As James began navigating his sophomore year at Georgetown University, one of his professors recommended him for a prestigious graduate scholarship.
School officials assigned Fr. Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J., an English professor, to the committee that helped James prepare his applications in Spring 2001. The priest quickly became a close mentor.
Over the course of their years-long relationship, however, James said Ribeiro sexually harassed him and exploited their power imbalance — ultimately attempting to kiss him after he graduated.
At the time, Ribeiro’s advances confused James, who now considers the behavior grooming. What he did not know was that another student had reported Ribeiro to the Jesuits for similar misconduct three years prior and the priest had just returned from leave when they met.
The new allegations against Ribeiro mark the first public report that a Jesuit priest engaged in sexual misconduct at Georgetown after being placed on leave following similar issues. His case, experts say, exemplifies a wider issue across Jesuit colleges where the Society of Jesus often does not share misconduct reports with university administrators — allowing offenders like Ribeiro to slip through the cracks.
“It’s a tough thing to think that this could have been prevented,” James told The Hoya. “It makes me mad. It makes me wonder how many other people there are out there like me who have not had the opportunity yet to come forward.”
Over the past seven months, The Hoya interviewed three survivors of Ribeiro’s misconduct, reviewed their emails with Georgetown administrators and Jesuits, spoke with nine experts on clerical sex abuse and grooming, and examined hundreds of archival records to document the extent of Ribeiro’s wrongdoing and the institutional systems that permitted it. Two survivors, including James, are referred to by pseudonyms for privacy.
The Hoya first published a different student’s allegations against Ribeiro in 2020. Now, The Hoya’s reporting confirms for the first time that Ribeiro allegedly harassed at least four Georgetown students before he resigned in 2010, three years before he died.
Colt Anderson, a Fordham University professor who studied Jesuit reporting structures, said Jesuits do not reliably relay misconduct reports to university administrators.
“Anything that gets reported goes into a black hole,” Anderson told The Hoya.
That is because, he said, Jesuits review misconduct reports internally and generally are not required to share allegations with the universities where their priests are stationed.
In response to The Hoya’s reporting, a university spokesperson disclosed that this April — 25 years after James first met Ribeiro — Georgetown and the local Jesuit province adopted formal protocols requiring that clerical misconduct allegations “be appropriately shared” with the university to ensure they are “addressed promptly and appropriately.”
This is the first time Georgetown has ever openly acknowledged the need for structural change. But still, the university never publicized the April change, nor told James and other survivors. The spokesperson did not specify how Georgetown implemented the new policy or ensures compliance.
Georgetown did not make administrators available for an interview despite repeated requests, but the spokesperson said university officials “condemn in the strongest possible terms any clergy abuse.”
“We are committed to ensuring that University policies are as strong as possible in supporting survivors,” the spokesperson wrote to The Hoya. “We will also continue our response to the clerical sex abuse crisis, hosting public convenings and conversations that build awareness and supporting research into the effects of clerical sexual abuse on survivors and how to improve screening and assessments of candidates for the seminary.”
Angela Walker (CAS ’87), who leads the national Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), said Ribeiro’s alleged misconduct is “not an isolated case” and similar reporting failures occur across U.S. Catholic colleges.
The local Jesuit province did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
The Hoya’s findings come seven years after over a dozen Georgetown-associated Jesuits were credibly accused of sexually abusing minors outside the university, and five years after Georgetown stripped honors from a former Jesuit provost who nonconsensually kissed and touched students on campus.
For survivors, Georgetown’s response to the clerical sex abuse crisis has been disrespectful and lackluster. James said universities’ integrity is measured by whether they go into “cover-up mode” or “reparations mode” after abuse comes to light.
“As much as we would want a world where there is no misconduct of any kind, there’s always going to be misconduct,” James said.
“When it happens, the question becomes: How does an institution react to it?” he added.
Ribeiro’s History of Misconduct
Almost a decade before James graduated, Steven Slawinski (CAS ’97) enrolled in Ribeiro’s Fall 1995 “Prize Novels” class. The 48-year-old priest sexually harassed him for the next two years, Slawinski said.
He often made sexual comments in Slawinski’s class, and invited students to dinner in Copley Hall, where he was a chaplain-in-residence. When Ribeiro then proposed sleepovers to Slawinski — who was a resident assistant in the upperclassman dorm Village C — Slawinski said he was unsettled.
“What I remember him saying all the time was, ‘If things are too crazy over at Village C, you can come over here and sleep over here, but be careful, because I sleep naked,’” Slawinski told The Hoya.
It was during a class movie screening that Ribeiro’s behavior reached a “turning point,” Slawinski said. Sitting in a dark library room, Slawinski felt the priest’s hand traveling up his leg and thigh.
