Following my disclosure of the other victim’s letter to the Boys Club, they responded with the following letter, which I received first by email and later by US mail.
February 18, 2000
Re: Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston
Dear Mr. Chester:
I met this morning with representatives of the Boys & Girls Clubs to discuss a response to your most recent correspondence and your renewed demand for a payment from the Club of $300,000. In the three and one-half years since you first brought your allegations to the Club’s attention, we have listened to your story and have tried to respond in an appropriate fashion. Your claims were a source of very real anguish for the administrators and directors at the Club who were aware of your claims. Many of these people were Club members as children and feel that they have benefited enormously from their association with the Club. As a result, they have dedicated their professional lives as well as their personal time and resources to ensuring that today’s children have access to those same benefits. The story that you told horrified and dismayed them. There was also a very real desire to want to help you in some way. However, before the resources of this organization could be used in such a fashion, it was essential that we validate in some fashion the events that you recounted.
In the last three years every time that we have tried to verify, even in some limited way, your story, we have been unable to do so. The Club went so far as to go back into the community and talk to people who were at the Club during the time that you allege that these events occurred. We were not able to find anyone who could remember anything that would support the claims that you made. Last August, after we completed our inquiry we told you quite clearly that we were unable to help you. Since then, you have repeatedly sought to continue our communications. Most recently, you informed us that yet another “victim” had come forward, apparently having found your website. You steadfastly refused to share with us any information that would allow us to corroborate this new claim. While you contend that the Club knew about what happened to him at the time and even made some kind of settlement with him, we can find no record of such a claim or settlement. Given the horrific nature of the assault which you contend was perpetrated on this individual, it strains credibility to believe that no one would recall it, even though it occurred many years ago. Further, you stated in your recent correspondence that the perpetrators of this other assault were the same people who assaulted you. It is incomprehensible to us that you are unwilling to share their names. Even if you feel you must protect this new victim, you surely have no reason to protect the people whom you believe perpetrated these vicious assaults.
I am relating all of this to you because I want you to understand the process that we went through in determining our response to your most recent demand. Given your continued reluctance to share information with us, we do not believe that further discussions would be helpful. Your unwillingness to provide us with this information is even more perplexing in light of your implication that your next move is to go public in some fashion. If you choose to do so, you will need to provide more than your allegations that these events occurred. At this point, you should understand that you have no legal recourse against the Club and that all you can hope to accomplish is to tarnish the reputation of an organization that has years of dedicated service to the children of Boston.
Sincerely,
Judith A. Malone
cc: Linda Whitlock
When the same letter arrived a few days later by US mail, I wrote “Refused” on it and put it back into the mail system.
Later, I sent one last communication to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston telling them that they could verify the other victim’s story by contacting the board member who had shown him my June 1999 letter.
Here is the email:
“Contact those members of the Board of Directors who grew up in Charlestown and received my 06-11-99 letter. One of them knows the individual who has come forward. That is how he learned about me. He was shown the letter (with my web address redacted), and that is why he went looking for my web site. He did not stumble upon it; he went looking for it. If the board member in question is unwilling to talk, then there is nothing more to be said. However, it is up to you to convince him he should cooperate. If he tells what he knows, then you have your corroboration and then we’ll see just how genuine you are about helping me. Put aside all demands, then ask me how you can help; that’s if he talks.”
The attorneys for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston never responded to this email. I believe they never wanted corroboration, nor did they need it — because they already knew.
This was the end for the both of us. They embarked on an attempt to proffer a settlement covertly, which did not work, partly because I was too stupid to take clues and partly because I needed something official, which they absolutely refused, especially after I went public, which I did with full steam.
But vengeance was definitely not one of my motivations.
And I have thought about that possibility many times over a long period of time. Keep in mind that vengeance has never been in my blood; neither has jealousy nor lonesomeness. These are common passions that I have never swayed me. And I do not mean I fought them. I mean I never felt them. When I was a kid and I heard someone say “I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction,” I had no idea what they meant. I was a fully grown man, well into my manhood, before I finally figured out what that meant. By the same token, I have known uncommon passions that many other people have never known, the most significant of which is (1) my passion to find my Self and (2) my passion to move beyond my Self once I found it, into the over-Self, which admittedly, did not come to me on its own but only through Nietzsche’s tutelage. And then there was also my uncommon ability to endure. And there is no one who can better tell you about that than the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and their attorneys. In other words, I was not a common man. I was something different. But vengeance was never my motivation. Of course, all the lying and bad faith made me resentful. And later, the ruthless persecution to deny me my very basic rights (to housing, privacy, employment, and free speech, to name a few) made things much worse and only served, as time will tell, to further ruin the reputation of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, their directors, and their attorneys at Palmer and Dodge and Ropes and Grey, so I allege.