Child Rape Victim Pleads with Mr. Andrew G. Arnott for Help

Mr. Andrew G. Arnott

• Global Head of Retail, Manulife Investment Management
• President and CEO, John Hancock Investments
• Member, Board of Directors, the Boston Foundation
• Member, Board of Directors, Mt. Mansfield Winter Academy
• Member, Board of Governors, ICI (Investment Company Institute)

Between 1952 and 1963, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston had a serious problem at their clubhouse located in Charlestown. An individual named Ed Darragh had wormed his way into their employment, and Ed Darragh had his own agenda. He was a pedophile, and, for whatever reason, the Bunker Hill Boys Club let him have his way — for a long time. He set up what he told the boys was a “secret club” within the clubhouse and he actively recruited boys into his “secret club.” Initiation was a bizarre rite of passage that involved the boy agreeing to strip down in front of Darragh and other boys who were already existing “secret” members. He also tried to recruit other pedophiles into the club to join him, and he did this with flagrance and impunity, go figure. You can read personal accounts of this activity online here.

The Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston knew what Mr. Darragh was doing back then, inasmuch as other children and other employees, like Edmund Moussally, saw him doing it. But they didn’t stop it. In fact, pedophilia became so rampant at the Bunker Hill Boys Club that they actually published photographs of it in their community newspaper, the Charlestown Patriot. You can see those photographs here.  They show nearly naked boys clearly being posed, wearing nothing but a loin cloth; look for yourself. If you compare them to earlier photos of children playing the same Indian game, before Ed Darragh took over the Midget Division that grouped together the youngest boys at the clubhouse, the difference is astounding and reveals a bad situation that is totally out of control.

Ed Darrah’s employment at the Charlestown Boys Club was a disaster waiting to happen, and that disaster happened in 1963, sometime between the last week of June and the first week of July, just four months before President Kennedy’s assassination. Day camp counselor James Power, who now resides at Indian River Shores in Florida and his brother, Michael Power, who now resides in Aiken, South Carolina, kidnapped a small group of pre teen boys and took them to the equipment room inside the gym, where they raped, tortured and mutilated them. I was one of those boys.

When contacted by the Boston Police in March of 2021, Michael Power refused to answer any questions whatsoever and James Power lied and said he never had anything to do with the day camp. After that, the Suffolk County DA shut down the investigation. That shutdown was illegal and politically maneuvered with help I have alleged was provided by former Suffolk County DA Rachael Rollins who was later forced to resign as US Attorney for Massachusetts for precisely the same allegation involving local, Boston politics. I am fighting this.

The crime had different effects on different children. Some of them suffered serious physical injuries that required surgeries afterward but they suffered no psychological injuries, while others suffered very serious psychological injuries. I was one of those other children. I suffered catastrophic psychological injuries that became my life’s purpose to overcome, which I succeeded in doing. I learned a wealth of knowledge, became a writer, and now draw people from universities all over the world who come to my website to read what I write about a new art form that is called dithyrambic music and a cultural phenomenon that is called proto tragedy, which dates back to ancient Greek culture, where it was used to heal the bad conscience at the root of human suffering. As I said, I have been successful in life, despite what the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston did to me when I was a child.

Back in 1963, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston learned what happened the very next day. And they made settlements with the parents of children who spoke about what happened to them. But I could not speak about what had been done to me. It took me decades to navigate the chasm that the horror of child rape cleaved in my mind. My suffering was literally unspeakable, and it was documented with voluminous hospital records, which the Club’s lawyers callously ignored. I had no help from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, then or now. In three decades, since 1996, while this dispute has played out, nothing has changed from the way it was in 1963. What a lesson in crime and conscience this dispute has been for me. This disturbing hypocrisy within Boston Brahmin culture, which can be traced back to a loss of conscience, then and now, has been the bane of my existence. Nothing has been more detrimental and injurious to my life as has the extraordinary opposition that these people have thrown at me.

Back then, instead of helping me, which would have been the natural thing to do, knowing what had happened, the Club chose to cover it up — to the point of ignoring me and what had been done to me, literally, and left me to suffer, unbeknownst, for the rest of my life, obliviously— for the rest of my life; this from a Brahmin society that hails itself as the savior of poor children in Boston.

