taken similar pictures in the past and used them for sexual stimulation.
The claim against Harrington and the diocese in the civil lawsuit was that the retired bishop and other diocesan officials knew or should have known that Provost had a propensity for such behavior and failed to take appropriate action.

In testimony, Provost and Harrington offered conflicting accounts of a 1980 meeting between the two after another priest expressed concern about photographs of young boys that Provost had in his room at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Worcester.

Provost testified that Harrington, then auxiliary bishop and vicar for priests, questioned him about taking nude pictures of boys and sent him to the House of Affirmation, a treatment center for clergy.

Harrington said he found the photographs he was shown to be harmless and denied asking Provost about taking pictures of nude boys. Harrington said Provost followed his suggestion that the priest obtain counseling to "broaden his ministry" because of concerns that he was devoting too much of his time to the very young and the elderly.

Dr. Robert M. Barresi, a Worcester psychologist, testified that the boy had post-traumatic stress disorder from Provost's conduct.

In his instructions, Judge Raymond J. Brassard told the jurors that in order to recover damages on the claim against Provost, the plaintiff had to prove he suffered emotional distress, that it was caused by Provost's negligence and that there was some physical manifestation of the distress, such as headaches, diarrhea, concentration and reading problems, sleeplessness or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Pitnof said after the verdict was returned that there was ample evidence of physical problems suffered by his client to meet the standard established by the state Supreme Judicial Court. The reason for the "physical manifestations" requirement, he said, was to "screen out frivolous claims of emotional distress."

Aloise disagreed with Pitnof's assessment of the evidence, saying the only testimony offered on physical suffering came from Barresi and not directly from the boy or his family.

The boy's mother said after the verdict that her son was "dramatically affected by this and again, the church has just walked away from its responsibilities.
"It's pretty easy to stick your head in the sand and pretend this doesn't happen...," she said.

Raymond Delisle, director of communications for the diocese, said diocesan officials had no immediate comment on the verdict.

January 27, 1996

JURY FAILS TO REACH VERDICT IN PROVOST CIVIL LAWSUIT TRIAL

Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

WORCESTER - Jury deliberations are scheduled to resume Monday morning in the trial of a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of a Barre boy who was the subject of semi-nude photographs taken four years ago by a Catholic priest.

A 14-member jury deliberated for about an hour yesterday in Worcester Superior Court without reaching a verdict in the suit against the Rev. Ronald D. Provost, retired Bishop Timothy J. Harrington and the Worcester Diocese.

Judge Raymond J. Brassard excused the jury of eight men and six women at about 5:15 p.m. and asked them to resume their deliberations at 8:30 a.m. Monday.
The suit, filed on behalf of the boy by his father, seeks monetary damages under a negligent infliction of emotional distress claim against Provost and negligent supervision claims against Harrington and the diocese.

The photographs that are at the heart of the case were taken by Provost on Jan. 11, 1992 in the locker room of an indoor pool in Gardner during a "swim night" organized by the priest while he was pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Barre. The boy, who was not a member of St. Joseph's, was 10 at the time.
Provost was convicted on a criminal charge of soliciting a child to pose in a state of nudity in connection with the pictures. He received a suspended state prison sentence and was placed on probation for five years.

When questioned by police about the photographs, Provost said he had taken similar pictures of young boys in the past and had used them for sexual stimulation, according to evidence introduced at Provost's 1993 criminal trial.

CHARGE DENIED

Lawyer Nathaniel D. Pitnof, who represents the boy and his family in the civil suit, has alleged that Harrington and other diocesan officials knew or should have known that Provost had a propensity for such behavior and failed to take appropriate action. James G. Reardon, the lawyer for Harrington and the diocese, has denied the charge.

Dr. Robert M. Barresi, a Worcester psychologist who said he has been treating the boy for more than a year, testified that the youth suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the picture-taking session.

In his closing argument yesterday, Provost's lawyer, Louis P. Aloise suggested that if the boy was emotionally harmed, it was not as a direct result of Provost's conduct. Aloise noted that the pictures taken of the boy by Provost were developed by police and said that the youth's mother told him "what the priest would have done with the photos if he had the chance.

"You have to ask yourself why," Aloise said. "There was no need for this young man to be burdened, if that's the correct word, by what the priest might have, could have, would have done with the photographs."

Aloise also argued that Barresi's testimony should be viewed as "highly suspect" because the psychologist had a financial interest in the outcome of the case. Barresi testified that his fees were to be paid from any award in the case or that the family's payments would be extended over a period of time.
Reardon also attacked Barresi's credibility in his closing argument.

"He must have been vaccinated with a Victrola needle. He went around and he went around and he went around," Reardon said. He argued that Provost was "not doing church work" when the photos were taken.

CONFLICTING TESTIMONY

"How do you supervise a criminal act? How do you say to me that there was a negligent act of supervision when he was not acting as a priest. What do they want to say, that he was baptizing in the pool?" Reardon asked.

There was conflicting testimony from Provost and Harrington about a 1980 meeting between the two after another priest asked Harrington, then vicar for priests and auxiliary bishop, to look at some photographs of boys that Provost had in his room.

Provost said Harrington asked him if he had taken photographs of nude boys and sent him to the House of Affirmation, a treatment center for clergy.
Harrington testified that he considered the photographs he saw harmless, that he never asked Provost about taking nude pictures and that he suggested Provost get counseling to "broaden his ministry," not because he suspected the priest had a problem of a sexual nature.

"He (Harrington) looked you in the eye and said I didn't know," Reardon told the jury.

Referring to Provost as a "defrocked priest" and "convicted felon," Pitnof asked, "What on earth does he have to gain by lying about what happened in the 1980s?"
Pitnof asked the jurors to consider Provost's testimony that he took the pictures of the boy as "a memento" of the evening.

"This is a memento," Pitnof said, holding up a Red Sox pennant for the jury. "Not a 10-year-old boy mooning to a pedophile or a pervert with his buttocks exposed."
Pitnof said the evidence showed that there were concerns about the amount of time Provost spent with young boys in 1970 and again in 1980.

January 26, 1996

HARRINGTON'S TESTIMONY CONTRADICTS PRIEST'S

Author: Gary V. Murray; Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

WORCESTER - Retired Bishop Timothy J. Harrington testified yesterday that he never asked the Rev. Ronald D. Provost if the priest had taken photographs of nude boys.

The retired bishop's testimony clearly contradicted the priest's account of a 1980 meeting between the two in which Harrington suggested that Provost undergo counseling. Harrington said the suggestion was made to help Provost in "broadening his ministry," not because he suspected the priest had a problem of a sexual nature.

Harrington, Provost and the Worcester Diocese are defendants in a civil lawsuit. The suit was brought on behalf of a Barre boy photographed in various stages of undress by Provost four years ago while he was pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Barre. The photographs were taken Jan. 11, 1992, in the locker room of an indoor pool in Gardner during a swim night organized by Provost.

The boy, who was not a member of St. Joseph's Church, was 10 at the time. Provost was later convicted on a criminal charge of soliciting a child to pose in a state of nudity in connection with the pictures.

The civil suit, filed by the boy's father, seeks monetary damages under a negligent infliction of emotional distress claim against Provost and negligent supervision claims against Harrington and the diocese.

Testimony began Jan. 18 in Worcester Superior Court. It is believed to be the first such case against the Worcester diocese to go to trial.
Harrington, who was animated at times during his testimony and appeared weary at others, was questioned at length by the boy's lawyer, Nathaniel D. Pitnof, about a meeting with Provost in 1980, while Provost was assigned to Our Lady of Mount Carmel parish in Worcester.

Harrington, represented by Worcester lawyer James G. Reardon, said he was contacted in 1980 by the Rev. John Capouano, then pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, who showed him some photographs found in Provost's room. Harrington testified he did not recall Father Capouano's exact words, but told the jury, "The impression I had was that this was something that did not meet with his approval."

Harrington, then auxiliary bishop and vicar for priests, said he was shown about a dozen photographs of boys ages 10 to 12 who appeared to be having a pillow fight in a dormitory or barracks setting. Some of the boys in the photos were dressed in underwear and others were in pajamas, he said.

"I really didn't see anything bad in those pictures... I remember saying I don't think these are so bad as you are judging them, John," Harrington said.

Harrington said Capouano also used the meeting with him as "an opportunity to tell me about other complaints that he had about Father Provost, among which were his paying attention, giving most of his attention to the young and the very old, and not reaching out to the young adults, teen-agers, young marrieds and so on in the parish." While serving as a priest in the diocese, Provost was known for organizing youth activities.

