Boston mayor: Release investigation into officer accused of abuse

BOSTON — Redacted copies of an internal affairs investigation into a former Boston police officer and union chief charged with molesting multiple children as far back as the mid-1990s will be released as soon as the end of the week, Acting Mayor Kim Janey said Tuesday.

Patrick Rose Sr., 66, a retired officer and the one-time president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, was initially charged last August when a father and his teenage daughter reported that the girl had been repeatedly molested by Rose from age 7 through 12.

“I have directed the city’s law department to immediately review Patrick Rose’s internal affairs file and redact any information that could compromise the identities of the sexual assault or domestic violence victims,” Janey said during a press conference.

Janey said she hopes to make those documents public by week’s end.

“The victims of these appalling crimes must be protected, but transparency cannot wait any longer,” she added.

Five more people have since come forward to accuse Rose of molesting them as children. The Boston Police Department in 1995 filed a criminal complaint against Rose for sexual assault on a 12-year-old child, The Boston Globe reported Sunday.

The criminal complaint was eventually dropped, but an internal investigation concluded that Rose likely committed a crime. He was allowed to stay on the force, and was often sent to respond

to cases involving children.

Boston police have refused to release records pertaining to the 1995 case.

Rose has pleaded not guilty to 33 total charges involving six alleged victims and is being held on $200,000 cash bail.

Rose’s lawyer, William J. Keefe, has said Rose “maintains his innocence to all of the charges that have been brought against him and he maintains his innocence to what was alleged to have transpired back in 1995.”

The Boston Police Department has said in a statement said it was legally prohibited from commenting on the 1995 investigation of these “horrific allegations.”

Janey said that “the likes of Patrick Rose will not be protected on my watch.”

“As a mother and as a grandmother I was heartbroken and angry to learn that nothing was done to keep Mr. Rose away from children or to terminate him for that matter after serious charges were found to be credible” by an internal affairs probe in 1995, she said.

Janey, who is Black, last month became the first woman and first person of color to assume the office of mayor in Boston after former Mayor Marty Walsh became President Joe Biden’s labor secretary.

She plans to run for the office in the fall. She faces several other candidates. some of whom weighed in on the Rose situation.

City Councilor Michelle Wu on Monday faulted the mayor’s office for not acting faster to release internal affairs records.

“This a horrific breach of public trust, and it continues to this day with the administration’s refusal to release internal affairs records,” the mayoral candidate said in a statement Monday without naming Janey.

Fellow city councilor and mayoral candidate Andrea Campbell was more direct in her criticism of Janey.

“Every minute of delay further erodes public trust and denies victims justice. Acting Mayor Janey should release these records immediately,” Campbell said in a statement Monday.

Suffolk District Attorney Rachael Rollins said in a statement Tuesday that the individuals who have come forward against Rose “deserve the privacy protections that our Massachusetts laws guarantee them as victims of sexual assault.”