Background
In 2022, James Chester wrote to the Department of Justice to complain that an investigation of child rape in 1963 at a Boys and Girl Club in Boston by the Suffolk County District Attorney had been deliberately obstructed by the US Attorney for Massachusetts, Rachael Rollins, who had opened the investigation a year earlier when she was the Suffolk County DA and then deliberately leaked confidential information to opposing attorneys. Two months after receiving the letter, the DOJ forced Ms. Rollins’ resignation for leaking confidential DOJ information for the purpose of influencing Boston politics. But the child rape investigation was blocked and then shut down by political maneuvering in Boston, and both the Boston Police and the new Suffolk DA explicitly refused to reopen it, even though Massachusetts law does not allow child rape investigations to be closed until they are completed. In addition, Chester asked Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell to intervene and she ignored his request. Two years later, and only after the Senate Judiciary Committee investigated the FBI in December of 2023 for mishandling complaints of sexual crimes against children, notably in the Larry Nassar case, the acting section chief of the FBI’s Violent Crimes Against Children Section, Jeremy Wright, finally responded to Chester’s letter in September of 2024 and said that no violation of federal law had been articulated in the letter and there was nothing the FBI would do. In response, Chester wrote the following letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee that oversees the FBI.
Read More
You can read more about this story at https://jameschester.org/james-chesters-blog-crime-and-suffering. And you can read a summary at Child Rape Victim Pleads with Massachusetts Bank of America CEO Miceal Chamberlain for Help (https://jameschester.org/a-public-letter-to-miceal-chamberlain-from-child-rape-victim/.
About
James Chester is an American philosopher, a writer, and a dissident. He was the first philosopher to discover a new art form called dithyrambic drama in Friedrich Nietzsche’s enigmatic chef d’oeuvre Thus Spoke Zarathustra when he identified it as a literary representation of human will. He has written four books as instruction in the dithyramb: The Birth of Dionysia, Dionysia Metaphysica, Nietzsche on Dithyrambic Music, and Nietzsche on History and Supra History. After teaching himself how to read dithyrambic music and how to practice dithyrambic drama, Chester learned what happened to him at the Charlestown Boys Club in 1963 and only as a direct result of undertaking Nietzsche’s dithyrambic drama, the goal of which is to unite the reader with his deepest conscience and then redeem the torment that caused its disintegration. The Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston have opposed Chester’s claims with unrelenting fanaticism, which is the focus of his dissent.
The Letter
October 23, 2024
The Honorable Alex Padilla
Majority Member
Senate Judiciary Committee
United State Senate
224 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Senator Padilla:
I write to you in your role on the Senate Judiciary Committee as overseer of the FBI on behalf of the American people, as stated at the outset of your committee’s recent investigation of the FBI’s failure to investigate allegations of child sexual abuse. Specifically, I write to report an historic, current and ongoing threat of sexual violence against the children of Boston, which I previously reported to the FBI in May of 2022 and which they declined to investigate, though my letter played a role in the resignation of the US Attorney for Massachusetts, Rachael Rollins. I ask that you consider the urgency of an investigation of what I report and, if you see an urgency, then help me to enjoin the FBI in that investigation because my state and city officials staunchly refuse to help.
Please note that everything I report here is documented and corroborated.
In 1963, when I was 11, I attended a two-week session of the Stay At Home Day camp at the Charlestown Boys Club (“the Club”), just across the Charles River from Boston. At that time in 1963, a serial child rapist named Edward Darragh had been working as a director at the Club for at least ten years, first as director of the Midget Division, which was comprised of the youngest Club members, and then as director of the swimming program, where boys were required to swim in the nude. Consequently, pedophilia was rampant at the Club, according to photographs and personal accounts in my possession, which I have published.
During his tenure, Darragh established what he called “a secret club” within the clubhouse. Boys were initiated into the secret club according to their willingness to completely undress in front of Darragh and other existing “secret club” members. Darragh was observed by other children and by other employees flagrantly touching his wards in a sexual manner, apparently enjoying impunity, with no fear of reprimand or criminal prosecution. In addition, he posed boys wearing nothing but loin cloths while photographing them and then publishing those photos in the Club owned community newspaper, no doubt to recruit more individuals inclined to pedophilia into the Club, which I have also documented with a personal account of someone he tried to recruit. Darragh’s tenure ended when something catastrophic happened at the day camp in 1963, which resulted in the camp’s closure for an entire year. And then, only after losing the protection that the Club had previously afforded him, Darragh was finally caught raping children and sent to prison for life. But a lot of damage had been done by then. And all of it would be covered up. Even the children, some of whom were so traumatized that they had no memory of what had been done to them, were not told, leaving them to wallow in misery with their demons for the rest of their life. That was an extremely unconscionable disregard that resulted in unnecessary suffering, which persists today.
Sometime in the last week of June and the first week of July, just four months before President Kennedy’s assassination, eighteen-year-old James Power, presently of Indian River Shores in Florida, and his fraternal twin Michael, presently of Aiken South Carolina, kidnapped a group of thirteen pre-teen boys, herded them into the equipment room inside the Club’s separate gym, and then raped, mutilated, and tortured them. I was one of those boys. The Club learned what had happened the next day after children reported it to their parents that night.
But I could not speak about what had been done to me, and there was no one in my home, unfortunately, who cared enough to notice a change in me. The horror of it all cleaved a chasm in my mind that would take me decades to overcome. And the Club knew how badly I had been injured the very next day when they asked me to tell them what happened, and all I could do was stare straight ahead at a blank wall and wait for them to leave me alone. The true extent of that terror became most manifest when I went into talking therapy while just a teenager and then required hospitalization after my doctor spent three years trying to ease me into a talking state, unsuccessfully.
