Woman says priest abused her in Windham, Maine, 60 years ago, but was not invited to diocese settlement

Kimberly Watkins Stevens said that when she was 8 years old, she was sexually abused by a Catholic priest in Windham. The priest, the Rev. Lawrence Sabatino, is also the subject of reports from more than a dozen other adults, who said they were abused by him in the 1950s and 1960s. Those adults recently resolved their civil claims against the Roman Catholic Bishop of Portland through a settlement process. Stevens, now 68, was not part of that process, and her attorney says she was not invited to participate.

Her attorney, Mitchell Garabedian, said Friday that “there is unfortunately nothing unique to this claim from Ms. Stevens.” He said he brought her case to the Roman Catholic bishop of Portland in 2021, when the state changed its law to allow anyone to sue for child sexual abuse regardless of previous statutes of limitations. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court overturned that law last year after an appeal by the diocese. Under current law, Stevens cannot sue the diocese for child sexual abuse. Garabedian said the diocese has refused to engage with settlement requests for more than five years. A spokesperson for the Roman Catholic bishop of Portland declined to comment on Friday.

Stevens said she met Sabatino as a child through friends who were Catholic. Speaking outside the chancery in Portland on Friday morning, with Garabedian on the phone, she recalled that Sabatino would pick up children and bring them to St. Peter’s Parish. She said she waited while he finished Mass, after which he took the children to get a treat from a bakery. According to Stevens, Sabatino held on to the treats until he took the children to a property in Windham, where he played “hide and go seek” with her and the other children. She said that during these visits he sexually abused her. She said she was abused five times before Sabatino invited her to a sleepover, after which her parents told her she could no longer see him.

Garabedian, a Massachusetts attorney who specializes in sexual abuse cases, said the diocese should have known at the time that Sabatino had been accused several times of abusing children. According to previous reporting, a girl’s mother tried to report him to police in 1958. Sabatino was assigned to nine different parishes over more than 30 years before he died in 1990. He was later included on a list of 20 “credibly accused” clergy that the Office of the Maine Attorney General released in 2004, following an investigation into the diocese.

The diocese recently resolved more than 100 claims against the church involving allegations against several clergy members. Some of the claims were filed as lawsuits, while others were never made public. Many included claims that could no longer be brought after the high court’s 2025 decision. Attorneys for some of the plaintiffs said the diocese agreed to settle the older claims only if all of their clients with active claims also agreed to participate. At least one woman was required to agree that she would not sue a different religious order, the Brothers of the Sacred Heart, which employed a priest who pleaded guilty in 1988 to two counts of unlawful sexual contact with a 15-year-old girl. Attorneys involved in the settlements declined to say how much was paid, though one attorney described the amount as seven figures.

Stevens said she learned about the settlements from news coverage and wanted to share her story to draw attention to how the diocese has treated her case. She said she has sought help through counseling and has struggled through many low periods. She also said she was recently baptized and is a practicing Protestant, and she has found some comfort in her faith, an experience of being comforted in her own suffering (2 Corinthians 1:3-4).

“But I did go through a time where it was like, how can a priest do this to me?” she said. “And how can I believe in anything?”

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