Following my email correspondence with the attorney for the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, Judith Malone of Palmer and Dodge, we agreed to a a meeting. When I didn’t hear back from her in a while, I emailed her again inquiring, and she responded that the “Club” was moving “to determine who should attend the meeting with you and availability.” She also said “I hope to get back to you next week.” When she had not contacted me by Thursday of the following week, which was July 23, 1999, I sent the following letter to Matt Storin, who was editor of the Boston Globe, and I faxed a copy to Judith Malone.
However, before doing so, I contacted Larry Hardoon, told him about my frustration with attorney Malone and about my letter to Matt Storin, and asked him if he thought I should send the letter to Storin. He replied “I think you should do whatever you think is right.”
Unfortunately, I have lost the letter I sent to Matt Storin.
But he responded by sending reporter Cindy Rodriguez to my apartment. I wasn’t home when she visited, but I still have the note she left me.
In the meanwhile, Jeffrey Jones of Palmer and Dodge called Matt Storin, so I surmise, and told him something like “the guy has no evidence and any story would severely damage my client’s reputation.”
Accordingly, Matt Storin decided not to investigate.
When I called back Cindy Rodriguez, she was not friendly, and she told me the Globe was putting the story on hold until I had more evidence.
But she didn’t know what evidence I had because we hadn’t met or even talked.
Instead, Storin accepted Jeffrey Jones’ summation that I had no evidence.
Shortly afterward, I saw an interview in the Boston Globe that Jeffrey Jones gave to the newspaper about the Palmer and Dodge law firm. Staid Boston law firms do not give newspapers an invitation to come in and ask about their goings-on. The interview was Jeffrey Jones’ return of a favor to Matt Storin, so I allege.
Nonetheless, I accepted Matt Storin’s invitation to get back to him after I obtained more evidence, which is what I did when the assistance Camp Director, Edmund Moussally, corroborated what happened in the summer of 1963 at the Charlestown Boys Club.
And the letter I sent to Storin appears below.
January 31, 2001
Matthew V. Storin, Editor
The Boston Globe Newspaper Company
135 Morrissey Boulevard
P. O. Box 2378
Boston, Massachusetts 02107-2378
Dear Mr. Storin:
In July of 1999, I wrote you a letter detailing allegations that I had been raped and tortured while attending the Stay-At-Home day camp at the Charlestown Boy Club in 1963, when I was eleven years old. You referred my letter to a reporter, Cindy Rodriguez, who spoke with me briefly on the telephone a few days later and then consulted with her editor and asked that I contact the newspaper again when I had obtained more corroboration. I have now obtained that corroboration. It comes from a professor at Roxbury Community College, who was the assistant camp director in 1963. The new evidence proves that the crime I alleged in 1996 did indeed occur in 1963 and that the Boys Club administration knew about it immediately after it happened.
I am seeking this publicity, despite the pain and the adversity it will surely visit upon me, because I believe it will bring help. Charitable immunity has made it extremely difficult for me to find legal assistance, and I am hoping that an attorney will read about my plight and come forward to help me obtain the funding I need to complete my recovery, which I nearly achieved in 1996 but for a lack of funding. I hope also that the publicity will add to my efforts to solve the crime by pressing the camp director, who refuses to speak with me, to divulge what he knows.
Please accept my invitation to review all the evidence I have obtained. I can be reached on any day before 3 o’clock, after which I leave for work.
Sincerely,
[signed]
James Chester
Mr. Storin ignored my letter. Two months later, I called him out on this neglect with the following, second letter.
March 22, 2001
Matthew V. Storin, Editor
The Boston Globe Newspaper Company
135 Morrissey Boulevard
P. O. Box 2378
Boston, Massachusetts 02107-2378
Dear Mr. Storin:
In July of 1999, I wrote you a letter and told you about a crime that was perpetrated upon myself and other children at the Stay-At-Home day camp at the Charlestown Boy Club in 1963, when I was eleven years old. In response to my letter, you sent a reporter, Cindy Rodriguez, to my apartment. Unfortunately, Ms Rodriguez and I never met, but we spoke on the phone. Afterwards, Ms. Rodriguez asked me to contact the Globe again when I had more corroboration of the crime.
Almost a year later, in March of 2000, I placed in ad in the Globe seeking witnesses to the crime. On the same day that I faxed the ad to the Globe Classifieds, people on two machines at the Boston Globe went to my web site, www.PublicAppeal.org, and read nearly every single web page over a period of five hours.
Lastly, just last January, I faxed you a second letter telling you that I had finally obtained proof of the crime, and I asked to show it to you. You did not answer my last letter.
Given the keen interest that the Globe has demonstrated in this story on two previous occasions, it is very difficult for me to understand why it has no interest now, when I have finally obtained proof of the crime. With all due respect, sir, the Globe’s decision to ignore this story appears complicit.
I would now like to bring your attention to a letter I received yesterday from an individual who attended the day camp with me and whose name was published by the Charlestown Patriot newspaper in June of 1963 as one of the attendees at the camp. I am enclosing the letter as part of this facsimile transmission. I would especially like to direct your attention to the gentleman’s last two closing paragraphs.
There are now four individuals who were at the Stay-At-Home day camp that summer and who have come forward with allegations of sadistic and sexual criminal behavior upon children by the staff, including the assistant camp director, who has implicated the director himself.
I hope you will reconsider your decision not to review all the evidence I have obtained and that you will contact me after you do.
Sincerely,
[signed]
James Chester
Mr. Storin responded by sending reporter Jamal Watkins to meet with me, and we met. He subsequently spoke with assistant Camp Director Edmund Moussally, who was reluctant to talk. Using his skills as a reporter to elicit information from an unwilling subject, Mr. Watkins asked Mr. Moussally if it was possible that this happened, to which Mr. Moussally replied, “yes, it is possible it happened.”
But after my meeting with reporter Watkins, I never heard from his again. Subsequently, he left the Boston Globe. After I wrote about my meeting with Mr. Watkins on my website, somehow, it got back to him and he wrote me, reporting all of the above about his conversation with Mr. Moussally. It was Mr. Watkins belief that Mr. Moussally’s admission that “it may have happened” was sufficient cause to continue investigating the story but that Matt Storin refused to allow him investigate further. It was Mr. Watkin’s belief that Matt Storin had killed the story.