Harrington said he relayed Capouano's concerns to then Bishop Bernard J. Flanagan and later met with Provost. "Without ordering him, with no imperatives at all, I suggested that perhaps it would help if he went to the House of Affirmation to get some career counseling ... to see if he could broaden his ministry," Harrington said of his meeting with Provost.

"I didn't send him. It was a recommendation that he took," the bishop said.

"I never, never, never asked him about pictures of nude boys because I had no cause to," Harrington said.

Asked by Pitnof if it did not seem unusual to him that a priest would have photographs of boys in "a bedroom setting," Harrington replied, "Well, at the time, it didn't. I thought he was capturing in his snapshot one of the fun moments that these kids were having, a pillow fight."

Harrington said he never followed up on Provost's treatment at the House of Affirmation by asking Provost to sign a release that would have let Harrington obtain the counseling records.

After being questioned by police about the 1992 incident that resulted in a criminal charge against him, Provost admitted to investigators he had taken photographs of young boys "mooning" in the past and had used the pictures for sexual stimulation.

"I didn't know and I don't think anybody knew up until the time he talked to the sergeant," Harrington said. "I'm on record as having said when I was bishop that any priest found to be abusing a kid is no longer to serve in this diocese.

"If any of you are mothers or fathers," he said to the jurors, "you know that sometimes Daddy is the last to know or Mommy is the last to know. Right now, for all I know, there's a priest double-parked someplace. How can I know that?"

Provost's account of the 1980 meeting with Harrington differed from Harrington's. Provost, represented by Louis P. Aloise, said Harrington asked him at the time if he had ever taken any photographs of nude boys. Provost also testified that Harrington sent him to the House of Affirmation, a treatment center for clergy, where he said he was treated on an outpatient basis for several months.

Provost said in a sworn, pretrial deposition that his treatment at the House of Affirmation was for a "sexual addiction." He testified at trial, however, that he did not fully understand what a sexual addiction was or that he had one until after he was charged criminally in 1992 and treated at St. Luke's Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Maryland.

January 25, 1996

PSYCHOLOGIST SAYS PHOTOGRAPHS TRAUMATIZED BOY

Author: Gary V. Murray; Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

WORCESTER - A psychologist told a Worcester Superior Court jury yesterday that a Barre boy suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of being photographed in his underwear by a priest in 1992.

The testimony of Dr. Robert M. Barresi, a Worcester psychologist, came during the fourth day of the trial of a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of the boy against the priest, the Rev. Ronald D. Provost; retired Bishop Timothy J. Harrington and the Worcester Diocese.

Some of the photographs taken Jan. 11, 1992, in the locker room of a Gardner pool, depicted the then 10-year-old boy exposing part of his buttocks. Provost was convicted of soliciting a child to pose in a state of nudity in connection with the taking of the photographs.

The civil lawsuit, filed in May of 1993, accuses Provost of inflicting emotional distress on the boy. It also seeks monetary damages under negligent supervision claims against Harrington and the diocese.

Barresi, who said he has been treating the boy for more than a year, testified yesterday that he diagnosed the youth as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, a condition that he said was directly related to the 1992 incident. In explaining post-traumatic stress disorder, Barresi said the boy suffered psychological damage as a result of having been traumatized by what he described as the "abusive photography session."

Barresi said symptoms exhibited by the boy included clinical depression, denial, anxiety, emotional "numbing," distrust of others, poor self-image, increased irritability, repeated intrusive thoughts, loss of social relationships and recreational activities, diminished energy, loss of religious convictions, over-vigilance, difficulty concentrating and sleeping and immaturity.

Barresi said the boy has shown some improvement in the last six months or so, but is in need of another several months of therapy and possibly additional treatment in the future.

At his hourly rate of $125, Barresi said he expected the initial evaluation and treatment of the youth to cost his family about $15,000. Another $5,000 to $10,000 worth of treatment may be needed in the future, he said. Barresi said it was his understanding that his fees would be paid out of any judgment that might be awarded in the case or that the payments would be extended over a period of time.

Under cross-examination by Provost's lawyer, Louis P. Aloise, Barresi said he spent 30 to 40 hours preparing the initial evaluation that included his diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. A total of four to six hours of that time were spent interviewing the boy, he said.

Barresi rejected Aloise' s suggestion that the boy's grades in school remained "essentially consistent" in the years immediately before and after the taking of the photographs. According to Barresi, the youth's grades suffered and he began getting more Cs after Jan. 11, 1992.

Barresi said he was aware that the youth told a medical doctor during a 1993 physical examination that he was having no difficulties in school and was having no trouble eating or sleeping. He said he was also aware that the boy's mother had expressed concerns during a 1991 doctor's visit that her son was watching too much television and spending little time outside playing with his friends.

Barresi acknowledged that he never saw the photographs that were taken of the boy. "I had enough information without the photographs," he said.
Testimony was scheduled to resume today.

January 25, 1996

WHERE DOES PROVOST CASE TRUTH LIE? \ PRIEST, BISHOP DIFFER ON

Author: Dianne Williamson,Worcester Telegram & Gazette (MA)

When the Rev. Ronald D. Provost was confronted by police in January 1992, he made little effort to hide the fact that he took inappropriate pictures of young boys and used them for sexual stimulation.

The man known as Father Ron to the adoring youths of his parish voluntarily took police to the rectory of St. Joseph's Church in Barre and showed them pictures he kept on the mantle in his bedroom. When police asked to see more, Father Provost took them to a back room and turned over a manila envelope filled with photos of boys in various stages of undress.

"On some occasions I have taken pictures of kids in the nude, mooning," he told police at the time. "When I look at these pictures I have sexual tendencies. I have fantasies of having sex with the boys. I sometimes masturbate while looking at these pictures ... I have had the problem of sexuality for about 20 years ... I admit that I have a problem and intend on getting help with it."

Provost has displayed rare candor in his account to police and in his testimony earlier this week in Worcester Superior Court, when he revealed that he was sent to a treatment center for clergy in the early 1980s after then Auxiliary Bishop Timothy J. Harrington asked whether he had taken nude photographs of young boys.

BISHOP TO TESTIFY

But today in Worcester Superior Court, Harrington is expected to take the stand and present a widely divergent account of the sad events that culminated in 1993, when Provost received a 10-year suspended prison sentence for taking pictures of a boy who relied on the priest for moral guidance.

"There will be a stark contrast between what Father Provost has said and what Bishop Harrington is going to say," according to lawyer Nathaniel D. Pitnoff.

Pitnoff is representing a Barre boy and his father who have filed a civil suit in connection with photos of the boy taken by Provost in the locker room of an indoor pool in Gardner. The suit seeks monetary damages under an infliction-of-emotional-distress claim against Provost, and negligent supervision claims against Harrington and the Worcester Diocese.

While Provost has appeared to accept and deal with his sad proclivities, the trial now under way in Room 18 serves to underscore the failure of the Catholic Church in facing the reality of child molestation and pedophilia by its priests. If Harrington's testimony today is consistent with a deposition he gave in 1994, it paints a sad picture of a diocese only too willing to ignore the clear warning signs of a problem.

CONTACTED BY SUPERVISOR

In his deposition, Harrington acknowledged that in the early 1980s he was contacted by the Rev. John Capouano, then pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, who wanted him to see some pictures of young boys taken by Provost that Capouano found inappropriate. Provost was then associate pastor at Mount Carmel.
Harrington said he went to the rectory and saw the snapshots, which were in Provost's room.

"I didn't think they were inappropriate," Harrington testified in 1994. "To me they were pictures of young men, young boys as I recall, it was like in a dormitory or in a bedroom ... I think they were having a pillow fight. Some were in their pajamas, some in their pants, some were in their shirts and shorts ... No one was, let's say, naked or in any way naked. I didn't think they were any more disturbing than what I see on a basketball court or tennis court or track."

Harrington also said in his deposition that he spoke to Provost shortly after and suggested he go to the House of Affirmation, a treatment and therapy center for clergy that was closed in 1989. But while Provost testified this week that Harrington asked if he took nude photos of boys, Harrington indicated in his deposition that Provost was sent for counseling in an effort to broaden his ministry.

NO FOLLOW-UP

Asked if Harrington considered it his duty to follow up on priests who were treated at the House of Affirmation, he replied, "No. Not usually."

Instead, priests such as Provost were routinely reassigned to different parishes, and no efforts were made to monitor their behavior or keep an eye on their activities. In Father Provost's case, he was allowed to continue his rather obsessive focus on the boys of his parish - organizing trips to pools and amusement parks, assembling teams for flag football and street hockey, and sponsoring nights dedicated to baseball card exchanges.

