Editor’s note: Mr. Boivin read this letter to the Select Board at their meeting on Tuesday, August 6, 2024.
I’ve been coming [to Public Forum] for seven months now to try to get this Board to do the right thing. I’m tired of having to do this, meeting after meeting after meeting…yet here I am. Still. Again.
Mr. Bertram of Harrington Heep offered what initially seemed like a sincere apology to the survivor in the John Porter alleged child rape case who was doxed by the town when the Hopkinton Police Department released the personal identifying information of her as well as her children on its blog. Unfortunately, upon reflection, I find that his comments and those made by Ms. Ritterbusch in the July 9th Select Board meeting leave our Town Government still hopelessly mired in a moral abyss.
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While Mr. Bertram claimed in vague general terms that Harrington Heep is correcting the process that failed so miserably, he did not provide any specifics. While his apology was sincere, there really wasn’t any meat behind it. Just saying the PII was missed, and he regrets it, that isn’t enough.
Harrington Heep said it will put checks in place – more eyeballs – but how will Town officials improve their own processes to ensure something like this never happens again? The previous town manager was intimately involved throughout this entire series of catastrophic events and dropped the ball, plain and simple. For instance, when your PR firm asked when it could release the information, the reply was “That’s Norman’s call.”
So how will you fix such a miserable failure by our senior-most Town officials?
Joseph Bennett – who based on the Northwest District Attorney’s Office report as well as Town Government, Kroll, and legal counsel emails secured through a Freedom of Information Act request by Steve Snow – was the force pushing to release the transcript of Sgt. Brennan’s interview: yes, the transcript that was not sufficiently redacted to protect the identity of the survivor and her children. Yet Chief Bennett is still in his job and Harrington Heep is still our legal counsel.
How is this even possible?
Even if this was a one-off, the sheer totality of his demonstrable incompetence and abhorrent insubordination detailed by the previous Select Board chair during the Chief’s recent tumultuous performance review is far, far beyond the pale. Why is he still the police chief? He has lost all credibility. He needs to be replaced.
Finally, Ms. Ritterbusch, you said in the July 9th meeting that you were sick to your stomach and immediately contacted the town manager and police chief, who took the HPD blog post down on Saturday, January 20th. THEY. DID. NOT. It was still live on the HPD blog through the evening of Sunday, January 21st. I, as well as the survivor’s family, were checking the blog all weekend, and it was still up. So quit lying.
Ms. Ritterbusch, you also said you were “shocked” when you found out just before Sgt. Brennan’s Loudermill hearing began that the Kroll Report materials were being released to the public. Yet you quickly shared the blog post to thousands of your social media followers. You couldn’t have been too shocked.
Seriously, how are you still able to even show your face at these board meetings? Like Chief Bennett, you have lost all credibility, Ms. Ritterbusch, and you need to resign.
Mr. Herr, the current Select Board chair, talks about one town, one solution – I truly believe that is a great aspiration. But until this Town government gets serious about addressing this total systemic failure – until it comes clean on what happened and why – that unity is not possible. It starts with people taking responsibility and/or suffering the consequences.
Quit hoping this will go away. It won’t. I don’t want to have to keep coming here to demand accountability, and I know some of you are sick of seeing me. I have better things to do with my Tuesday nights. It has been exhausting to try to get you all to do the right thing – what you were elected to do – meeting after meeting after meeting.
This shouldn’t be so hard. The Select Board and Town officials need to get serious about addressing this travesty thoroughly and transparently – without compunction.
Timothy Boivin, Hopkinton
Thank YOU Tim!
The easy solution Tim is to stop, obviously your words have no effect.
A grave error was made by the town. I believe the town has learned what a great injustice was due me. This whole situation has divided the town. I still respect and believe in our SB and our Police Chief. I know I am not alone.
Not “a grave error.” Several cascading grave errors, that ruined a woman’s life and resulted in the one guy who tried to do the right thing — Tim Brennan — being fired.
At least Mr. Myrick gave a heartfelt apology. I can’t say the same for Chief Bennett or the members of the last Select Board who were so eager to show Sgt. Brennan the door because it made them look bad for promoting John Porter to deputy chief — a man, incidentally, who even the chief acknowledged in his interview with the Kroll investigators had serious issues with his temperament.
This dubious idea that oops, my bad, let’s just move on, is wrong on so many levels.
Utilitarian philosopher John Stuart Mill said it best:
“Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
A day of reckoning will come. And we, as taxpayers, will foot the bill once this ends up in civil court.
So, no, Beth, and any others who want this to go away…
It won’t. This town ruined a woman’s life and there have been absolutely no consequences suffered by any of the parties responsible for this reprehensible behavior.