PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) – An East Greenwich family has accused defense lawyer Joseph Bevilacqua Jr. of providing cocaine to their teenage daughter and having a sexual relationship with her.

Dr. Charles Calenda, his wife, Paula, and their daughter, Courtney, filed a complaint last year with the disciplinary board of the Rhode Island Supreme Court, a 12-member panel that reviews complaints against lawyers and recommends sanctions.

Courtney Calenda, now 19, said she wants Bevilacqua “to acknowledge what he did to me, have him take responsibility,” the complaint says. The family wants Bevilacqua permanently disbarred, according to a letter their lawyer wrote to the disciplinary board.

Bevilacqua, 56, was disbarred last month after pleading guilty to contempt and perjury for leaking an FBI surveillance video to TV reporter Jim Taricani, who later served four months under house arrest for refusing to identify Bevilacqua as the source of the tape.

Bevilacqua can be reinstated to the bar in five years. He denies the allegations by the Calendas, according to a letter sent to the family from chief disciplinary counsel David Curtin. A message left with his lawyer, Thomas Tarro III, wasn’t immediately returned.

The complaint, obtained by The Providence Journal, alleges that Bevilacqua began supplying Courtney Calenda with cocaine when she was 17, resulting in her addiction. It also says he betrayed her parents when they sought his help addressing her drug problem.

“He used his role as mentor’ to deceive us and to draw her into his secret world, a world she was unprepared to handle,” the complaint says.

The complaint alleges that the two used drugs and continued a sexual relationship in various hotels, and in his office, in the summer of 2003. Bevilacqua hired Courtney Calenda as an intern in July 2003, according to the complaint, and gave her cocaine in the office.

Charles Calenda said he confronted Bevilacqua on Nov. 30, 2004 and ordered him to keep away from his daughter. The couple filed their complaint against Bevilacqua on Dec. 31, 2004.

In a letter April to the Calenda’s lawyer, Curtin said that “in the absence of a toxicology report … we do not have a drug case.”

Curtin also wrote that Courtney Calenda was over the legal age of consent, which is 16, and that the rules of professional conduct do not specifically prohibit a lawyer from engaging sexual relations with a client.

Curtin said the disciplinary board could hold a hearing if there is “clear and convincing evidence” that a lawyer has engaged in sexual relations with a client and that the client’s legal interests “were harmed or jeopardized.”

AP-ES-06-19-05 1622EDT