Today, Father Provost is defrocked and disgraced, working as a gravedigger at St. John's Cemetery. He has nothing to lose by being honest with those who now seek some closure in a court of law.

But others have much to lose - their reputation, their standing, the respect of their flock. This week, it's up to a jury to decide who's telling the truth, and who's continuing to cover up a sad and shameful secret.

January 24, 1996

PROVOST RECOUNTS MEETING \ PRIEST TESTIFIES HARRINGTON SENT HIM

Author: Gary V. Murray; Telegram & Gazette Staff

WORCESTER - The Rev. Ronald D. Provost, a Catholic priest, testified yesterday that he was sent to a treatment center for clergy in the early 1980s after then-Auxiliary Bishop Timothy J. Harrington questioned whether he had taken nude photographs of young boys.

Provost's testimony came during the trial of a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of a Barre boy who was photographed in various stages of undress by Provost in 1992. The suit, filed on behalf of the now 14-year-old boy by his father, seeks monetary damages under an infliction of emotional distress claim against Provost and negligent supervision claims against Harrington and the Worcester Diocese.

Provost was convicted on a criminal charge of soliciting a child to pose in a state of nudity in connection with the 1992 photographs, which were taken in the locker room of an indoor pool in Gardner during a "swim night" organized by Provost while he was pastor of St. Joseph's Church in Barre.

As a result of the 1993 Worcester Superior Court conviction, Provost received a suspended prison sentence and was placed on probation for five years.

EARLIER INCIDENT

Provost, who was called as a witness by Nathaniel D. Pitnof, the lawyer for the boy and his father, was asked to recount a meeting he had with Harrington sometime between 1979 and 1981, while Provost was associate pastor of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Worcester.

"I remember the bishop said he was concerned about some pictures and he was concerned that I spent a lot of time with the young and the old ..." Provost said. "He asked, when I came in, if I had taken any nude pictures of boys."

When Provost was asked by Pitnof how he responded to Harrington's inquiry, objections were raised by Provost's lawyer, Louis P. Aloise and James G. Reardon, the lawyer for Harrington and the diocese. After a brief bench meeting with the lawyers, Judge Raymond J. Brassard told the jurors that Provost was invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

Pitnof asked Provost if Harrington had confronted him with an accusation of taking photographs of nude boys. "I would say it was a question," Provost said.
Pitnof then referred to Provost's pretrial deposition in which he answered yes when asked essentially the same question.

CONTINUED DUTIES

After the meeting, Provost said, Harrington sent him to the House of Affirmation, which Provost described as "a treatment center for religious," for counseling and therapy. He said he was treated there on an out-patient basis for several months and was allowed to continue performing his priestly duties at Mt. Carmel during that period of time.

Pitnof asked Provost if his treatment was for a "sexual addiction." Provost testified that he recalled saying that in his deposition, but went on to say that he did not fully understand that he had a sexual addiction until after he was charged criminally, requested help and was sent to St. Luke's Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Maryland, for an additional several months of treatment.

Under questioning by Pitnof, Provost said he did not recall any diocesan officials ever discussing with him his treatment at the House of Affirmation or any evaluation of him that might have been done there.

When asked by Pitnof why he took the 1992 photographs of the boy "mooning" and in his underwear, Provost said, "I wanted to take one picture of him, just to have one, no reason." He said he had no sexual interest in taking the pictures.

"This one picture was just going to be a memento of the evening," Pitnof asked.

"That would sound right," said Provost.

Under cross-examination by Reardon, Provost, who was not dressed in clerical garb, said that while he is technically still a priest, he is no longer allowed to serve as one.
"You are now a grave digger, are you not? You dig graves for the diocese?"

"Yes, I do," Provost said.

Provost, a Worcester native, served at St. Camillus and St. Bernard's in Fitchburg, among other parishes in the district.

Testimony in the case was scheduled to resume today in Worcester Superior Court.

Fay ppa v Provost et al

June 7, 1993

"UNHOLY ACTS"  

by PAUL WILKES,*The New Yorker Magazine*, 6/7/1993

The Catholic Church's failure to confront the crisis within its clergy - - more than four hundred priests have been accused of sexual misconduct with children in recent years -- has begun to cripple its authority among believers.
At a small parish in Massachusetts, parents have been forced to confront a pastor's abuse of their faith.
------------
On a Sunday morning a year ago last January, the congregants of my church -- St. Augustine's Mission, a tiny Catholic church in the central Massachusetts town of Wheelwright -- looked up to see an unfamiliar priest at the altar. Nothing was said about our pastor, Father Ronald Provost, by this stranger in white alb and green stole; the Mass went on, as we were taught that it should, regardless of the celebrant. We received Communion, said our thanksgiving, and went downstairs to the hall for coffee and doughnuts. There were some whispers of curiosity about where Father Provost was that morning, but in such a small parish we were not going to ask anyone directly; and, whatever the reason for Father Provost's absence, we knew we were lucky to have a priest at all in these days of an ever-shrinking clergy and a growing number of church closings. After greeting us at the back of the church, the visiting priest, who identified himself as Father Rocco Piccolomini, the diocesan vicar for priests, had quickly left.

Around us, on walls and ledges, in the cheerful panelled basement room were many framed pictures of our parish children; at our annual chicken barbecue; in their First Communion clothes; playing games; running a race. Father Provost, who had been our parish priest since 1988, was always taking pictures and handing out extra copies to the subjects. Also on the wall was his own picture, with our thanks recorded beneath it. Two years before, the room where we were standing had been no more than a dark crawl space. With volunteer labor and scraped-up funds, he had excavated and constructed. His efforts had afforded us a place to gather after Mass and get to know one another.

We parishioners of St Augustine' -- our usual Sunday group consisted of about a hundred adults -- were grateful to Father Provost, but we never regarded him as anything more than a marginally adequate pastor. The religious-education classes that he supervised for our children were poorly run; there were no classes for adults; and no grownup ever thought to go to him for counselling or advice on personal matters. In fact, this man, at fifty-three, seemed to have difficulty carrying on a conversation with a grownup. There was a childlike quality about him that seemed to preclude adults' having a serous relationship with him. But he was sweet, simple, smiling, hardworking, and beloved by the children, and he seemed to be doing the best he could with what limited abilities he had. He was interested in kids. and was always organizing trips to amusement parks and swimming pools, assembling teams for flag football and street hockey, and sponsoring nights dedicated to baseball-card exchanges.

On the Sunday mornings that followed, a series of priests unknown to us came to say Mass at our church. None of them gave us any information about our pastor, but one let it be known that if we wanted to write to him our letters would be forwarded. Early in the period of Father Provost's absence, I called the auxiliary bishop, whom I knew, to ask after him. He told me, "We had to get him out of there quickly, put him on sick leave." He asked that parishioners inquire no farther but grant Father Provost time and privacy to work out what it was that was troubling him. Surety, we thought, it couldn't he alcohol or drugs. We concluded that he must have had some sort of nervous collapse.

A box was placed at the rear of the church to receive our messages. Adults sent him cards and letters; children sent him their thoughtful artwork, expressing affection and wishes for his return. Some of us received responses, many bearing a Washington, D.C., postmark. Father

Provost said nothing about where he was or what had happened.

Early last summer, our sexton gave me a supermarket bag, saying that it was from Father Provost, and that, after a seven-month absence, the priest was back in the are~ Inside the bag were two street-hockey-championship shirts for my sons, a few packets of greeting cards (Father Provost was famous throughout the diocese for sending cards), and a four-volume set of "Liturgy of the Hours," the Breviary. The volumes, bound in plastic covers, were m extraordinarily good condition; in fact, three of them were still in the manufacturer's protective cardboard sleeves. Just before Father Provost left, I had mentioned to him my desire to begin some sort of daily prayer. When I asked about the advisability of buying a Breviary, he said, "Oh, no, don't do that-I'll give you mine. I never use them." He laughed, and added, "I never learned how to use them in seminary." I found myself at once moved by his generosity and saddened that his own spiritual life had been so limited.

I learned from the sexton that Father Provost was staying with his brother, Kenneth Provost, in Worcester, and when I called to say thanks for the Breviary he sounded chipper and happy. He had been attending Mass in his home parish, St. Peter's, also in Worcester, and was telling people there that he was awaiting his next parish assignment. For the past seven months, he told me, he had been at the St Luke Institute, a psychiatric hospital in Suitland, Maryland, just outside Washington. 'Ten thousand dollars a month it costs," he said proudly. "A really good place."

