RYAN

A Burrillville mother of four who was raped by a Roman Catholic priest was offered $400,000 from the Diocese of Providence to settle her lawsuit but turned down the money because she wanted a trial –– a trial where diocesan leaders would be forced to divulge what they knew about pedophile priests in parishes and how they dealt with complaints about them.

But Mary Ryan isn’t going to get any trial. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected her bid to force the Rhode Island court system to give her one.

The refusal of the high court to hear arguments in her case — which was tossed out by a Rhode Island Superior Court judge in 2003 –– spells the end of a long legal battle Ryan has waged on her own, a battle that has cost her thousands of dollars as well as psychological trauma.

In denying Ryan’s petition asking it to review her case –– something that would include a full briefing and oral arguments before the nine justices — the high court offered no explanation. It simply said, “Petition denied.”

Ryan, 47, said she knew the chances were slim that the court would hear her appeal, which she and her husband of 25 years, Thomas Ryan, had filed on their own, without legal representation. In 2006 –– the latest year for which statistical records are available –– there were 8,857 cases that the court was asked to review. It chose to hear just 78 of those cases.

But Ryan fought to the end. She spent months preparing a 40-page petition asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear arguments in her case because she felt that the Rhode Island courts had erred in dismissing her lawsuit. She also alleged that her constitutional rights had been violated by the state court system.

In 1982, Ryan was raped in the bedroom of her Providence apartment by the now-deceased Monsignor Louis Ward Dunn, a priest whom she considered her surrogate father. He gave her away at her wedding and baptized her first child. Nonetheless, she decided to seek his prosecution and, in 1997, testified against Monsignor Dunn in a criminal trial. He was convicted of raping her. It was the first rape conviction of a priest in Rhode Island.

While she won justice in the criminal courts, her path through the civil-justice system has been less successful.

In 2002, Ryan was the only one of 38 victims who’d been abused by priests who would not participate in a $13.5-million settlement from the Diocese of Providence that was mediated through binding arbitration. When she balked because she wanted a trial, her lawyer decided he didn’t want to represent her anymore.

In 2003, Superior Court Judge Robert D. Krause dismissed Ryan’s lawsuit, saying she had waited too long to sue after being raped by Monsignor Dunn. This February, the Rhode Island Supreme Court rejected her appeal, agreeing with Krause. The court said Ryan and her husband had just 3 years to sue after the rape but had waited 13 years to do so.

For the past six years, Ryan has represented herself in trying to get a trial. She says she has spent more than $6,000 on transcripts alone.

In the papers she filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, she claimed that there was “no statute of limitations of a cover-up that continues to this day.”

Ryan said she gave up $400,000 because she wanted the opportunity to prove her allegations that local diocesan leaders had swept complaints against pedophile priests under the rug and had repeatedly transferred them from church to church, where they continued their sexual predation.

To date, the Diocese of Providence has produced files on 83 priests –– including Monsignor Dunn –– who have been accused over the years of sexual misconduct. Those records were produced after Ryan’s lawsuit was dismissed, as part of litigation brought by three men who say they were molested years ago by three different Rhode Island priests. But since those lawsuits against the diocese have settled pretrial, almost everything produced by the diocese remains under seal.

tbreton@projo.com