Two victims of child rapist Patrick Rose Sr. have filed suit against him, the City of Boston, the police union, the state Department of Children and Families and more than two dozen other named and unnamed individuals they say allowed the abuse to happen.
Rose, who was the president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association from 2014 to 2018, pleaded guilty last year to 21 counts of child rape and sexual assault that occurred over a 27-year period.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Boston on Thursday, from plaintiffs John Doe and Jane Doe, along with a spouse, states that Rose abused both the victim plaintiffs through the 1990s and that he also abused four minor family members from at least 1990 through 2020.
DCF, however, received its first complaint that Rose was sexually abusing a child in 1992, 30 years before Rose’s guilty plea. It was while he was under investigation for such abuse, the lawsuit’s complaint states, that Rose was first hired as a police officer.
And DCF would receive another report of Rose’s sexual abuse in November of 1995, this time against “John Doe,” one of the plaintiffs who was abused by Rose from 1990 through 1997 when the boy was between eight and 14 years old. “Jane Doe,” the other victim plaintiff, was abused from approximately 1990 through 1999, when she was between 5 and 14 years old.
Rose was arrested and charged with indecent assault on a child and placed on administrative leave before the Suffolk District Attorney’s office dismissed the charges, “purportedly because the victim was unwilling to testify.”
The BPD’s Internal Affairs Division sustained the complaint, but then-BPD Commissioner Paul Evans, who is named as a defendant in the suit, “did not discipline or terminate Rose.” The lawsuit states that he instead bowed to pressure from the union and reinstated Rose.
“For the next 23 years, Rose worked as a police officer rising through the ranks of the BPD and the union, all the while continuing to sexually abuse John Doe,” the complaint written by attorneys Patrick Driscoll and Janine Kutylo states.
“Due to the complete failure of the BPD and DCF, Rose was not terminated from the police department, and avoided criminal charges, incarceration, restraining orders, therapy, and child custody restrictions,” the complaint continues. “Because the BPD and DCF did nothing, Rose was emboldened and escalated his abuse against John Doe and Jane Doe and extended the abuse to additional child victims.”
The lawsuit from the now-adult victims seeks not only compensatory and punitive damages from Patrick Rose Sr. and the other defendants, but also seeks the implementation of additional training protocols for employees of the city, Boston Police Department and the DCF to prevent future abuse and “effectively punish” the conduct that allowed the abuse to happen.
When Rose pleaded guilty last year, Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden called the abuse “monstrous, monstrous acts” following the guilty plea, and current BPPA President Larry Calderone echoed the sentiment.
“While there is no punishment or condemnation too severe for a man guilty of the atrocious crimes committed by Pat Rose, we hope today’s decision will bring with it some small level of comfort, closure and vindication for the victims and their families,” he said that day.
Calderone could not immediately be reached for comment Thursday evening and Ricardo Patron, the press secretary for Mayor Michelle Wu, said the city would not be commenting on current litigation.