He said nothing about why he had gone there, but he implied that the treatment had worked, and said that he was ready and eager to go back to work as a parish priest

It was a short conversation. I didn't ask Father Provost about his ordeal, but he volunteered a comment that seemed strange to me. '('don't know why they're after me," he said. "Just seven pictures of kids in their underwear." I had no idea what he was taking about

Later that week, a front-page story in the Worcester Telegram & Gazette gave me all too good an idea. The day before, a grand jury had indicted Father Provost on a charge of posing a child in a state of nudity. That story and two more, on subsequent days, told in some detail what had happened in January, when Father Provost so abruptly left.

On Saturday, January 11, 1992, Father Provost had taken a group of boys and girls, aged between six and sixteen, to swim at a public athletic facility in Gardner, a town about fifteen miles away. A man who had been lifting weights saw the priest taking pictures of one of the boys as he dressed in the locker room, and reported the incident to the lifeguard, and the lifeguard called the police. On Wednesday, January 15th, Detective Sergeant Richard Morrissey, of the Gardner Police Department, called the priest to investigate the complaint Father Provost voluntarily went to the Gardner police station, handed over his camera, which contained an undeveloped roll of film, and gave a statement That statement prompted Morrissey to have the film developed immediately. Morrissey accompanied the priest back to the rectory in Barre, where he lived alone. Father Provost led Morrissey to his second-floor bedroom and there he handed over more than a hundred pictures of nude and semi-nude boys, dating back to 1977. (Later, diocesan officials came to clean out Father Provost's room, after he was sent to St Luke, and they discovered a collection of child pornography magazines. They also found a collection of baseball cards, the most prized of which were attached to his kitchen wall and his refrigerator door.)

According to his affidavit, Father Provost told the police he had "taken pictures of kids in the nude, mooning," and added, "when I look at these pictures I have sexual tendencies. I have fantasies of having sex with the boys." He said he would often masturbate while looking at the pictures. "1 have had the problem of sexuality for about twenty years. I admit that I have a problem and intend on getting help with it," the affidavit said. Father Provost was ordained in 1970; if his confession was true, he had been involved with this kind of voyeurism for virtually all his priestly life.

The mother of the boy in the locker room pictures told the Worcester newspaper that her children belonged to a youth group that the priest had organized. "He was wonderful with the children," she said, noting that he had sent her son cards and gifts. The mother, who asked not to be named, went on to say that when the police identified her son in the pictures and came to her, the boy at first defended the priest, saying, "But, Mommy, he told me he was a priest, and it was O.K." She told the newspaper, "Father Ron spent about two years seducing my son."

On the Sunday following Father Provost's indictment, the St. Augustine's parishioners again gathered in the hall after Mass. This time, we found it impossible to look at his pictures of our children in the same way. Had these pictures been a cover for his other interest? Yet, strangely, we defended him in our conversations with one another. We listed his faults and shortcomings, but few spoke disparagingly of him. In fact, many people wanted to present their stories of how good or kind or considerate he had been. One woman told of her bout with cancer when she was pregnant, and how Father Provost said a Mass at the very hour her operation was scheduled. A young couple related how the priest had eased their transition back to church after many years of absence. I volunteered my Breviary story. Father Provost had visited the sick, buried the dead, married a few young couples, heard an occasional confession, and started his homily each Sunday, regardless of the weather, with "Thank God for this beautiful day that we can be together." His Masses were crisp and never went over forty minutes; his sermons were usually bland and sometimes incoherent, but were never assaultive. He always spoke without benefit of notes. The reviews from the pews were forgiving, by and large: he was a great advocate of the Blessed Virgin; he supported the Church's ban on artificial birth control methods and abortion, but spoke of such controversial topics with a certain understanding of human limitations. Now there was a palpable sadness in the hall, and no anger. A few pictures: what harm had been done?

After all, he was not Father James Porter, the priest who several months earlier had been accused of abusing dozens of children over many years in the various parishes he served in Massachusetts, Minnesota, and New Mexico. And Father Provost's alleged offense was nothing compared with the behavior of Father Joseph Fredette, a priest who had served in Worcester and was accused of

preying on three of the delinquent boys entrusted to his care in a group home. Father Provost was our pastor. Now, with the indictment, he had joined the ever-growing legion of priest -- by that time they numbered over four hundred -- who had been accused in the last decade of sexual misconduct with children and teen-agers.

I MET Father Provost for lunch a week after the indictment was handed up; it was the first time I had seen him in eight months. When he greeted me on the street outside Al & Harry's Restaurant, on Main Street in Worcester, I could see that he had gained some weight, but that otherwise his looks hadn't changed. He has a full head of gray hair, short on the sides, with a small wave in front. His face is smooth and young looking. His front teeth are usually in evidence -- he has a vague ever present smile, which seems to indicate little of his mood. That day, he was wearing a sports shirt and dark trousers; it was the first time I had ever seen him in anything other than clerical garb. He felt tired all the time now, he told me, and would be happy when "all this is over." He was sleeping a lot, watching some sports and news on television, and going for a daily walk He couldn't concentrate on reading. He had read a bit in the first weeks at St Luke, but then had lost the urge. The days dragged on, with nothing to fill them.

Trying to understand something of his early life and the roots of his vocation, I asked about his family and childhood. "Oh, it was wonderful," he said. I asked about his seminary training. "It was excellent." He said nothing about why he became a priest-what or who had inspired him. When I asked about his life as a parish priest, his face darkened and the smile left. He told me that, while he loved parish work, seven of the eight pastors he served under had been mean." He said, "They never gave me anything to do."
As for his work in our parish, he said that it had exhausted him. I expected to hear of endless rounds of sick calls, the time needed for preparing sermons, the demands of readying young couples for marriage, and too many meetings, but Father Provost mentioned none of these. "If this hadn't happened, I would have had a nervous breakdown," he said. "I was up until eleven o'clock so many nights. Four hundred bulletins do you know how long it takes to turn them out each week?

"What about your prayer life, Father?" I asked "How was that going?"

He looked at me quizzically, and hesitated. "Oh," he said, and paused again, then added, "Outside of saying the Mass, I really didn't have any."

He talked at length about the spirit of community he had found among the other patients at St. Luke, which specializes in the treatment of pedophile priests. Father Provost said he was now required to be a member of the Worcester chapter of Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, and confided that he had been quite shocked by some of the stories he heard, most notably the story of a gay man who had sex with as many as fifty partners in a week. The look on Father Provost's face was that of a young boy who was amazed that a grown person could do such a thing. Nonetheless, in these lonely days the group provided him with a sense of belonging to something, he said.

He was optimistic about his chances of being acquitted, and was sure that the lawyer the Church had hired for him, James Reardon, who had handled other cases of alleged sexual abuse by Worcester priests, was first-rate. Again and again, he said that he would be happy when "this is all over.
And after that? Father Provost looked down into his plate. He said he knew that his days as a parish priest were finished.

When I went to see Father Provost's own pastor, Bishop Timothy Harrington, of Worcester, I was somewhat surprised to find that he had gathered his counsellors about him:

Auxiliary Bishop George Rueger and Monsignor Edmond Tinsley, the diocesan director of fiscal affairs. We talked at the Bishop's residence, a handsome, spacious Tudor home on Worcester's west side. Bishop Harrington, who is seventy-four, had welcomed me into his living room dressed in a brightly striped

knit shirt, but he had the look of a beleaguered man. He told me that he had recently recovered from a heart ailment; that a church he was trying to combine with another nearby in Worcester had been occupied for months by angry parishioners; and that vocations were at a trickle. In the presence of his counsellors, who spoke very little, Bishop Harrington ruminated about a Church that, sadly, no longer existed -- a Church whose primary concerns once were parishes that didn't pay their apportionments or deciding what to do with an alcoholic priest. "What happened?" he said, shaking his head. "What happened? I just don't understand."

When we finally turned to Father Provost's situation, it was obvious that the three clergymen had been concerned that more might be disclosed about the priest's private sexual life. Would more charges be forthcoming? Had Father Provost been more than a voyeur? Had his looking ever developed into physical molestation?

When I asked Bishop Harrington directly, he said unequivocally that he had had no idea of Father Provost's problem. He had received no complaints from parents, nor had any adults come forward to say that Father Provost had taken similar liberties with them when they were young. The Bishop had learned about the problem the day after the police confronted the priest, and plans were immediately set in motion to send Father Provost to St. Luke. If anything, Bishop Harrington was surprised when the priest was indicted; after seven months with no action, he had concluded that there was insufficient evidence. He had hoped -- prayed -- that the incident would pass.

