Victim: Release ‘disgusting … outrageous’
A victim of serial child rapist Wayne Chapman was stunned by a Middlesex jury’s decision to acquit him of lewdness — clearing for his release after four decades behind bars.
“That’s disgusting. That’s outrageous,” said Dan Christian, who said he was 8 years old when Chapman molested him at a 4-H youth program in Rhode Island in the 1970s. “He admitted to raping over 100 kids, little boys — he admitted to that,” Christian said. “How the hell are they going to let that guy out of jail?”
Chapman, 71, had been held on civil commitment since his last prison sentence expired in 2004. But last year two psychiatrists deemed him safe for release. The lewdness charges could have kept him behind bars for another three years had he been convicted.
Word of the verdict spread quickly among Chapman’s victims and those connected to them. It also reached the family of Angelo “Andy” Puglisi, the 10-year-old boy who disappeared from a public swimming pool in Lawrence on Aug. 21, 1976. Chapman has long been the prime suspect in that case.
Upon hearing of Chapman’s release, Melanie Perkins McLaughlin, an Emmy Award-winning documentary filmmaker who was Puglisi’s childhood friend, said, “My first and foremost thoughts are for Andy Puglisi and his family.”
McLaughlin said she spoke to Puglisi’s parents Friday afternoon, shortly after jurors announced their findings.
“They’re weary and tired and overwhelmed and sad — and not entirely surprised,” she said. “They have been getting this sort of news over the years on the regular. I don’t think anything really surprises them at this point.
“They’ve been dealing with this nightmare for 42 years,” McLaughlin said. “They’ve had to go to and listen to reports and previous hearings and the psychological background and the history of what Wayne Chapman has done to children … and they still don’t know where their 10-yearold little boy is.”
McLaughlin, who has attended many hearings involving Chapman over the years but was not in court this week, said, “To say that he’s not a sexually dangerous person — I don’t care how old he is, it’s just not accurate.”