In 1963, sometime during the last week of June and the first week of July, I was one of a small group of about a dozen boys at the Charlestown Boys Club who were kidnapped, raped, mutilated and tortured by eighteen year old day camp counselor James Power and his gay, fraternal twin, Michael Power. I have now spent twenty-six years trying to bring the Power brothers to justice. But the mighty Brahmins who run the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston since the fifties and sixties, beginning with Helen Bowdoin Spaulding, have opposed me, ruthlessly and criminally.
The Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston have had a close and cozy relationship with Boston society’s most powerful people, including the Boston Globe, district attorneys, the Boston Police, its wealthiest business people, and numerous federally elected officials like Ted Kennedy and Tip O’Neill. So, it hasn’t been easy getting district attorneys to help. There is a lot of history there between us.
In 2017, I finally found the Power twins and I was ready to move. Both of the previous two DAs, Ralph Martin and Daniel Conley refused to investigate. The most interesting thing about that was that they had different reasons. Martin said the statute of limitations had killed the case, but that wasn’t true because both brothers had tolled the statute by leaving the state, though that was not known at the time. And Conley said I didn’t produce any evidence, except that he cancelled a second meeting that had been scheduled for the purpose of presenting my evidence after I had time to organize it, just so that he could truthfully say “We saw no evidence.” Pretty specious, huh? As soon as I was out there door that afternoon, I heard the door slam hard when, as I was leaving, Victim’s Advocate William Paige asked me “what would it take for you to let this go?”
After all that, Rachael Rollins comes along preaching progressive values. Okay. So I decided to give it the third try. And I sent her the following letter.
The Honorable Rachel Rollins,
Suffolk County District Attorney
Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office
One Bullfinch Place, STE 300
Boston, Massachusetts 02114-2921
Dear District Attorney Rollins:
As you no doubt already know, on May 17, 2013, Paul Collins, the former swim coach and aquatics director for the Arlington Boys and Girls Club, was arrested in New York for the forceful rape of a child sometime in the 1970s. Mr. Collins was subsequently convicted and sentenced to ten years in prison.
In the 1960s, while attending the Charlestown Boys Club when I was eleven years old, I was the victim of a rape in which a baseball bat was used. I was also raped orally via irrumation. I was threatened with death from being pushed out a window, and I was tortured. So were the other twelve boys right alongside me, some of whom required surgery afterward, according to a written account that one of them provided me.
As in the case involving Paul Collins, the police were not notified. However, I was questioned the next day about what happened, but fear prevented me from speaking and I simply stared straight ahead at a blank wall. Knowing that I was too afraid to speak, the Boys and Girls Clubs felt secure in their coverup, so I allege, and did absolutely nothing to help me, while settlements were made with the parents of other children, according to one victim. Immediately afterwards, one of the perpetrators moved out of state, where he has remained ever since.
When I was still a child, I used to beg God to end my suffering. When that did not happen, I begged Him just to reveal the cause of my suffering so that I might fix it myself. And when that did not happen, when I was seventeen, I started psychotherapy, trying to talk about what was wrong with me, though I had no clue, while the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston knew exactly what was wrong. Therapy was very painful — and lengthy. Once, when my sense of feeling was temporarily restored, I spent a month at Mass General with a transient psychosis, imagining myself in a small room with an older male who was threatening me sexually while I cowered in a constant state of inarticulable and overwhelming fear. Decades more of therapy did not help. It wasn’t until I finally found courage on my own, thirty‑three years later, that I was able to brave my fear and admit to myself what had been done to me.
I immediately contacted one of your predecessors, Ralph C. Martin, who was a member of the board of directors at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston (“the Club”) at the time, Despite MGL chapter 277, section 63 and chapter 265, section 22A, DA Martin told me that the statute of limitations had expired, time‑barring his office from doing anything. As I understand it, this was a patently false statement that was designed to dissuade me from pursuing the matter further.
Unconvinced and indefatigable in my hope for justice, I then sought corroboration. And I found it in the assistant Camp Director, Edmund Moussally, who remembered me and gave me the first name of one of my perpetrators. Though he was too scared to disclose more, he also disclosed a coverup, which he said started the day after the assault. Mr. Moussally’s statements provided the necessary corroboration that MGL chapter 265, section 22A dictates.
Years later, I contacted your immediate predecessor, Daniel Conley, who was never named as a member of the board of directors at the Club but nonetheless comingled with those members at events hosted by the Club and afterward joined one of the two law firms that defended the Club against my allegations, Mintz Levin. At the time, DA Conley also refused to prosecute the case, though he never gave me a reason and simply stopped responding to my inquiries, until months afterward when assistant DA Catherine Tucker finally told me, in contradictory fashion, that their investigation uncovered no evidence to support my allegations, but that, in any case, the statute of limitations had expired, citing MGL chapter 277, section 63, which explicitly refutes ADA Tucker’s claim of being time‑barred.
