Following the Boys Club’s letter refusing to mediate this matter in private and their repeated demands for all my documents, I wrote the following letter to the attorney for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, Judith Malone, in an attempt to obtain assurances that my documents would be kept private and that the information contained within my documents would not be used to whitewash my allegations.
November 28, 1997
Dear Attorney Malone:
Mr. Hardoon is tied up with other business right now, so I must deal with you directly.
I am not willing to turn over the names of individuals who may have knowledge of this crime because I’m afraid that the Boys’ Club will contact them, and, if they’re going to be contacted, I want to speak with them first. But if I contact them, which is what I feel compelled to do, major trouble will surely follow, and I must bear responsibility for that trouble. I have spent a good deal of time gearing up to that responsibility, and I am now prepared to proceed, but, before I do, I need to know that I attempted every other avenue first.
If the Boys’ Club will pledge itself to making a genuine attempt to evaluate my claim via an examination of all my other documentation, I will give it to you. My other documentation includes detailed records of psychiatric treatment between the years 1972 and 1986 and a journal I kept in the summer of 1996 when I finally braved the torment that is documented in my medical records and then learned about this assault and what it had done to me.
I think this is a very reasonable offer, and I pray that the Boys’ Club will accept it. If they do, I will need an agreement which protects the confidentiality of my documents. Specifically, I need an agreement stating that: (1) you will not disclose the information contained in my documents to anyone other than officers of and attorneys for the Boys & Girls Club of Boston and other professionals whose expertise will assist the Club in its efforts to evaluate my claim; (2) you will not disclose the information contained in my documents to any attorney representing any individual who may be brought into this matter either as victim or alleged perpetrator, barring a court order; (3) you will not copy my documents; and (4) you will return my documents to me when you finish your examination of them or upon demand by me.
I would appreciate your prompt response.
Sincerely,
James Chester
Attorney Malone would not provide me a satisfactory assurance of confidentiality. Moreover, after examining my documents, which did nothing to persuade the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, I asked for them back, and Judith Malone replied that they never agreed to return them by would do so in order to avoid any contention. She then sent me badly copied and badly reassembled reproductions, which she claimed were the originals.