The Boston Phoenix
June 15 - 22, 2000

[Features]

Media

The mother of all denials

by Dan Kennedy

RALPH MARTIN: easing up on hate crimes?

The Boston Globe on Monday led with a startling and disturbing story. Staff writer Judy Rakowsky reported that Suffolk County district attorney Ralph Martin has deliberately scaled back the prosecution of racially motivated hate crimes since being appointed to the DA's position in 1993. And she presented the numbers to back it up: though the number of reported hate crimes rose by 57 percent between 1993 and 1999, the number of cases that led to criminal charges dropped by 56 percent. Worse, Rakowsky asserted that Martin -- a black Republican -- beat back a challenge by white Democrat Gerry Malone in 1994 in part by promising South Boston community activists to transfer several members of the Boston Police Department's Community Disorders Unit (CDU), mockingly known in parts of Southie as the "Caucasian Detention Unit."

But though Rakowsky's report appears solid and troubling, there remains a nagging question. Martin spokesman Jim Borghesani adamantly insists that he never, ever said anything remotely like the words attributed to him in Rakowsky's article, in which he allegedly promised two South Boston activists in 1994 that Martin would defang the CDU. Of course, denials of unfortunate outbursts are hardly unusual, and Rakowsky dutifully recorded Borghesani's side in her first piece and in follow-ups on Tuesday and Wednesday. Still, this goes beyond what's typical in such cases. Borghesani and Martin both insist the event where Borghesani supposedly shot off his mouth never even took place. Borghesani also says he's never stepped foot inside or anywhere near the club where the event occurred (or didn't occur). And several other alleged participants back him up.

"It's the first time in my career that I've had my name attached to an utterly fictitious quote uttered at an utterly fictitious meeting that followed a fictitious event," an angry Borghesani charges. Of the setting -- the former Bayside Club, now the Seaside -- he adds, "I've never been in that building. I've never been outside that building. The closest I've been is watching the Bulger St. Patrick's Day breakfast on TV. I don't even know where it is."

According to the Globe article, Borghesani was approached at a "candidate's night at the Bayside Club in October 1994" by two leaders of the Old Colony Tenant Task Force, Maureen Berry and Willie Tierney, who asked him what could be done about the CDU. Rakowsky reported that Berry recalled Borghesani as saying, "Vote for my guy and they'll be transferred." Rakowsky reported that Tierney did not remember the meeting but added, "If Maureen said it happened, then it did." And she wrote that a "Boston law enforcement official who asked not to be named said Berry and Tierney separately informed him of the exchange with Borghesani shortly after it happened."

On Wednesday, Rakowsky reported that Martin, during a speech at Northeastern University, attempted to discredit Berry and Tierney by calling them "hatemongers in South Boston." Offstage, though, Berry and Tierney were actually lending credence to Borghesani's denial -- and, thus, to Martin's side.

In an interview with the Phoenix, Berry not only denied having supplied the Borghesani quote to Rakowsky, but also insisted that she had no recollection of meeting Borghesani, either in 1994 or at any other time. (Likewise, Borghesani denies ever having met Berry.) "I never said it. She didn't even misquote me -- it's just a total, total lie. I'm willing to take a polygraph over it," says Berry of Rakowsky, adding that she fears the words attributed to her will come back to haunt her teenage son, who's serving probation for his role in a racial incident. (Rakowsky reported on Wednesday that Berry "hung up on a reporter" when asked to comment on Martin's "hatemonger" remark.)

Tierney, too, claims that Rakowsky twisted his words. "There was no meeting. I told her [Rakowsky] that," he says. "I told her, 'Don't try to put words in my mouth.' I was never there, and if there was a meeting I would've heard about it." (Rakowsky's Wednesday story acknowledged that Tierney denies having participated in such a meeting.)

Borghesani says that Rakowsky, when interviewing him, told him that Mike Flaherty -- then Martin's South Boston coordinator, now an at-large city councilor -- was also a witness to the Bayside exchange. Yet Flaherty, too, denies it, and says he doesn't believe Borghesani even stepped foot in South Boston during the campaign. "I was at every single community event in South Boston on the campaign trail with the district attorney. Jim Borghesani would have never been there," says Flaherty. "Very rarely did Jim come out of headquarters." Flaherty -- like Tierney -- also asserts that no "candidate's night" was ever held at the Bayside during 1994, a time when it was undergoing renovations, although he says Martin may have dropped in at an event for another politician being held in the upstairs function room.

Rakowsky declines to discuss the specifics of Borghesani's complaint, saying, "We just stand by the story. I don't see why I need to get into a detailed back-and-forth." Deputy managing editor Ben Bradlee, who oversaw the piece, says that Rakowsky has Berry's recollection of Borghesani's comment in her notes, on the record, backed up by the anonymous law-enforcement official who says he heard both Berry and Tierney describe the incident "contemporaneously." Bradlee says he knows the identity of the anonymous source, and is confident that he's telling the truth.

"I'm sticking by my reporter. We're satisfied that it did happen," Bradlee says. "It's something that's very low in the story. It's a very tangential point in the story. The main point of the story is numbers -- the whole retooling of the CDU. That's the core of the story."

Indeed. And it was ironic that the forum at which Martin chose to denounce Berry and Tierney was a 20th-anniversary celebration of the state's hate-crime law. Ultimately, it may prove impossible to tell whether Jim Borghesani did or didn't utter the words attributed to him -- although the number of witnesses who back his version may be telling.

Nevertheless, Rakowsky's reporting has unearthed real problems in the way hate crimes are dealt with in Suffolk County. As Boston NAACP president Leonard Alkins told Rakowsky, "There is a serious problem here." And that is the overriding point.