In any case, if there is a question of being time‑barred, the perpetrator’s absence from Massachusetts since the time of the crime should have tolled the statute of limitations, as it did in the case of Paul Collins.
I am writing you now on the mere glimmer of hope that your proclaimed passion for justice — and especially against justice that is exempted by privilege — is not a pretense. Thus far, everyone to whom I have appealed has stood entirely on privilege and pretense. Everyone.
In 1963, when I was eleven years old, sometime during the last week of June and the first week of July, two individuals whom I have identified and located, kidnapped myself and a group of other boys while we were attending the Stay‑At‑Home day camp at the Charlestown Boys Club. I say “kidnapped” because I ran to escape and both men chased me down, restrained me, and dragged me kicking into a small room within the Jordan Gym at the Boys Club where the other boys were already being held as well against their will. Even after my capture, I struggled to free myself by frantically trying to release the lock on the door before being physically restrained again, and then by trying to hide myself under some gym mats that were being stored in a closet in the room, all to no avail. Once inside, we boys we forced to remove all our clothing and then forced to dance in the middle of the small room. Then, one individual, who was homosexual, sodomized us with a baseball bat and perpetrated irrumation on me, while the other individual stood nearby, watching and directing the homosexual perpetrator through further assaults. Afterwards, the supervising individual forced me to clean discharged excrement off the floor by licking it up with my tongue. He then threatened to throw me out the window and made me beg for my life until I agreed not to tell anyone what had happened. The next morning, he threatened me a second time. But that day, the Boys Club learned what had happened, according to the assistant director of the Stay‑At‑Home day camp, Edmund Moussally, and removed him. That individual immediately fled Massachusetts to another state, where he has remained ever since. I was questioned about what happened, but I was unable to overcome my fear and could not speak, so they knew I had been severely injured, though my injuries were psychological, which was okay with them as long as I remained silent, so I allege. Indeed, though I spent decades in therapy trying to speak, I finally learned what was required was simply courage, which took me a few more decades to muster, despite my very best and most indefatigable efforts, so horrific was my terror.
I have identified and located two other victims, who both live nearby. And a third victim actually located me and provided me with a written account of the numerous surgeries he endured as a result of the things that were done to him. Curiously, he suffered no psychological injuries, whereas I suffered massive psychological injuries. While he was able to build a successful life after his recuperation, I never could. My life was ruined by what happened that afternoon.
However, I was very fortunate when I was a teenager to find a passion for philosophy, which I have pursued all my life, becoming an expert in the work that was done by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. In 1883, Nietzsche wrote a book called Thus Spoke Zarathustra that has stumped everyone who has tried to read it. No one has figured out how to read it. When I was still a teenager, I discovered that it was an entirely new art form called dithyrambic drama and that it was written in a new form of writing called dithyrambic music, which, simply put, is a literary representation of human will, comprised of certain cultivated hopes and desires that are transliterated into gesticulative metaphors, whose rendition and embodiment leads the reader through a journey within himself into the deepest parts of his subconscious, wherein he struggles to free himself from the grip of his demons. And, as he succeeds, which is also taught by the “music,” he ascends to a highly illuminative and redemptive state of mind that renders all his suffering meaningful and worthwhile.
I am the only person, living or dead, who, one, discovered this new art form, two, learned how to read and practice dithyrambic music, and, three, undertook and completed the journey. And that is how I learned what had happened to me, and that is also how I learned to move beyond it.
And finally, that’s why I suffered so much when other boys who had undergone the same experience as me went on to build successful lives and I wallowed in fear and humiliation for decades afterward. It was so that I could learn the reason for suffering and find the good that is meant to come from it and then teach it to others, which is what I have done — with two books, both of which you can peruse on Amazon (with the keywords “James Chester philosophy”), if you are so inclined.
The problem now, in addition to my inability thus far to achieve prosecution of this crime, is that the decades‑long cover up by the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston has been extended to prevent my work as a writer from succeeding. And the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and their friends have undertaken a persecution that is ruthless in its thoroughness and even in the trivial details. What we have here is an epic, biblical battle between good and evil, nothing less, all of which is being enabled by nothing more than a wayward coverup.
