Black Collar Crime: Catholic Priest Ronald Paquin Indicted on 31 Counts of Sexual Misconduct

The Black Collar Crime Series relies on public news stories and publicly available information for its content. If any incorrect information is found, please contact Bruce Gerencser. Nothing in this post should be construed as an accusation of guilt. Those accused of crimes are innocent until proven guilty.

Ronald Paquin, a former priest with the Boston Catholic diocese, was indicted last week on 31 counts of sexual misconduct.

Seacoast Online reports:

A York County Grand jury re-indicted a former Catholic priest from Boston on additional charges alleging he repeatedly sexually abused young boys in Kennebunkport in the late 1980′s.

Ronald Paquin, 75, was originally indicted on 29 counts of sexual misconduct last February stemming from an investigation by Kennebunkport police after one of the victims contacted them. He was re-indicted last week with two new charges, bringing the total now to 31.

Paquin has been held at the York County Jail since his arrest in February at a homeless shelter in Boston.

According to Kennebunkport Police Chief Craig Sanford, the two new charges filed last week stem from one of the victims remembering two more events during the course of the ongoing investigation.

The defrocked priest, formerly of the Boston archdiocese, served more than a decade in a Massachusetts prison for abusing an altar boy from 1989 to 1992 while serving as associate pastor of St. John the Baptist Church in Haverhill, Massachusetts. He was a central figure in the Boston archdiocese’s sex abuse scandal. He pleaded guilty to raping an altar boy in 2002 and was released in 2015.

….

Keith Townsend of Seabrook, New Hampshire, said in an interview with Seacoast Media Group in February that Paquin’s release from jail in 2015 prompted him to contact Kennebunkport police again, leading to the indictments. He first met Paquin when he arrived at St. John the Baptist Church, his family’s church, in 1981.

Townsend said he was molested by Paquin approximately between the ages of 8 and 13. He said Paquin used alcohol and drugs to control and sedate him during the period of abuse. He said he was one of about 10 other young boys abused together during trips to a camp in Kennebunkport, and that he personally knows the other victim tied to the new indictments.

….

cal coverage, including for medication. He then decided to go to the Kennebunkport Police Department, where he told an officer in a video interview about the abuse, but said he did not contact the department again until Paquin was freed in 2015.

“I was under the impression he was in jail for the rest of his life,” Townsend said. “When they released him, simple outrage. Nobody is safe as long as this guy’s on the street.”