Keith Townsend, a survivor of childhood sexual abuse by defrocked Boston Catholic priest Ronald Paquin, expressed hope that the clergyman’s recent death in prison will provide closure to victims and their families. Paquin died in custody on 11 September at age 83 while incarcerated in Maine. Townsend, now 52, said that despite the burden survivors carry, he hopes the death motivates people “to keep pressing forward every single day.”
Paquin’s crimes were central to the clergy sexual abuse scandal involving Boston’s Catholic archdiocese, which prompted the resignation of Archbishop Bernard Law at the end of 2002 and spurred policy reforms across the U.S. church. In 2002, Paquin pleaded guilty to sexually abusing an altar server between 1989 and 1992 at St John the Baptist church in Haverhill, Massachusetts. His crimes were initially exposed through Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporting by the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, which later became the subject of the Oscar-winning 2015 film.
After Paquin’s release from prison in 2015, Townsend came forward to report abuse he had suffered during camping trips to Maine between 1985 and 1989, when he was between ages eight and thirteen. A Maine grand jury indicted Paquin in 2017 on charges of gross sexual misconduct. Following a jury trial in November 2018, Paquin was found guilty of abusing Townsend and was sentenced in May 2019 to 16 additional years in prison by Judge Wayne Douglas.
Townsend reflected on overcoming substance abuse addiction that resulted from the trauma and emphasized his focus on protecting children. He credited Maine’s legal system with aggressively prosecuting the case, stating that his efforts to secure Paquin’s imprisonment were motivated by preventing others from suffering similar abuse. Attorney Mitchell Garabedian, who represented multiple victims of clergy abuse and was portrayed in the Spotlight film, noted that the movie provided survivors with awareness that they were not alone in their experiences.
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