“I was shocked,” he said. “I knew what it was, but I didn’t know what it was, and I just froze.”
Slawinski ultimately took three courses with Ribeiro and graduated in Spring 1997. The two kept in touch, and Slawinski later asked the priest if he should return to work at Georgetown. Ribeiro encouraged him not to, Slawinski recalled.
By then, Slawinski said, Ribeiro was “probably onto” John.
John, whose allegations The Hoya first reported in 2020, met Ribeiro as a sophomore in Fall 1997, when the priest was his professor and chaplain-in-residence. Like Slawinski, John said Ribeiro made inappropriate comments in class and in the dorm.
In December 1997, John said Ribeiro “whispered” in his ear and hugged him in a Copley common room.
“He’s like, ‘Hey, you got an A in my class,’ and he goes, ‘Not many people do. Can I get a hug?’” John told The Hoya.
The following spring, John recalled Ribeiro talking about phallic poetry while John did laundry. Days later, he offered John a Playboy magazine, alcohol, a suit, a sit-down dinner and a trip to a movie, all of which John declined.
A few weeks later, John said, Ribeiro followed John into the Yates Field House sauna, took off his own towel and shook his penis in front of him.
John reported Ribeiro to Rev. William Byron, S.J., the rector, or head, of the Georgetown Jesuit Community later that semester. Soon after, Ribeiro left campus and did not return until Spring 2000, according to university records.
In 2020, The Hoya independently confirmed that three family members and friends heard about John’s allegations during and after the misconduct.
Georgetown has never specified whether the Jesuits notified university administrators of John’s allegations — or any similar cases — in 1998. The former College of Arts & Sciences dean, Rev. Robert Lawton, S.J., and several English professors who worked with Ribeiro told The Hoya they did not know of any reports at the time.
Regardless of whether the Jesuits told Georgetown officials about Ribeiro’s misconduct, John said the school should have recognized the situation when Ribeiro was placed on leave and removed as a chaplain-in-residence.
“It’s their responsibility,” John said. “How would the school not know about it if he was kicked off the floor as a floor chaplain?”
James did not know about John or Slawinski when he met Ribeiro three years later.
The following spring, he was studying abroad at the University of Oxford when Ribeiro invited him to dinner. They met at Ribeiro’s hotel, where James said the priest wore only a towel.
“I was uncomfortable. I believe that I tried to remain in the hallway, but he invited me into his room and asked me to sit on the bed,” James wrote in a 2018 report to the Maryland Province, the local Jesuit district.
Back at Georgetown the next year, James visited Ribeiro’s off-campus residence several times, often for lunch and a Mass in the Jesuits’ private chapel. During at least one visit, Ribeiro told James he sunbathed nude on the deck, James later wrote in the report. He also said the priest occasionally kissed him on the cheek and hugged him for long periods of time.
Despite feeling uncomfortable, James did not realize the behavior was inappropriate until he became a professor years later — a telltale sign of grooming, according to experts.
“In retrospect, having spent 15 years as a college professor, I would never think about doing that,” James said. “But anyway, at the time, I just felt very singled out and special.”
When James visited the home of Ribeiro’s relative in rural England as a graduate student, the priest suggested James take his shirt off and stay the night. James remembers feeling scared; he stayed in a guest room and locked the door.
A few years later, Ribeiro invited James to a private lunch and Mass in Washington, D.C. The priest asked James to his room, grabbed him and tried to kiss him, James said. He pushed Ribeiro away.
“He became very emotional and told me that he himself was gay and did not know what to do about it,” James said. “He told me that he was depressed and sad. I believe that I told him that I was sorry to hear that. I sought to get out of the room and the residence as soon as possible.”
When James detailed Ribeiro’s behavior to the Jesuits in June 2018, the head of the Maryland Province wrote a letter acknowledging and apologizing “for the misconduct of the late Alvaro Ribeiro, S.J. against” him.
Ribeiro continued teaching until he resigned in Spring 2010. Ten years later, Georgetown acknowledged that Ribeiro’s resignation followed an Office of Institutional Diversity, Equity and Affirmative Action (IDEAA) investigation that found he engaged in “unwanted touching of students’ posteriors while clothed.”
According to the university spokesperson, Ribeiro did not live or work at Georgetown or any other university from that time until his death in 2013.
Steven, John and James’ accounts, alongside the separate incident investigated by IDEAA, suggest Ribeiro abused or harassed at least four Georgetown students. It remains unclear if Georgetown ever knew about Ribeiro’s misconduct before the IDEAA inquiry.
