Background
Arlene Violet was born into a middle class Republican voting family in Providence, Rhode Island.
nun author talk show host and politician
Arlene Violet was born into a middle class Republican voting family in Providence, Rhode Island.
She was the first female Attorney General in the United States. Violet later earned a bachelor’s degree from Salve Regina University and was a school teacher in a disadvantaged neighborhood in the early 1970s. Becoming interested in law, she enrolled at Boston College Law School, graduating in 1974.
During her schooling, she clerked in the judge’s chambers and did an internship in the Rhode Island Attorney General’ General’ s Office.
Due to financial difficulties at the convent, she left her legal work and returned to the convent, serving as an administrative nun through the early 1980s. In 1982 she ran unsuccessfully for Attorney General.
During her time in office she focused on organized crime, environmental issues, and victim’s rights. One of her innovations was to use videotape interviews of child victims rather than direct testimony.
She lost her reelection bid in 1986 and her term ended.
After leaving office, Violet returned to prosecuting, taught environmental law at Brown University, ran a talk show on WHJJ Radio from 1990 to 2006, and writes a weekly political column. She has written two books Convictions: My Journey from the Convent to the Courtroom (1988), an autobiography, and Maine and the Mob (2010) a book about the witness protection program She also drafted a manual on search seizure law.
She was inducted into the Rhode Island Heritage Hall of Fame in 1996.
She wrote a musical, The Family, A Musical Drama About the Mob, with composer and lyricist,Enrico Garzilli, which premiered by special arrangement with Trinity Repertory Company in Providence,Rhode Island in June 2011.