While driving down a road late at night, they hit a child, stopped, got out to look, saw a child laying mortally wounded by the side of the road, reaching up to them with the pleading eyes of a child in pain — and they drove off, leaving him writhing in pain. They just drove off. Imagine? How does that happen in a normal world? The culture that these people lived and thought in did not value conscience. I’m talking about the old Brahmins from the 60s and earlier, including Henry Cabot Lodge, and even Ted Kennedy.

After the kidnapping, the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston undertook an overhaul of their organization. They closed the camp for a year, brought in professional camp counselors from the newly named John F. Kennedy Community Center when they reopened, and kicked out Ed Darragh. It was only then, after Darragh lost the impunity that he enjoyed at the Club for more than a decade that he was finally caught hurting children in other places and sent to MCI Gardner for life. But the children were left to suffer on their own through life because no one said anything. Boston Brahmin Helen Bowdoin Spaulding, descendant of both the founder of Bowdoin College and Founding Father Alexander Hamilton himself, bridesmaid to Jacqueline Lee Bouvier just ten years earlier in 1953, and now Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of the Boys Clubs of Boston in 1963 — just drove off in the middle of the night!

In all fairness to Mrs. Spaulding, it took a lot of courage to make that decision, to deliberately leave children to suffer, and I don’t think she had that in her. I think she was ill advised by attorneys who are quick to get cagey. Nonetheless, that is the history of the Charlestown Boys Club, and the lack of conscience, the hypocrisy, is revolting.

When I finally found my own courage and learned to brave the horror that had kept me silent for so many years, I wrote to the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and asked for their help. Stupidly, they told me to prove it, and I did. But they really weren’t interested in me proving anything. They just wanted me to go away. But I have not gone away. And they have done a lot of bad things trying to force me away.

Mr. Arnott had no knowledge of Ed Darragh’s truly horrific exploits at the Charlestown Boys Club, and he may have no knowledge of what happened to me. I am not accusing him of any wrongdoing or any impropriety. The senior directors of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston are exceptionally crafty at maintaining secrecy, even amongst their own, sometimes especially amongst their own. And when there are cover ups, innocent people are needlessly hurt. My life is a testament to that. However, I do not think Mr. Arnott ever knew anything, but he knows now.

The Letter

Dear Mr. Andrew G. Arnott:

I wanted to write to you privately, but I cannot do that because the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston is intercepting and confiscating my US Mail, even when I put a phony return address on the envelope. You’ve probably never heard of that happening and you may think I’m a conspiracy nut, so take a look at these USPS tracking numbers and see for yourself: 9407111898765492545058, 9407111898765492545027, 9407111898765492545096.

It’s interesting that they know which of my mailings pertain to my dispute with the Club and grab those while letting the others through, but that’s what happens.

The Club’s law firm refuses to identify itself, which I think raises ethics concerns, but I figured out it was Foley Hoag. And I sent a letter to the managing partner at Foley Hoag, James Bucking, and accused him of obstructing justice by illegally shutting down an investigation by the Suffolk County District Attorney, which I’ll get to in a minute, and he did not deny it! But what’s most interesting is that the letter got delivered, while three other letters about my dispute with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston (above), which all went out on the same day from the same mailbox, never made it, stolen en route from within the USPS. (For the Bucking letter, see USPS tracking 9407111898765492545003. It was the only one delivered.)

As for my ability to communicate generally, I can’t use a cell phone either or any phone with a number assigned to it because senior director John Fish constantly harasses me with ghost calls. Just as soon as I get a new number, the ghost calls start. And if you can’t believe that, see for yourself here. Unfortunately, I can’t get help from any law agency because I tried and they completely ignored me, all of them, completely, even US Attorney General Merrick Garland and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell, to say nothing of the numerous law firms in this city who will not touch the case, given the influence wielded by those involved. If ever there was a David and Goliath drama playing out in Brahmin Boston, this is certainly it, as I am about to disclose to you.

