TEEN CHARGED WITH HATE CRIME, ASSAULT
Man says he was terrorized for being gay
A Framingham teen was charged with assault and hate crimes after a 50-yearold man claimed the youth starved and terrorized him over four days in a church basement because he is gay, according to investigators.
When police first encountered the accuser Saturday night, they said he was bloodied, barefoot and told them “he had escaped from a church’s basement where he was kept against his will for four days,” according to documents at Framingham District Court, where Jackson Sugrue, 19, pleaded not guilty Monday to charges of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon, assault, witness intimidation and committing a hate crime.
The accuser told investigators he and Sugrue had smoked crack in the basement of Philadelphia Baptist Church in Framingham. While they were not in a dating relationship, Sugrue “used him for favors of borrowing clothes, a place to sleep from time to time, and money because Mr. Sugrue knew that (the accuser) really liked him,” according to a police report.
The man had been sleeping at the church for three weeks while looking for more permanent housing, according to court documents. Sugrue, meanwhile, shared his parents’ home near the Belknap Pool and Tennis Club and is the product of a private education, his mother told the Herald.
The accuser said the teen became “crazy and very dangerous” once they began doing drugs June 27. Over the next four days, he said Sugrue denied him food, water and the use of his cellphone, bashed him over the head with a coffee table and stepped on his neck after repeatedly screaming at him, “I know you like me. I know you are gay.” Sugrue never told him he couldn’t leave and he never tried to, he told police, but only because he was afraid Sugrue “would harm him or maybe even kill him.” When asked to describe his alleged abuser, the accuser told officers, “He is beautiful with a beautiful body.”
Sugrue is free on $1,000 cash bail pending his next court date Aug. 1 and is receiving medical care for the incident. Teresa Sugrue told the Herald the experience left her son “traumatized.” At the time of his arrest Saturday, he was on pretrial probation for allegedly stealing a $500 bicycle last year from a woman filling out a pizza-delivery job application.
“It’s a hell that we’re living in,” Teresa Sugrue said. “It’s a one-sided story. We’re helpers, we’re not haters.” She said her son met the man in downtown Framingham and at one point discussed sharing an apartment until she and her husband became uncomfortable with the friendship and the age difference and asked him to stop seeing the man.
“This is a person that we tried to help, that we gave rides to work to, that I bought dishes and glasses for. We even paid this guy’s electric bill,” she said of the accuser. “The bottom line is, my son shouldn’t have gone into the basement with (the man), but it was someone he trusted. He is a heartfelt child. He finds the wrong people to be with. It’s a story every mother has. He had a connection with this gentleman that I just don’t understand.”