*The Catholic Free Press*, the Worcester diocesan weekly newspaper, keeps a file of clippings on every priest. Before Father Provost's current dilemma was added to the clipping file, he appeared to have had a quite successful twenty years in the priesthood. While still a seminarian, he had been a respected chaplain at the Treasure Valley Boy Scout Reservation, in Paxton, where, according to a 1968 article, "the kids responded to Ronnie," a camp staff member said, and youngsters "yelled and screamed" at his every appearance. With thirty-three thousand dollars in federal funds, Father Provost had built a street-hockey rink in Fitchburg, north of Worcester. His teams were the national champions in 1980 and 1982. He was so beloved in a parish in Winchendon, on the northern edge of the diocese, that when word came from the diocese of his transfer to another church, after only a year there, fifteen hundred signatures were obtained in a protest drive, led by a teen-age boy. He bought and renovated antique fire engines and gave children rides. He took children on camping trips to the White Mountains or to Whalom Park, a nearby amusement park. And there was his philosophy of the priesthood, spelled out in a newspaper article: "Fire and brimstone is not the way today to keep the young close to God. In a society rife with alienation, the love and protection available from God and from doing good is the answer." Also included in his folder was a card listing the barest information about his family, his education, and his parish assignments. He had served ten parishes in twenty"' years. I was later told by one Church official that during that period no other parish priest in the Worcester diocese had been transferred more often.

Ronald Provost grew up in a second floor apartment in a triple-decker in the working-class section of Worcester. Father James Hoey, who had been in the Boy Scouts with him from the time they attended St. Peter's grade school (he had also been the Provosts' paper boy), remembers a smiling mother, Laura Provost, but has no memory at all of Provost's father, John, who was a factory worker at American Steel & Wire. "I try to remember his father, and all I remember is a guy standing back from the door, in the shadows," Father Hoey told me last fall. There was a brother, Ken, three years younger, and two sisters. Father Hoey, now a pastor in Leominster, outside Worcester, and others who knew Provost as a young boy

recall him as obsessed with Scouting, in love with outdoor activities and camping. But he was never to be found at such mixed-company events as the frequent dances held at St. Peter's, which was the social, educational, and religious center of their young lives.

After high school, Provost worked for six years as a shipping clerk and counterman at an electrical-supply company. Then, in 1962, he was accepted into Holy Apostles Seminary, in Cromwell, Connecticut. His was considered a "late vocation"- something rare at that time, for most boys then went directly from high school to seminary. Father Peter Inzerillo, who was accepted as a seminarian the same year as Provost and later became a classmate of his at St. Bonaventure College, near Olean, New York, recalls, "There were no tests, mental or psychological, in those days. You just showed up at the cathedral on the designated Sunday and sat down with a priest. He asked you a few questions about why you wanted to become a priest and then opened his Breviary and asked you to read the Latin and translate it. There were really no questions about your family, and I'm sure the word 'sex' was not mentioned. All the better if you had never dated or had a serious relationship. You had shown yourself to be serious about preserving your vocation. What the standards were we didn't know. You were notified, and you went off to study."

Of his and Provost's seminary years together Father Inzerillo remembers "an agreeable, smiling guy who never said much in class," and says, "He didn't ~ seem to be the best student. I guess he had problems keeping up with his studies. But he was very sincere. When we'd do our laundry, or something like that we'd ask him to go for pizza with us. but he never seemed to want to do that. Looking back, I guess he was kind of a hit-and-run kind of guy you never got below the surface with him. But, given the opportunity to go out and do a project with some kids, he'd be eager."

Father Hoey says, "Seminary training at the time really didn't help you grow up, or face anything in the real world. It was considered more a place to shield you, to preserve your vocation in the midst of an evil, secular world."
A person with access to Provost's personnel file says that if Provost's record at both seminaries revealed anything about the man or his future, it was concern about his immaturity. But seminary was a time to learn the intricacies of Catholic dogma and ritual, and a young man like Ronald Provost - so the thinking went in those days would surely grow up in the priesthood. After all, he did not act out; he did not disobey rules.

In March, 1968, when Ronald Provost was in his second year at St. Bonaventure, a small item appeared at the bottom of an inside page of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. Kenneth, Ronald's brother, who was then twenty seven and was working in a factory, had been arrested on a "morals offense"-- a newspaper euphemism that often indicated either indecent exposure or the indecent assault and battery of a minor. Such items were routinely accorded scant coverage, and there is no indication that the seminary or the Worcester chancery was aware that the accused was related to the seminarian Ronald Provost, who was so passionately interested in youth activities.

After his ordination, in 1970, Father Provost's first few parish assignments brought him under the authority of a series of pastors who were known to be quite demanding. This was a period of clerical hazing, a rite of passage for young priests, their boot camp. They were expected to develop a social life outside the rectory with priest friends of their own age to see them through these rocky days. But with these pastors a pattern was formed in Father Provost's life which would not be broken. "He was the kind of priest who drove the old-style pastors nuts. George Lange, who served with Provost at St. Mary's in Southbridge, on the outskirts of Worcester. "He was always out of the rectory, doing kids' things, stickball, Scouts, trips-and kids were calling day and night for Father Ron. We had some antiques in the attic at St. Mary's, and he was selling them to get money for stickball. Our pastor, Monsignor James Gifrain, went through the roof All these activities with the kids would have gone down easier if he had done his parish stuff; too. But he didn't. He was getting a reputation in the diocese as a guy who didn't do his share." Bob Feen, who served with Father Provost at a parish in Fitchburg (and has since left the priesthood), says, "He had his own agenda, and it never involved Catholic Youth Organization stuff or the classic Catholic activities; his work was largely outside the church. He was busy all the time. I remember him one night mailing out a hundred and twenty-seven cards to Scouts from the previous summer's camp and complaining that he had a hundred and thirty-six more to do. He always seemed at odds with authority, but with kids he was comfortable, relaxed -- that is, until they reached about fifteen. Then he wouldn't have anything to do with them."

A priest who served in one of Father Provost's early parishes remembers feeling discomfort as he watched Father Provost standing behind one of the parish boys and massaging the boy's head. "When it happened the first time, I didn't think much of it. But then it happened over and over again. I felt squeamish. But what was I going to say? It was so embarrassing that you almost didn't want to look, and yet you didn't know what to say, so you avoided the guy. A thing like that distances priests from one another."

The quick transfers from his early parishes seem not to have been prompted by any reported impropriety but instead by the pastors' reactions to him: they apparently found the young priest distant and difficult to live with, so obsessed with youth activities that his other work suffered. And yet Father Provost's personnel file shows nothing of the kind. No calls from irate pastors were recorded. Letter after letter attesting to Father Provost's excellent work with young people accumulated. Anyone going through his file would conclude that he was a model priest.

By 1979, when Father Provost reached Our Lady of Mount Carmel St. Ann, in Worcester, he had been a priest for nine years. Here, pornographic pictures of young boys were inadvertently discovered in Father Provost's room. This incident was supposedly reported to the diocese, but no mention of it can be found in Father Provost's personnel file. At this time, Father Provost began visits to the House of Affirmation, in Whitinsville, a small town outside Worcester. The House of Affir-

-mation, a treatment and therapy center, was co-founded in 1973 by Father Thomas Kane. (It was closed in 1989, after thousands of dollars in operating funds were found to be missing, and Father Kane has recently been named In a civil suit charging that he molested a nine-year-old boy, Mark Barry. Barry, now thirty-four, also charges that Kane not only had sex with him at the House of Affirmation but arranged for him to have sex with another priest and a therapist there.) The House of Affirmation was staffed by both clerical and secular therapists and counsellors, and offered both in-patient and out-patient treatment to priests, nuns, and religious brothers who were having problems, which might range from crises of faith about their vocation to drug and alcohol abuse and child molestation. The House of Affirmation promised its clients confidentiality. The reason for Father Provost's treatment, its duration, and its result are not part of his personnel record.
At the time, pedophilia among priests - while rarely revealed to the

public and never openly discussed by Church official -- was actually a well known phenomenon in many clerical circles. But it was looked upon as a matter not of pathology but of immortality -- a failing, but one not nearly on a par with sexual involvement with women. The priest-pedophile was asked to repent his sin -- perhaps to make a retreat, or to seek help at a place like the House of Affirmation --`and then was reassigned to a tough pastor, who could keep him in line. No thought was given to any extended treatment. As for the young victims, they were viewed almost as Inanimate objects or else were looked upon as sources of temptation for a consecrated servant of God. "They're kids, they don't know anything about sex, they~ forget about it," an archbishop told me, sadly recalling the attitude prevalent at the time.