Twenty five years ago, in 1999, I wrote to all the board members of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America and they responded favorably, but their calls went unheeded by the senior directors of the Boston organization, the executive committee of four, who had become entrenched in their opposition to me. At around the same time, an attorney who was helping me, Larry Hardoon, wrote to the Club’s attorney, Judith Malone of Palmer and Dodge, and warned the Club against the path of extreme adversity that they had chosen to follow specifically because it would worsen for them. Still, under the late senior director Bill Bain’s guidance, which has been characterized by at least one source as “never knowing when to stop,” the Club dug in and fought on, which resulted in director and maverick broadcaster Ed Ansin’s departure from the board.

It turned out that Mr. Hardoon was prescient in his 1999 warning when the Suffolk County District Attorney, Rachael Rollins, opened an investigation in 2021, after I named the perpetrators of the crime at the heart of this dispute as James Power and his brother Michael Power. But, as Ms. Rollins was prone to do, something for which she has now paid dearly, her office shared all the information I gave them during my forensic interview on January 8, 2021, in direction violation of M.G.L. c. 41, § 97D, and Foley Hoag went to work obstructing and shutting down that investigation, again, so I allege. Behind closed doors, that’s hailed as astute management, really brilliant work. But in public, it’s excoriated as a crime. Thus, the hypocrisy, which I lay as blame on the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston.

Upon learning about the investigation directly from me in September 2021, David Ambroz, who had assumed the position of CEO and president just six months earlier, promptly left the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and went to work for Amazon instead. That letter to Mr. Ambroz, having gone viral, as the Club knows, may very well preclude any hope of recruiting a visionary leader for who knows how long. In addition, Foley Hoag’s magical ability to shut down law enforcement investigations (of child rape, no less) seems to have emboldened John Fish, who overruled a wise decision to settle the dispute in 2021 and chose instead to continue down the path of extreme adversity, which has now turned to grossly illegal machinations, as despair will do, so I allege. And that led directly to the departure of yet another senior director, Michael Bronner, who seems to have been averse to living on the precipice of a public relations cataclysm and has had his name wiped clean from the Club’s website after his departure. (See for yourself at www.bgcb.org.) Despite all the carnage that this dispute has wrought on this organization, which is substantial, the question you should ask now, as a board member, is where is the dispute headed next?

One hint of that direction comes out of the debacle that I allege occurred within the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office. I have proof, incontrovertible proof, that the DA leaked the investigation along with confidential documents that contained the names of other possible victims, which is a crime under Massachusetts law (see above, MGL). I was the first one to tell ADA Alissa Goldhaber that her office was leaking information. A public records request has produced that complaint to ADA Goldhaber in emails, which I now submit as proof of a leak. Those emails are electronically date-stamped just weeks after the investigation was opened. Even though ADA Goldhaber was genuinely dumbfounded in a follow up telephone conversation with me, nonetheless, their bad judgement in leaking a child rape investigation led directly to obstruction of that investigation and eventually, an illegal shutdown, in violation of specific Massachusetts laws.

Afterward, when I submitted a public records request to the Suffolk DA to find out who leaked the investigation, it took them nearly five months, five months, instead of the ten days that law allows, to complete the production. And they gave me my own emails in the end, even though I was entitled under the law to qualified, extended disclosure as the victim making the request. I have no doubt that records were withheld from me in my efforts to determine the cause of the leak, and I fully intend to challenge the production. The Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office had all the motivation in the world to deny me a public records request seeking records of it leaking and then shutting down an investigation. That is precisely where this dispute is headed. And I predict it will test the conscience and the integrity of the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office, publicly.

Another question to ask yourself is how much more damage is the Club willing to endure simply to satisfy a single, pig headed senior board member? I just don’t see the economy in that.

In any case, I am more determined now than I was twenty eight years ago to obtain justice from the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston. As a result, what is coming to light is that the Club parades itself as a champion of the poor children of Boston, one the one hand, yet knowingly condemned one of its mortally wounded wards to suffer in oblivion for the rest of his life, knowingly and willfully, on the other. That hypocrisy will be righted, I assure you. I am indefatigable. And my vision is crystal clear.

Most earnestly,

James Chester