Split Systems
When John reported Ribeiro to Byron, the Georgetown rector, he assumed the Jesuits would inform university officials about his allegations. But experts say that likely never happened, and multiple Georgetown administrators who oversaw student life and conduct at the time have no recollection of any communication.
The Catholic Church and Jesuit universities have long used a bifurcated reporting structure that channels misconduct complaints made directly to a Jesuit through private, internal processes — often without notifying the associated school. According to researchers who study clerical sex abuse, this siloed system fails to protect vulnerable students from reoffending priests.
Anderson, the Fordham professor, said Catholic leaders’ emphasis on the church’s reputation makes Jesuits less willing to share misconduct reports with school officials and unable to effectively punish one another.
“They have difficulty balancing the rules governing community life with policies at the school,” Anderson said.
“At each step, all the information goes to one person, and that one person decides whether to move it up the chain, but if they move it up the chain, they probably never hear what the result is,” Anderson added.
Ribeiro’s case appears to fall into this pattern.
Penny Rue — Georgetown’s senior associate dean of students from 1995 to 1999, who sat on an internal sexual assault working group — said the Jesuits rarely sent misconduct reports to the university’s sexual assault services.
“I can’t see how it would, unless the one who was reported had an issue of conscience,” Rue told The Hoya.
John said when he met with Byron, the rector did not ask follow-up questions and the meeting lasted only 20 minutes. John never heard back from the Jesuits or Georgetown officials. Byron died in 2024, but when The Hoya contacted him for the 2020 story, he declined to comment, citing confidentiality agreements between rectors and Jesuits.
Bethany Marlowe, Georgetown’s associate dean of students from 1986 to 2001, said that while she regularly liaised with the Jesuits, they “handled their own things” and did not share information with her.
Neither Rue nor Marlowe, who both were familiar with Georgetown conduct cases at the time, remembered hearing about allegations against Ribeiro or any other priest. Marlowe could not recall a single instance during her tenure where a Jesuit relayed a complaint made against another Jesuit.
Walker, the SNAP director, said that when ministers at non-secular colleges face misconduct allegations, religious organizations “try to sweep them under the rug.”
“The priest is moved from one assignment to another,” Walker told The Hoya.
“When that happens, the likelihood that there will be more people victimized increases exponentially,” she added.
The Boston Globe first publicized how the Catholic Church systematically concealed sexual abuse allegations in 2002 — by relocating accused priests without notifying the public. Sixteen years later, after a Pennsylvania grand jury report named over 300 priests credibly accused of sexually abusing over 1,000 children, Catholic provinces across the country released similar lists.
That led The Hoya to report on the “Georgetown 14” — the Georgetown-affiliated Jesuits named in the Maryland Province’s list.
But the Jesuits’ subsequent response focused primarily on minor abuse — which experts and survivors say perpetuates misconduct against vulnerable adults like college students. Since Ribeiro allegedly harassed legal adults, the Maryland Province omitted him from its list.
Elizabeth Jeglic, a John Jay College of Criminal Justice professor who researches sexual grooming, said college students are “particularly vulnerable” to abuse, especially by religious figures, because they are still developing.
Before the list’s release, James raised these concerns with Mike Gabriele, the Maryland Province’s communications director. In emails reviewed by The Hoya, Gabriele reaffirmed that the province would only name priests accused of misconduct against minors, which James saw as “a reaffirmation of a tactic that has been used throughout this process to limit the scope of the church’s revelations.”
“Nothing magically changed on my 18th birthday to give me the capacity to resist the grooming from Ribeiro, and so it seems to me highly myopic of the Jesuits and other church authorities to draw this line,” James said.
Hollow Commitments
That split reporting system did not appear to change until this April, when Georgetown and the Society of Jesus implemented novel information-sharing requirements — over 30 years after Ribeiro began his alleged misconduct against Slawinski, and six years after The Hoya first established that the Jesuits knew about Ribeiro’s conduct as early as 1998.
The Georgetown spokesperson’s Oct. 14 statement was the first public admission of any such arrangement. It did not specify what the “formal protocols” entail or what compliance looks like.
When specifically asked earlier in October whether misconduct reports made to Jesuits are automatically shared with the university, a Georgetown official evaded the question and did not mention the April agreement, saying the school is prioritizing communication improvements — the same promise the university has made for years.
James, who only found out about the change from The Hoya, said that although the protocols are welcome news, he has no “basis for confidence” that they would have protected him from Ribeiro.
“Given that one of the failures of the Jesuits throughout this entire process was a failure of transparency, the fact that these protocols were developed and put in place without any communication to survivors that we know of is disheartening — but it also fits the pattern,” James said.