In the Worcester of twenty years ago, I have been told, if a priest had any sexual problems or was involved in a compromising incident-even if it involved an arrest-the diocese could prevail upon the local papers not to write about it and upon the district attorney's office not to prosecute. To reveal a priest's shortcomings was akin to blasphemy in the eyes of diocesan officials, and they were ever vigilant against such disclosures. Clerical omerta (silence) was a given. One Worcester priest recalls an altar boy's coming to him: "The kid was shaking. This was very hard for him to do -- to tell on Father. He said one of the other priests had taken out a comb and was simulating combing his pubic hairs. The kid knew that it was wrong but the thing was, it wasn't that wrong. The boy was wise enough not to let it go by. Of course, now we know that that is a prelude to a further seduction of the kid. Anyhow, I went in to the bishop and told him. He turned it right back on me. Was I having difficulty getting along with this priest? What was the state of my soul that I could cast such a judgment? Dismissal is the most effective tool for silencing someone. It worked -- I never said another word about this guy. He was later arrested for molesting a boy."

Father Provost moved on, creating a legend for himself -- not only with all his youth activities but by the cards he sent out, to all the Worcester priests on their birthdays and to all his young parish-

ioners on theirs. Even children in his former parishes heard from him on their birthdays. He never failed to attend clergy retreats, and eagerly engaged priests in conversation at the social hour. '(it was obvious that he wanted companionship, but it was hard to sustain a conversation with him," Father Lange says. "It was always about street hockey or baseball cards."

Another story about Father Provost that became widely known in the diocese was his annual observance of his grandmother's birthday. He never mentioned his parents, both of whom died not long after his ordination, but each year, according to one priest I talked to, he would have a Mass and a rectory birthday party for his grandmother, cake and all. This wouldn't have been unusual-many priests relish their strong family ties, especially because they lead such an itinerant life -- except that his grandmother, too, had been dead for years.

When, in 1983, Father Provost was assigned the post of chaplain at Saint Vincent Hospital, a large Catholic facility in Worcester, any priest knowledgeable about diocesan transfers would have suspected that something was wrong. "His whole life was street hockey, and all of a sudden he's at the hospital -- you wonder what's up," says Father Robert Keresey, the pastor of Christ the King Church in Worcester, who had once been the diocese's vocations director. Father Jack Gallagher, a member of the Order of St Camilius, whose mission is to work with the sick, says, "The drunks, the misfits -- if you couldn't find anyplace else for them, they were too often made chaplains; in those days, we got a lot of them. But Ronnie was amazing. He'd run off copies of these soppy Helen Steiner Rice poems and start on the top floor and work his way down, handing them out He'd cover all six hundred and twenty beds in a day, and some days do half of them again. It was his idea of visiting people. We worked four days off and four days on at Saint Vincent. In his four days off; he was still running the street hockey. I remember one day he had given a woman a ride to the hospital and she arrived to find that her husband had died. 'Jack, I can't believe it,' he told me afterward. 'She cried and cried and wouldn't stop.' I told him Ispent an hour, maybe an hour and a half with a person after a loved one died. He was amazed. What do you say, Jack?' he asked me. Then, there was the time in the emergency room. This Italian woman was dying. Ron walked in, pulled out his book, and, without saying a word to the woman, or to her daughters, standing at the bedside, began reading the anointing prayers. The daughters came up on either side of him and put their arms through his, just trying to make some contact at this very special moment. I could see the prayer book begin shaking in his hands. 'Get these women off me!' he yelled. I wondered, What the hell is wrong with this guy?"

Father Keresey says, "There is a theory of ongoing transformation and growth for priests, where you can correct your shortcomings, where you can learn to do better. But it's a joke. Unless you do it on your own, it doesn't happen. There is no structure to encourage you, or to bolster you. Listen, these are tough days to be a priest. Most of the time we feel pretty much alone out here." Informal support groups and prayer groups for priests did form in the Worcester diocese in the late seventies and early eighties. Some priests remembered seeing Father Provost at one or two meetings, but after that he drifted away.

Other dioceses began to institute procedures by which parishioners could periodically offer an evaluation of their priests, and clergy were called upon for their assessments of fellow-priests, but, according to several priests, Bishop

Harrington steadfastly sided with his presbyterial council, which opposed such evaluations. "When the people had a lousy priest, they had no place to go, a Worcester priest said. "And when we saw stuff we didn't like, what the hell could we do? Go in and have it turned back on us?" Whenever an accusation or a rumor arose about sexual misconduct with children, the diocesan procedure was to insist that the accuser face the accused -- that the child be forced to confront the priest. The well-being of parishioners was categorically set aside in favor of a strictly legalistic approach that presumed a priest's innocence and doubted the child's veracity.

IN 1988, Father Provost, with eighteen years' seniority, was in the zone for becoming a pastor. He had previously been passed over, and most of his 1970 classmates had been given their own churches. Once again, his file was presented for consideration to the diocesan personnel board. Though he had been moved frequently, his record contained no formal complaints, no allegations of impropriety. As the board attempted to balance the ever smaller number of priests with the ever larger number of Catholics needing pastors, the bottom line was not "Why?" but "Why not?"
The board members were confronted with a man who had clearly demonstrated problems with interpersonal relations, who had difficulties getting along with his pastors and fellow-priests, and yet was comfortable in the company of young boys - never girls or older teenagers or adults.

"There were what we called 'ghosts' all around Ronnie - rumors - but we had nothing specific on him," one priest told me. "At a time like that, priests ask themselves, 'Am I going to cast the first stone?' We didn't want to turn into a police state, running down everything we heard about him."

And the "ghosts" were many. It was on young boys that Father Provost was now focussing his attention exclusively - and, many who knew him felt, inappropriately. There were rarely any other adult leaders on his outings. And he had taken trips to Disney World with only two or three boys.

Father Inzerillo offers a view of seminary days that seems to pertain to ordained life as well: "Unless it's broken, we don't fix it. When it's cracked, we just patch it up instead of taking it out of service." And Father Keresey says, "I don't want to cast any judgment upon Father Provost, but in any other business he would have been fired long ago.

Moving a priest from parish to parish is known to undermine both his sense of place and his confidence. Giving Father Provost a parish of his own was seen as a way of restoring both to him. "He'll be the boss out there; that should improve his confidence," one diocesan official said as the decision was made to.give Father Provost a parish. 'Maybe he'll grow up out there," another member of the personnel board added of this now fifty year-old priest. Indicating its reservations about Father Provost, the personnel board appointed him administrator, rather than pastor, of his new church. This is a step taken in approximately twenty per cent of pastoral appointments, and is meant to make sure that the priest is up to the job and will mesh with the congregation. Canon law prohibits a pastor from being removed without cause -- due process must be observed -- so bishops are wary of putting a pastor's mantle upon shoulders they are not sure can bear the weight. "I just hope he doesn't turn it into an amusement park out there," one board member commented. "But let's give him a year and see how he does. He can't do too much harm."

Bishop Harrington -- the member of the personnel board who had the greatest reservations about Father Provost -- was finally won over by his colleagues.

Many people, both inside and outside the Catholic Church, wonder about the role that the vow of celibacy plays in encouraging, at least, sheltering pedophile priests. Discussion on this subject is emotionally charged and frequently lacks sound evidence, but it is possible to approach the question clinically. Dr. Frank Valcour, the medical director of the St. Luke Institute, who has treated hundreds of

priests with pedophiliac tendencies, told me, 'The sexually underdeveloped person may be drawn to a profession where celibacy is a given. The priesthood can be a safe place for such persons, where they will not be called upon to develop sexually where, in fact, they may even be rewarded for not developing a sexual identity." In some cases, priests may rationalize that becoming heterosexually involved is a direct violation of their vow of celibacy and a threat to their priesthood, while sexual acts with a child, though wrong, are forgivable and are somehow not as great a sin.

Dr. Fred Berlin, the head of a team at the Johns Hopkins Hospital which treats sexual disorders, believes that living under the mandate of celibacy may actually prevent a pedophile from expressing his sexuality in a more normal manner, leaving him to act out with children. Vincent Bilotta, a Worcester-area psychologist who has treated priests with pedophilia and other problems, says, "Too many men with the best of intentions have been ordained and then sent off to slaughter. Many have come through seminaries that were repressive and sexually dysfunctional; they find that the ongoing formation they were promised is nonexistent; they live an itinerant life, going from parish to parish, living with men with whom they may have nothing in common. They live with extraordinary stress, and, as is true of anyone in stress, their bodies ache to be relieved. And here are these young kids, who look up to the priest with great esteem and admiration, who offer direct access to emotional contact. It makes perfect sense and is a tragedy-that a priest would turn to children." These days, priests who have been accused of child abuse - and those rare priests who come forward and admit their problem - are treated primarily at two institutions: the Servants of the Paraclete, in Jemez Springs, New Mexico (which allows priests in treatment to serve local parishes; several priests who stayed there are now accused or under indictment in New Mexico on pedophilia charges), and the St. Luke Institute, where Father Provost was sent. At St. Luke, priests receive individual and group therapy, and participate in psychodramas in which they re-enact both their acts of molestation and the traumatic moments of their formative years which might have caused their pedophilia. "These are articulate men, used to talking their way around things, and that must stop if they are to be helped," says Dr. Valcour. "They have to admit what they did. They also have to identify with their victims, to see the harm they have caused. Morality is often a defense: 'I went to confession about this.' That's not good enough."