I lived with that terror, whose origin was unbeknownst to me, for decades, along with the humiliation that I had endured in that room. Demonic fear and humiliation haunted me relentlessly, day in and day out. And I ask you to consider the plight of other individuals who might be suffering with the same demons, in part because the Club never told them what had happened to them. After Darragh’s ten-year employment, I think it is reasonable to assume that there are hundreds of victims, all of whom remain in the dark about what was inflicted upon them.
But it gets much worse.
When I finally learned to brave the horror that lingered relentlessly within my subconscious, then I learned what had happened to me, which was in 1996. And I wrote to the Club to ask for their help with my recovery, to which they responded with a challenge that I prove it, which was a very fateful demand that they did not expect me to meet. But I did.
Naturally, I reported the crime to the police, who told me there was nothing they could do because the statute of limitations had expired. But what neither of us knew at the time of my reporting was that the perpetrators had left the state long ago, thus tolling the statute of limitations.
Next, I wrote directly to the Suffolk County District Attorney (“the DA”), Ralph C. Martin III, who was also a sitting member of the Club’s board of directors, and he restated the restriction imposed by the statute of limitations. But I did not give up. Years later, I wrote to the next Suffolk County DA, Daniel F. Conley, who granted me an interview and then promptly informed me that, although child rape forensic interviews are always recorded, my interview would not be recorded. And it was at that point, at the commencement of the interview, that I realized the DA was in the Club’s camp and would not help me regardless of what I disclosed to him. But I informed him that I had a considerable collection of documentary evidence that I needed to compile first, and he agreed to look at it. Afterward, all my calls were refused and my emails went unanswered, and DA Conley wrote to the Club and told them that he had seen no evidence to support my allegations, thereby giving the Club written documentation from the Suffolk County DA that my allegations were baseless.
Again, I did not give up.
Finally, after my pleadings, in 2020, DA Rachael Rollins granted me yet another forensic interview, which was conducted on January 8, 2021 with eight professionals present, all of whom asked me questions, unlike the previous interview years earlier. Afterward, while I waited, they voted unanimously to open an investigation.
Within weeks, all the documentation that I had given to the DA, including the names of the perpetrators and other possible victims, was handed over to the Club’s attorneys, thereby violating Massachusetts law that protects the confidentiality of victims of child rape and violating attorney client confidentiality as well. The perpetrators were well advised when the Boston Police contacted them, and they both reported coordinated stories, according to the Boston Police.
But what happened next was quite extraordinary.
My Victim’s Advocate disappeared without anyone telling me. When I asked that a replacement be assigned, I was refused. And then the Boston Police detective conducting the investigation was transferred out of the unit, which was the Crimes Against Children Unit (CACU). When I asked the supervisor Sgt. Det. Pamela Harris of CACU for a replacement, she refused. Thus, though illegal, an investigation of child rape was shut down through political maneuvering, with Rachael Rollins at the helm, though I had not yet figured out that she was the fulcrum in the mix. I was outraged, and I wrote to Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, but she ignored me.
What could I do at that point? Clearly, both city government and state government had turned against me. But they were the only ones who could conduct an authoritative investigation.
So, I wrote to US Attorney Merrick Garland in November of 2022. Unfortunately, though I did not know it, my government had also turned on me. My mail was being intercepted and confiscated. And the letter never made it. My only alternative was to travel to Washington and deliver the letter by hand. Then I got the idea that I could deliver the letter to the US District Attorney for Massachusetts, who was the Attorney General’s ambassador in Massachusetts. Surely that would work.
But the US Attorney for Massachusetts was Rachael Rollins, who, after a fight in the Senate that required Vice President Kamal Harris’ vote, was finally confirmed and sworn in on January 10, 2022, one year and two days after opening an investigation into my allegations. And she did not forward my letter because she was in on the obstruction, though, again, I did not know that then.
Finally, I got FedEx to deliver the letter six months after first I first tried to send it, and it arrived in March of 2023. Two months later, Rachael Rollins was forced to resign for leaking confidential DOJ documents in order to influence Boston politics.
I have no doubt that my letter to DOJ was in part responsible for Ms. Rollins’ ouster. But no one ever responded to my letter — until September 2024, two years later, and only after your committee investigated allegations that the FBI was negligent in its handling of allegations of child abuse. Acting Section Chief, Jeremy Wright, of the Violent Crimes Against Children Section of the FBI, told me that I had not articulated any violation of federal law so there was nothing they could do. (You can read my letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland online by searching “James Chester Merrick Garland.”)
There are two other facts I wish for you to consider. In October of 2000, just months after I had written to all the board members of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and told each of them specifically what had happened to me and where it happened, Brendan Coleman was arrested and charged with “sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy in a secluded area of the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club,” according to the Boston Globe. The gym at the Charlestown clubhouse is in a building that is separated from the main building, making it secluded and often unsupervised. And there is only one room in that gym, and it is the equipment room, where I was raped. (Parenthetically, I should tell you that the Globe immediately retracted the story and claimed that the Suffolk DA, Ralph Martin, who was a sitting member of the Boys Club board and a seasoned prosecutor at that point, made a mistake identifying the scene of a crime. And the Club denied that anything happened at the Charlestown clubhouse.) In addition, in 2003, the director of the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club, Jerry Steimel, admitted that he saw fear in the eyes of children who were summoned to the gym for exercise.
I want you to know that children are being raped at clubhouses run by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, and it is due entirely to a coverup. Were it not for the silence, these crimes against children would end. I wrote to the FBI and reported this. And the FBI chose to do nothing in response. And that is a mistake that will cost the children of Boston dearly. On behalf of those children, I urge you to please consider the full weight of my pleading and do whatever you might to correct the FBI’s error in this matter so that they look into the allegations and the facts and stop what is happening.
Sincerely,
James Chester
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