In addition to threatening me with “death” and “murder,” they hacked into my home phone, my cell phone, my website, and my personal computer, repeatedly, deliberately leaving telltale clues so that I knew they had done it, and took control of my communications with the outside world, effectively preventing people from contacting me, and shutting down a small computer repair business that had provided me a livable income. And when my landlord moved to evict me, they persuaded someone at Lawrence District Court to waylay my answer papers, effectively expediting my eviction, again, making sure I knew they had done it. And one of the most egregious things they did was to threaten financial injury upon a philanthropic organization that was about to award me a very generous allowance for the purpose of supporting my writing. None of this will end until the cover up is defeated. And the loss will be suffered by anyone who is condemned to suffer without hope — forever, as I was. But the real injustice will lay in the fact that hope was actually found and then subsequently extinguished by a privileged exemption from justice.
But consider also the effects of this cover up upon the children presently attending the various Boys and Girls Clubs around Boston.
Pedophilia at the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston has been actively promoted for a very long time, so I allege. And as proof of that activity, consider the enclosed photographs of boys at the Charlestown Boys Club, which were published in the 60s by the Club‑owned and publicly distributed Charlestown Patriot newspaper. One of those photographs actually shows a boy’s private area (enclosure #2, back row, second from right). And they published it in the community newspaper! What red‑blooded pedophile wouldn’t have signed up to volunteer after seeing those photographs?
And, in fact, at least one very dangerous pedophile was indeed working at the Charlestown Boys Club in the 60s. Edward Darragh worked there at least through the 50s and 60s, despite having been publicly accused of rape prior to his employment. Mr. Darragh was a serial child rapist who was eventually sentenced to and served a life sentence in prison at Souza-Baranowski for his crimes against children.
And please consider the enclosed photographs of the Jordan gym at the Charlestown Boys Club. They show the equipment room where I was brutalized alongside the other twelve boys that fateful afternoon in 1963. Please notice the two windows on either side of the doorway entrance to that room. In the later photograph, you can see that one of the windows has been removed. That room was actually partitioned, so that one side of the room was secluded from the other. Looking through the window on one side showed nothing of the other side. And removing the window that had been installed after what happened in 1963, in fact, reinstated complete seclusion on that side of the partitioned room. And it is that side of the room, where the later picture shows the window has been removed, where we were assaulted.
Most incredibly, I wrote to the members of the board of directors of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston and told them what had happened to me in 1963, and despite their knowing about the danger, it happened again shortly afterward, when, according to Ralph Martin’s office and the Boston Globe, Brendan Coleman was charged with sexual assault, including rape of a child, at locations that were cited variously as a “secluded area” and a “gym” and “the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club.” The Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston denies that Brendan Coleman committed any assaults at the Charlestown clubhouse, and they accused me of knowing the Boston Globe story was false and deliberately lying about in my letter to their board members. They insist that sitting board member and seasoned prosecutor Ralph Martin erred in his identification of the location of a crime scene involving the sexual assault of a child at the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club. But they have not refuted Mr. Coleman’s friend, “Chuck” Miller, who knew Brendan Coleman for 10 years, as reported by the Boston Globe on October 21, 2000, and stated that Mr. Coleman “was involved in all kinds of different youth organizations” and volunteered and worked “in almost every organization.” Just not the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston, according to the Club’s attorneys.
I would bet my life that the “secluded area of the Charlestown Boys and Girls Club,” despite the Globe’s later retraction, was the same office in the Jordan Gym where I was brutally and sadistically raped nearly four decades earlier.
And please consider also the comments made by the ‘90s director of the Charlestown BGCB, Gerald “Jerry” Steimel who stated explicitly that he saw fear in the eyes of children who were directed to the gym for exercises, but that “nothing ever happened on [his] watch,” decades after what happened to me.
Lastly, there is a reason, as you must know, why there is no statute of limitation for the crime of forcefully raping a child, in contrast to the absence of force, where there is limitation. It is because of the decimation of sensibility and the unfathomable terror suffered by the child. And my life is a very good demonstration of that suffering. If there were any doubt as to the guilt of the accused, I might begin to try and understand not pursuing a prosecution. But there is no doubt. And there are numerous witnesses today who can confirm that guilt, and, two, at least, who already have.
Unlike every single case of child sexual abuse that has been brought forward since the Father Porter case, this was not a crime motivated by sexual gratification. This was an especially sadistic crime that was thought out and brutally perpetrated specifically to inflict lasting pain and suffering — upon a child, and roomful at that. And that is what ensued. In this instance, justice begs to speak out over a coverup!
I would appreciate it if someone in your office would get back to me with a determination as to whether this crime is prosecutable and, if it is, whether or not they would be willing to proceed. If it is not prosecutable or if they are unwilling to proceed with a prosecution, I would be grateful for an explanation of that as well, most certainly.