The impact of priest pedophilia, both on the individuals affected and on the institution of the Church, has been devastating. All cases of sexual abuse of children by adults involve the misuse of authority, of course, but in the case of priests the authority misused is exceptionally powerful. One priest who had a young boy routinely perform oral sex on him would give him absolution from the sin while the boy was still on his knees. Another priest told a boy while fondling him that what he did was "an expression of God's love" and that "God is blessing this act." A third priest told his young victims, "I am God's instrument and God wants you to have pleasure right now, in this way." A woman has charged that as a girl she told Father James Porter in the confessional that a boy had touched her immodestly; Porter is alleged to have insisted on a demonstration and to have taken the girl into his section of the confessional and fondled her. Priests have admitted to scanning the congregation for child sex objects while saying Mass and ejaculating while at the altar. "Sex clubs" at which young boys were passed from priest to priest have been discovered in New York State and in Canada; others are rumored to have existed in South Bend and other cities.
There are thousands upon thousands

of boys and girls, scarred men and women, whose bodies have been invaded and whose self-worth has been destroyed by perhaps the most revered and trusted adult in their young lives. (An active pedophile may have dozens of victims and may abuse some of them continually over an extended period.) Sexually abused children are often fearful and uncommunicative; a few commit suicide. Adults who were sexually abused as children have higher than average rates of substance abuse, divorce, and mental illness. Some of them molest children in turn.

A recent study by Stephen Rossetti, a priest and psychologist who is now on the staff at St. Luke, shows that revelations of priests having abused children are a major factor in the recent steep decline in American Catholics' confidence in their Church. Catholics trust their priests less, and are less inclined to want their sons to be altar boys or priests. An overwhelming majority believe that the Church has not been honest with them about priests' sexual abuse of children, and has not dealt with the problem forthrightly. "Pedophilia is the lightning rod for disaffected Catholics who find their Church unresponsive or their priests inadequate," Father Rossetti told me. "When people read of abuse by a priest, it is seen as the abuse not of a single priest but of the entire Church."

Every bishop in America is pitifully aware of the existence of not only the convicted but also the accused and the suspected pedophiles among his priests. But the bishop faces a conundrum unlike any confronting an employer in the secular world. A priest is a priest forever; his bishop must provide him with work, or simply provide for him, forever. In addition, a public revelation of a priest who is only suspected, and not actually accused, of abusing children could open the diocese to a civil suit for defamation of character. And, because ordained priests are becoming something of an endangered species, any bishop is reluctant to remove a priest from the active ministry.

There are smaller, less publicized losses as well. Priests now almost routinely avoid talking privately with children, because of the charged atmosphere, or they keep office doors wide open if youngsters are with them. "A mother came to me and asked that I take her son under my wing, because the couple had separated and the father was giving the boy a hard time," Father Hoey told me. "Before all this, I would have had the kid come in on Saturdays and help around the church, and then I'd go out and have a hamburger with him, and let him talk Now? Impossible."

For Catholics of my generation, who came of age in the fifties, it was not uncommon to see a priest walking around the church grounds with girls and boys holding on to his hands or his cassock as he tousled a head of hair or pulled on a ponytail. No longer. Last fall, as I sat with Father Jack Siciliano, who now serves in St. Peter's, Father Provost's old parish, he looked out mournfully over Main Street at an area that over the years has become poorer and is now home largely to minority families. "Many of these kids need a male role model, and they need to be touched, they need to be hugged," he said. "I just can t do it anymore. If a child needs that physical affection, so does Father -- who has vowed never to be a real father. A priest's work with children and young people - the healthy, normal, productive sublimation of his generative drive must now be curtailed, self-censored. Ordinary, everyday touches and hugs, which were once a legitimate expression of his physicalness, are now denied him.

At nine o'clock on the morning of October 28th, Father Provost

appeared in court as his lawyer, James Reardon, filed a petition to dismiss the charges against him, contending insufficient evidence. With that vague smile on his face, Father Provost made his way through the courthouse crowd, his gaze fixed on some distant point on the ceiling. In less than ten minutes, his court appearance was over. November 18th was agreed upon as the date to hear arguments on the motion to dismiss.

A motion to dismiss is a customary legal tactic, a preemptive strike at the heart of the prosecution's case. Reardon, in a brief, argued that the evidence did not fall under the Commonwealth's applicable pornography statute. "The photographs which form the basis for the indictment do not display a minor in the state of nudity.... It is also important to note that none of the photographs demonstrate any frontal nudity on the part of the minor. Nor is the underwear which the minor is wearing translucent, or in any way less than opaque.

I flipped through the document to Exhibit A, a copy of the indictment. There, for anyone who cared to consult the public record, was the name of the ten-year-old boy whom Father Provost photographed that January day at the public pool in Gardner. Exhibits B through M were the photographs of the boy, arranged three to a page. The original color prints had been photocopied in black-and-white, so the collection had an added starkness. The pictures were now streaked with black lines, and virtually all contrast had been lost. There was the boy listed in the indictment, his expression denied any nuance, his features just blobs and lines, almost like the elements of a caricature. In the first picture, Exhibit B, he stands with his back to the camera, hands on hips, his face grinning in profile, his buttocks clearly exposed above cotton jockey briefs, which have been pulled down. Exhibit C presents a similar picture. In Exhibit D, the boy turns full face and grimaces. His briefs are now pulled up. His right middle finger pokes out over the edge of his underwear in a "Fuck you" gesture. The next three pictures depict the boy looking wistful and pensive, and still wearing only his briefs. In Exhibit H, the finger pokes up from his briefs. Exhibit I is another middle-finger shot; this time it is a blurry white mass, defiantly thrust into the air, shoulder high. In Exhibit J, the boy looks as though he were jogging. K is another middle-finger shot, this one in profile. In Exhibit L, the boy is making peace signs with two fingers of each hand. In the final picture, Exhibit M, he poses as a muscle

man, his scrawny arms and taut leg muscles rigidly flexed.

From the newspaper description of the photographs on which the charge against Father Provost was based -- and from his own unsolicited comment to me on the phone had assumed them to be a series of quickly snapped candid photo opportunities unobtrusively and casually exploited by a man who sought to add a new erotic jewel to the treasure chest in his rectory bedroom. But these twelve pictures were hardly that. There had been an interchange - spoken or unspoken - between photographer and subject. There had been encouragement to go on.

Questions flooded my mind. Where were the other boys? None were shown in the photographs. How had the priest managed to separate this boy from the others? And what had gone on between priest and boy to produce this many poses, to allow time for the flash to recycle, for underwear to be put on, yanked down, and then pulled back into place? The pity I once felt for Father Provost turned to something else. I have two boys of my own, seven and nine years old. They had trusted Father Provost-and I had trusted him with them. Had Father Provost not been confronted on that January evening, that face looking up at me through the photocopied photograph could have been a son of mine.
On November 18th, the motion to dismiss was argued by James Reardon's son Gavin before Judge James Donohue. Gavin Reardon's defense was a narrow and highly technical one, centering on the claim that the photographs the priest had taken of the young boy did not constitute a pornographic portrayal as the statute defines the term, because there was no frontal nudity depicted. Judge Donohue's frequent shifting in his leather chair and his pointed, impatient questions signaled the outcome. The motion was denied. The trial date was set for December 21st.