Over the past seven years, the university has publicized resources for survivors of clerical sex abuse, which the spokesperson pointed to as evidence of the university’s support systems.
In 2021, multiple graduates accused the late former Provost J. Donald Freeze, S.J., of sexual misconduct, and Georgetown stripped him of his title and honors. Former University President John J. DeGioia (CAS ’79, GRD ’95) also established a board of directors working group to “ensure transparency and information-sharing” with the Jesuits, and Georgetown created a page on its Title IX website dedicated to clerical abuse.
But five years later, the working group appears defunct, and the webpage contains the same language it did in 2021. The Title IX website still identifies the working group as “ongoing” university work to prevent clerical abuse, but it was never listed on the board of directors’ website, and all three directors originally appointed to the group no longer serve on the board.
The website contains no information about the April policy change, which came years after survivors of Ribeiro’s misconduct first raised concerns about how Georgetown handles Jesuit misconduct reports. They say the Jesuits and Georgetown must do more.
James met directly with high-ranking Georgetown officials to discuss Ribeiro in Fall 2019, after he filed a separate report with the Maryland Province in September 2018. The province offered to pay for some of his therapy bills, but rejected his other demands, including that the Jesuits provide a full timeline of reports they received about Ribeiro.
Georgetown officials later ignored James’ request to publicly name priests accused of misconduct against non-minors.
“It did not feel to me that the university had much energy or enthusiasm for making those points in any way that I could see,” James said.
In March 2020, when Slawinski contacted Georgetown’s Title IX office — becoming the third known person to report Ribeiro for sexual misconduct — administrators sent him a list of sexual misconduct support services. But they did not address his core concern: that what happened to him would be repeated.
Slawinski quit his position as a Georgetown admissions interviewer a few years later because he could no longer honestly tell prospective students that the university was safe.
“It got to the point where I couldn’t live with myself,” Slawinski said. “People were asking me who my favorite professor was and what my favorite class was, and I was either having to lie to them and tell them it wasn’t this priest, or I was having to live with what had happened in this class.”
“The university didn’t live up to its obligations to me,” he added.
In February 2023, Georgetown’s Title IX office hired Mike Riley, a Texas-based support coordinator for survivors of clerical abuse. When Slawinski reached back out that May, the office put him in contact with Riley — which showed to Slawinski that the university failed to make sexual-misconduct prevention an institutional priority.
“Today, it just seems like you contact Title IX, and they push you off to a therapist in Texas, and that’s their way of dealing with things,” Slawinski said.
In a statement to The Hoya, Riley said he lets survivors dictate sessions and acts as a “liaison” with Georgetown, coordinating meetings and communication with university officials — always with survivors’ “consent and at their direction.”
John, meanwhile, said no one ever reached out to him after he reported Ribeiro to the Georgetown rector.
“It was like it never happened,” John said.
Rosemary Kilkenny — Georgetown’s chief diversity officer and vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion — said abuse and harassment “run contrary to our values.”
“Our commitment to maintaining a safe university environment compels us to handle these cases with great care and compassion to support the survivors who report them,” Kilkenny wrote to The Hoya through the spokesperson.
Samantha Berner, the director of Title IX compliance, added that Georgetown reviews each report and takes “appropriate action in response through Georgetown’s established processes.”
Anderson, the Fordham professor, said that while better Title IX resources are a start, addressing the clerical sex abuse crisis requires a culture shift and “radical transparency.”
John Fortunato, another Fordham professor who researched university responses to the church’s sex abuse revelations, said schools must continually discuss the crisis because “it could potentially be ongoing, and therefore we need to be vigilant.”
Some Jesuit schools have dedicated websites and projects to grappling with the ethical complications of clerical sex abuse at their institutions. Georgetown, meanwhile, has only published reporting information on its Title IX site and hosted general academic conversations.
Through public announcements, Georgetown has recognized the misconduct of five priests it previously employed, and one other who held an honorary degree. Georgetown has only acknowledged its connections to nearly a dozen other abusive priests in statements to student media.
Allison Errico (CAS ’26) — a former member of the Sexual Assault Peer Educators (SAPE), Georgetown’s main educational resource on sexual misconduct — said the university never directed the group to cover clerical abuse in their trainings.
“I really do think that we missed the mark on thinking about preparing students for or talking about what happens if faculty or staff are harming or abusing students,” Errico told The Hoya.
Seven years after James first asked the university to publicize the names of all Georgetown Jesuits accused of misconduct, he does not believe anything has changed. But he still hopes the university can do better.
“Georgetown has the opportunity to be a moral leader in this space, and to say that part of its Jesuit history and heritage is very dark,” James said.
“Sunlight, as they say, is one of the best disinfectants,” he added.
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