Finally, it should not be difficult to understand why I fear for my life in this fight, and I am not referring just to the threats of “murder” and “death” that came from the Charlestown Boys Club in January 2000, so I allege. The coverup that I mentioned has become quite entrenched and pervasive throughout corporate America, especially within Big Tech, and even within the City of London, where power is absolute. Most significantly, with my publication this year of two books that have brought a sector of academia to my doorstep, I now have a stage from which to broadcast my plea for justice, and a break in tension is inevitable, if not imminent. If anything happens to me, please know that it was senior Club directors Jack Connors, John Fish, and Michael Bronner who did it.
Thank you very much.
Sincerely yours,
//signed//
James Chester Enclosures (7)
The reader can view the enclosures, which are photographs, by reading the rest of the story here on this website.
Rachel Rollins’ office did not write back. But on January 7 of 2020, Victims Advocate Brittany Doherty telephoned me, and a forensic interview was scheduled immediately. I went through the interview with eight professionals on a Zoom meeting on January 10, 2020. The interviewer was Jackie Lamont, and she was a professional forensic interviewer. When they were done, they took a long time to deliberate, but came back and told me they were opening an investigation. That took me twenty years to achieve, and I was elated.
Six weeks after the investigation opened, senior members of the board of directors of the Boys and Girls Clubs of Boston knew about it. And I wrote to Ms. Doherty and told her that information was being leaked. A few days after that, both Michael Power and James Power knew about it. And I told the DA about that, too. ADA Goldhaber seemed genuinely dumbfounded, like she didn’t know what to say or think, stating “We haven’t contacted anyone yet.”
Corroborating witness Edmund Moussally told me in December of 2000 when I met him at the Food Court at Boston’s Pru that he knew about the incident the day after it happened and that he didn’t work the day it happened. And he named “James” as one of the perpetrators, without saying the last name, which he deliberately withheld from me. Moussally got scared after telling me so much and shut down completely. But he spoke by phone also with Boston Globe reporter Jamal Watson and told him “it may have happened.”
When Boston Police contacted him, Mr. Moussally, who was waiting for the call, told investigators that he knew noting about it and had never told me otherwise, thus calling me a liar.
James Power very expectedly denied any involvement whatsoever and went further to say that he had nothing to do with the Boys Club summer camp, which should be easy to prove or disprove.
Michael Power, as was also expected — and predicted, refused to answer any questions at all. He also refused two letters I sent him, and they were returned to me.
A similar letter I sent to James Power, who was the ringleader and instigator of a brutal and sadistic sexual assault upon a roomful of terrified children, was stolen, right out of the USPS.
Boston Police Detective Jeffrey Firnstein left the Crimes Against Children Unit, which I do not believe was a coincidence, and his supervisor, Sgt. Det. Pamela Harris refused to return my calls or reply to my letters, thus shutting down the investigation.
Victims Advocate Brittany Doherty disappeared off the face of the map. No one even told me after she was gone. And when I called the DA’s Advocacy office and requested a replacement, they refused me, twice.
So what we have here is an investigation of the rape of children at the Charlestown Boys Club in 1963 that was thwarted by the leak of information from within Suffolk County DA Rachael Rollin’s office in 2020.
The real kicker happened in May of 2022 when I discovered that one of the potential victims whom I named to trusted investigators was leaked, and the Club’s attorneys had contacted him. I know it was the Club’s attorneys because ADA Alissa Goldhaber told me explicitly, twice, that she would never contact them.
It got me thinking if maybe the whole “investigation” had really been a ruse to get information and then quickly leak it. If it was a ruse, it wasn’t the first.
A filmaker once contacted me and offered to support me, provided I agreed with him when he said to me “I’ll need to see everything you’ve got,” and then disappeared when he discovered I didn’t have much. (That changed quickly.) It turns out he made commercials for a board member’s local meat company.
Another time, a fellow called me who was very anxious to authenticate himself as a fellow Boys Club survivor, begging me for the names of other victims. I didn’t trust him and thought he was another ruse, so I said no.
In November of 2022, I decided I had to do something to get things going again, so I wrote to US Attorney General Merrick Garland. That in itself was a Herculean task as the first letter was stolen out of the USPS system and I had to try four more times before finally getting the letter delivered in March of 2023, five months after I made the first attempt.
The letter came into the DOJ one month before the Inspector General’s investigation of Rachael Rollins concluded in April. Then in May, Rachael Rollins announced her decision to resign. When I heard the news on May 15th, that she was resigning because she ran her office like an agenda-driven ward boss and leaked “non-public” information, the first thing I wondered was if she had played me.
And so I ask the question, did Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins leak an investigation into child rape at the Charlestown Boys Club in 1963 in order to thwart the investigation and obstruct justice? Because I think she did.