On September 2, 1999, after I contacted the Boston Globe, the Boys Club reversed an earlier decision to settle with me and decided instead to fight me. I accepted the challenge and vowed to prove the crime by bringing forward an eyewitness. In order to find an eyewitness, I had to get the word out about the crime so that anyone who knew about it might contact me. Before proceeding, I contacted the Club with the following letter and told them exactly how I intended to proceed.
December 31, 1999
Dear Attorney Malone:
When we corresponded by email last week. I told you that I was about to make my next move and that my friends had persuaded me to inform the Club what I intended to do before proceeding with it. Please understand, then, that this letter is not a threat; it is a notice of action. And it is not intended to coerce the Club; it is intended to inform them. We both know that the time for making threats has passed.
According to your last letter, dated September 2, 1999, not one of the documents I have submitted to the Boys & Girls Club during the last three years has convinced them to help me, and they are demanding that I produce eyewitness corroboration instead. I regret the Club’s decision, but I accept it as final.
Four months ago, I contacted the Boston Globe and told them about my web site. Regrettably, I was unable to follow through with that contact because of the shame I felt talking about what happened to me in 1963. Consequently, no one at the Globe saw my web site or any of my documents. After I spoke with a Globe reporter by telephone, she spoke with her editor and then told me that the story was being put “on hold” until I had something to corroborate my allegations.
As a result of this incident, I have spent the last four months working to overcome my shame. Fearing that my friends would read about my ordeal in the newspapers, I felt compelled to tell them first. When I did, I was genuinely surprised by the support each and every one of them extended to me, and I am grateful for their encouragement. They have helped me to overcome my difficulties, and my success is evident in the addition of my name to my web site.
I am now taking my plight to the public. I believe it is my best hope for finding someone who has firsthand knowledge of the crime and for getting the help I need with my recovery. I do not believe an investigation can be undertaken with the Boys & Girls Club or without the public’s help, and I think the extreme adversity and the deliberate indifference with which the Club has met my appeal demonstrates this unlikelihood.
Accordingly, I am going to contact the Globe again and I am going to show them Dr. Wool’s letter and Fr. Healy’s affidavit. At the same time, I am going to reopen my web site and then advertise it in several local newspapers. I am also going to move against Dr. Wool for the production of my medical records, which, I believe, are being deliberately withheld from me.
The Club has stated that it views my going to the public as a vengeance by me upon their institution and that they will defend themselves against this vengeance. Each and every one of my letters bears out the fact that my going-forward is toward a hope, not a vengeance. I have offered immunity to people whom I suspected of torturing me, and I have pledged my full and unending cooperation to the Club in return for their helping me. The record shows that I have been forgiving and compromising, from the beginning. Notwithstanding my sentiments, the Club should understand that I would welcome any move they might make toward court.
Unless the Club reconsiders its demand for eyewitness corroboration, I do not see a way out of this situation for either one of us.
Sincerely,
[signed]
James Chester
The Boys Club responded three weeks later and denied that they were demanding an eyewitness. In the very same letter, they also stated that, in order to help me, they needed verification of my story, either by someone who saw it happen or by someone who heard about if afterwards, but that they could find no one. Go figure.