WILLIAMS

Frank J. Williams, the former chief justice of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, approved the hiring of the teenage cousin of his 6-year-old godchild to work at the court as an administrative assistant for three summers before the girl went to college.

The teenager as paid $10.11 an hour to work at the Supreme Court during the summers after her sophomore, junior and senior years at Cranston High School West in 2006, 2007 and 2008, according to personnel records.

Craig Berke, spokesman for the Rhode Island Judiciary, said that Alyssa Giudici was part of a Supreme Court internship program that used to employ about 20 high school and college students each summer for clerical and filing duties. Interns were all classified as administrative assistants, he said, and made about $3,500 based on a 35-hour workweek.

It was “a word-of-mouth program,” he said, and everyone got paid the same amount. “Pretty much the slots were filled on a first-come, first-served basis.”

Students filled out an application, and then the chief justice would decide who would be hired, Berke said. The program is now defunct because of state budget cuts.

Williams’ spokesman, Michael W. Doyle, of RDW Group, a public relations firm, said that the former chief justice acknowledges recommending Giudici for the internship because she is “an exceptional young woman.”

She is now a 19-year-old student and soccer player at the Community College of Rhode Island.

“He stands by it,” Doyle said. “It was an appropriate recommendation.” He said that Williams called it “common practice” for chief justices to be involved in the hiring of summer interns. “He has also recommended many others whom he considered to be worthy candidates.”

Giudici is the niece of Williams’ former driver, Deputy Sheriff Pamela DosReis, and the second relative of DosReis whom Williams put on the state court payroll while he served as the state’s top judge. Williams also hired Patricia Calise, 68, of Johnston, who is the grandmother of his godchild and mother of his former driver as a part-time cleaning woman at the courthouse. Calise is still working, with health benefits, at the Licht Judicial Complex.

Giudici began working at the court when she was 16. According to records provided by Anthony Bucci, state personnel administrator, she was employed from June 18 through Aug. 11, 2006, again from June 24 to Aug. 15, 2007, and most recently from June 8 to Aug. 29, 2008. She graduated from Cranston West in 2008.

Berke said that the interns in the program worked in all state courts but that Giudici was always assigned to the Supreme Court, mostly in the court’s employee relations office. He said it was no secret among some court staff that she was DosReis’ niece.

When the intern program was downsized in 2008, Giudici was one of just three interns hired, Berke said. In 2006, there were 22 interns in the program and 23 in 2007. Berke said the program had existed since the mid-1970s. He added that it was “not uncommon” for the same students to be hired for multiple years.

Williams’ relationship with the DosReis family has been put under the spotlight in recent weeks because his former driver is embroiled in a divorce with her estranged husband, Frank J. DosReis, a longtime corrections officer. Frank DosReis testified in court that Williams’ constant presence at his family home in Johnston was largely the cause for the demise of his marriage.

Williams announced on Tuesday that he will no longer continue to hear cases on the Supreme Court as a retired justice because media accounts of the Family Court matter were causing “an unwarranted and unnecessary distraction for the court.”

Alyssa Giudici’s mother, Joanne Giudici, is the godmother to the DosReises’ daughter, who is at the center of a custody/visitation dispute that is part of the divorce proceedings. Williams is the girl’s godfather and is currently under a court order, issued by Chief Family Court Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah Jr., which bars him from having any contact with his goddaughter.

Berke said yesterday that the current chief justice, Paul A. Suttell, didn’t know that the Supreme Court internship program had existed.

tbreton@projo.com