In the weeks before Father Provost's trial was to begin, the swirl of allegations of sexual abuse by priests continued as national news. In the Diocese of Worcester, they became almost epidemic. Father Justin Steponaitis, a former Worcester parish priest, and Father Victor Frobas, who had served a Worcester parish years before while receiving treatment at the House of Affirmation, were accused of molesting young boys; Fathers Joseph Fredette and David Holley were formally charged in multi-count indictments with sexually abusing many young boys. These allegations and charges prompted still more parishioners to come forward to tell of their own abuse as youngsters. (The priest who had told me earlier of the altar boy who complained about a priest's suggestively combing the outside of his trousers now identified the priest as Holley, whose inappropriate behavior he had tried to report years before.) Father Robert Kelley, of Gardner, fifteen miles north of Worcester, who received a five-to-seven-year prison sentence, in 1990, for repeatedly molesting and raping a girl, beginning when she was ten and continuing over the next two years, was now eligible for parole. Not only did his victim come out publicly to oppose any leniency but four more women came forward to claim that Kelley had also molested them when they were children. Yet another priest, Monsignor Leo Bartista, of Worcester, was accused by a nun, who had gone to him for counselling, of exploiting her sexually-she claimed that on one occasion he had sex with her just after she attempted suicide.

The diocese responded to this spate of cases by publishing chancery phone numbers that could be called to report suspected child abuse. Bishop Harrington proclaimed that no child abuser would be assigned to parish work, but that promise, while welcome, seemed hollow to many priests and lay people in Worcester. Obviously, no convicted child molester would be assigned to a parish, but what of other priests, who only had "ghosts"? The burden of proof was still on the victim. And, while the diocese promised an approach that was "personal and pastoral," no offers of counselling or therapy to alleged victims, including the boy Father Provost had photographed, were forthcoming.
All the stories of sexual molestation by priests were on the front pages of the Worcester Telegram & Gazette. But another case, also scheduled for December 21st in Worcester Superior Court, barely merited a mention on an in~de page. Kenneth Provost, Father Ronald's fifty-one-year-old brother, who in June had been convicted of indecent assault on a young boy and had

been sentenced to serve two and a half years in the Massachusetts Correctional Institute, had appealed the conviction and was scheduled to appear in court that day. The tragic coincidence did not end with the fact that both Provost brothers could theoretically be in court on the same day for morals offenses concerning children; Kenneth Provost had been arrested just six days after Father Provost's picture-taking at the Gardner pool in January, 1992. James Reardon, who naturally wanted to prevent his client from being tainted by his brother's case, was able to have Father Provost's court date rescheduled, for January 28th.

Kenneth Provost, free pending appeal, had accompanied his brother on his court appearances, but the priest whose picture had appeared numerous times in the local paper - was not on hand to sit with his brother on December 21st. After an unusually long conference with Joseph Brennan, Kenneth's

lawyer, and with Mary Gecewicz, the assistant district attorney who was prosecuting the priest's case (she handles a substantial share of the child abuse docket), Judge Timothy HIlIman emerged from his chambers to formally accept a plea bargain that had been struck His face was flushed; he appeared to be fuming.

What went into that plea bargain by which a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence became two years of probation-is indicative of what happens in numerous child-abuse cases. Kenneth Provost had been accused of four counts of rape and one of indecent assault of a boy under sixteen, and he was eventually convicted on the indecent-assault charge. (These assaults had occurred in Kenneth's house, where Father Provost later came to live after he returned from St. Luke and was awaiting trial.) In the process of Kenneth's appeal, the victim would have to retell the details of the assaults, which had taken place between July, 1988, and September, 1991, when the boy was between ten and thirteen years old. At the time of the appeal, the boy-who the prosecution maintained at the trial had suffered severe psychological damage from the abuse - had been in a psychiatric hospital for a year. Plagued by depression and having attempted suicide on more than one occasion, he was considered by the prosecution to be a shaky witness at best. Furthermore, his doctors said, his ongoing treatment could be jeopardized by an appearance in court, in which he would have to relive the attacks. Hence the plea bargain was struckFrom the bench, Judge Hiliman, whose disposition on the bench is typically that of a bemused and patient uncle, addressed Kenneth Provost in short, choppy sentences, his voice edged with a barely contained anger. The defendant was not to go near the victim, his family, or other young children; his probation would be strictly supervised; and, as a condition of probation, Judge Hillman demanded that he attend group-counselling sessions for convicted sex offenders who still deny their guilt.

In preparation for disposing of such a case, the court often orders for itself a standardized evaluation for aid in sentencing, known in courthouse shorthand as 15(e). This was done in Kenneth Provost's case. The evaluator noted that Kenneth was a defensive subject who claimed to have no sexual interests, was fearful of the many diseases he believed women carried, and said he confined his erotic life to masturbating over pictures of women. The 15(e) went on to paint a picture of Kenneth Provost as a man who unequivocally denied that he had abused the boy, maintained that he was actually helping the troubled youth, and claimed that if anything had happened it was inadvertent, an accident. Reference was made to his brother, Ronald, during the evaluation. Another family member had portrayed both Provost brothers as victims - they were being persecuted for doing good, for helping others.

A YEAR and two weeks after Father Provost took the pictures in the swimming-pool locker room, his trial was finally at hand. On January 28th, shortly before ten o'clock, Father Provost stood to answer a series of questions intended to insure that he understood, in waiving his right to be tried by a six-member jury, that he would be found guilty or not by one man his interlocutor of the moment, Judge Daniel Toomey. Father Provost's eyes were red-rimmed, and a tongue of hair that had escaped his combing projected from the back of his head. He answered in a quiet and even voice that he was taking medication -- Elavil, Prozac, and Depo-Provera (the first two drugs are anti-depressants, and the other is a sex-drive suppressant) -- and that they did not impair his ability to understand the proceedings. After hearing the opening arguments, Judge Toomey called the first witness. His name rang through the high-ceilinged courtroom. The tall, wide doors at the rear of the chamber swung open to reveal a small boy, blinking as he moved from the dim corridor into the brightly lit room. A television camera from the local cable station recorded his promise, as he raised his right hand, to tell the truth and then followed him to the witness stand. Dressed in dark trousers, a white shirt, and a dark tie, wearing his dark blond hair in a mushroom cut, the boy who had appeared in Exhibits B through M as an aggressive participant seemed in person more like a choirboy. He stood up straight, his hands behind his back, and began to answer the questions of the prosecutor, Mary Gecewicz.

His voice was so low that the judge leaned forward and James Reardon moved to the edge of the empty jury box to hear his answers. The St. Joseph's youth group had gone for a swim, the boy said, and after a while he wanted to change into his street clothes. Father Provost, who had a camera strung around his neck, with which he had taken a few pictures in the pool area, accompanied him to the locker room. The boy asked the priest to hold a towel so that he could dress in private. The priest at first held the towel, shielding him (although there was no one else nearby), but then folded the towel over his arm and raised the camera to eye level. He began to take pictures.

The boy testified that on seeing the camera he had "posed" for the priest and had "mooned." He said that the priest had not spoken to him while taking the pictures. After the man who was lifting weights happened to walk by and confronted the priest, the boy had dressed quickly. On his way out of the pool, he had said something to Father Provost. The boy testified, "I told him that he'd better throw away those pictures."

"And what did he respond to you, if anything?" Gecewicz asked the boy. "He said, 'Don't worry, I will.'"
James Reardon chose not to cross examine the boy.

In the afternoon, as the boy sat with his relatives in the courtroom, a string of other witnesses provided the necessary backdrop to the alleged crime. The boy's mother, dressed entirely in black, testified that she had taken her other son to a wrestling match, and had returned home late in the evening of January 11, 1992, before her younger son came back from the swimming pool. He had said nothing of the picture-taking. As she left the witness stand, fists clenched, the

woman stared fixedly at Father Provost, and as she passed by the defense table where he sat she rapped her knuckles angrily on the table in front of him.

The weight lifter, Leo Nass, testified that the string of picture-taking had seemed wrong to him, and that he had confronted Father Provost, who had angrily maintained that the boy was dressed.

Detective Sergeant Richard Morrissey, who had investigated the matter, told again how Father Provost had meekly and voluntarily brought the camera, containing the undeveloped film, to the police station, and had then gone with him back to the rectory. There he had led the detective to the mantel near his bed. On it was a large brown envelope containing a collection of photographs of young boys, in various states of dress and undress, which he had taken over the years. According to the detective, who had informed Father Provost of his rights, the priest '~said that he did have a problem, that he'd had it for about twenty years, and he said that ten years ago he wasn't this point, James Reardon rose quickly to object. Morrissey could possibly be ready to allude to or openly reveal Father Provost's therapy at the House of Affirmation, which he underwent after the pictures were found at the Mount Carmel

-- rectory. Such a revelation would show a pattern of child pornography-a pattern that no lawyer would want established.
The judge asked Gecewicz what she anticipated the response would be.
"I expect his response to be that Father Provost indicated

to Sergeant Morrissey that about ten years ago he was summoned to the bishop's office about his problem, and that he was sent away for treatment. No more specifics than that."