PROVIDENCE (RI)
Boston Globe
By Charles A. Radin, Globe Staff | November 17, 2005
PROVIDENCE -- A Dominican priest was removed from public ministry here yesterday and moved to another city after a former altar boy he allegedly molested in Maryland four years ago filed suit against the priest, according to the Dominican order and the Archdiocese of Washington.
The priest, the Rev. Aaron Joseph Cote, had been transferred to a church in Providence in 2004 after Brandon Rains, who is now 18, accused Cote of molesting him when he was 14.
The family decided to go public and to file suit against Cote after learning about two months ago that church officials had allowed him to continue functioning as a priest and working with children, Rains's mother, Toni McMorrow, said yesterday. Cote functioned as youth minister and associate pastor at St. Pius V Parish in Providence.
''The important thing is that he is no longer at St. Pius," said the Rev. Raymond Daley, an official at regional Dominican headquarters in New York. ''He has been asked . . . to come to a different community of our province pending the outcome this whole thing. He will not function publicly as a priest until this is resolved."