#USA #RI – In the final years of his life, the former director of St. Aloysius Home insisted that children who claimed they had been raped by priests and staff at the Catholic orphanage were lying.
“I’m telling you, how could it possibly be that they would say that, when I was there?” retired Rev. Robert McIntyre said in a 2018 interview, nearly 25 years after numerous sexual-abuse complaints forced the orphanage to close. “I mean, there’s nothing that happened there! There’s nothing!”
A new state law that took effect on July 1, 2026, however, gave alleged victims of childhood sexual abuse a two-year window to bring previously expired claims against institutions that allegedly allowed the abuse. More than 50 lawsuits were filed against the Roman Catholic Bishop of Providence in the weeks that followed. St. Aloysius was named in those lawsuits more frequently than any other diocesan property.
An earlier investigation by the Rhode Island attorney general’s office and State Police, which reviewed diocesan records of sexual-abuse complaints dating back to 1950, found that St. Aloysius had the third-highest number of victims of any diocesan location. McIntyre and the late Rev. Rene Guertin, who both served at the home for decades, were listed as having been credibly accused of sexually abusing more than a dozen children combined.
Six men who lived at St. Aloysius as children filed lawsuits alleging they were raped by priests and staff. Four of them directly accused McIntyre. The alleged abuse spanned from 1969 through 1989, when the victims were between the ages of 6 and 12. None of the men had previously been able to sue the diocese because of the statute of limitations.
The diocese had not filed a formal response to any of the new lawsuits by late July. Diocese spokesman Michael F. Kieloch said in a July 21 email that St. Aloysius had not operated for more than 30 years and that earlier litigation involving the facility had been well-publicized. He noted that claims from decades earlier raised difficulties related to lost evidence, unavailable witnesses, and faded memories.
St. Aloysius Home traced its roots to the 1860s, when the Sisters of Mercy cared for homeless girls in Providence. The diocese later built a large brick facility in Smithfield’s Greenville neighborhood. Guertin served there from 1946 to 1969; McIntyre arrived in 1971, became director in the mid-1970s, and remained until the home closed in 1994.
According to the attorney general’s March 2026 report, Guertin and McIntyre were alleged to have sexually abused or attempted to abuse 15 children at the facility. McIntyre was accused of abusing at least 11 boys between the ages of 8 and 16 from the late 1960s through the mid-1980s. Allegations against him also included possession of child pornography, forcing children to abuse one another, and involving other men in the abuse.
The first public complaints surfaced in 1992, when 16 boys reported abuse at the home. Three staff members and an optometrist were later indicted. State officials removed the children in late 1993, and the facility closed the following year. Earlier civil lawsuits against McIntyre, the diocese, and state agencies largely failed because of statute-of-limitations rulings and other legal barriers. The diocese placed both McIntyre and Guertin on its public list of credibly accused priests in 2019.
McIntyre left the priesthood, moved to Florida, and died in June 2020. State police had searched his home earlier that year after a complaint and found hundreds of images of young boys. Additional former residents came forward with allegations after his death.
Among the new lawsuits, one plaintiff said McIntyre first abused him when he was 6 years old. Another said he was 8 and that McIntyre used the boy’s desire to become an altar server against him. David Silipigni, one of the six men who sued, alleged that a priest raped him in the basement of the home when he was 8 in 1969. Silipigni, who agreed to be named publicly, was among the first to file under the new law on July 1.
The town of Smithfield later took ownership of the former orphanage property.
Image: St. Aloysius Orphanage in Smithfield, Rhode Island (now Mater Ecclesiae College).
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