A recent article in the Concord Monitor regarding Primo “Howie” Leung, the Rundlett Middle School and Concord High School teacher who was arrested for sexual assault on April 3rd, 2019, should be setting off alarm bells in New Hampshire and Massachusetts.
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Four years after his initial arrest, he has yet to be prosecuted in New Hampshire, and his trial in Massachusetts has been delayed a sixth time. He is being prosecuted in Massachusetts because Concord (New Hampshire) Police Detectives Julie Curtin and Sean Ford claimed that his “victim,” Fabiana McLeod, was repeatedly sexually assaulted at the Fessenden private boarding school in Massachusetts while he was teaching there during the summer and she was assisting.
After Howie Leung’s arrest, an independent investigation into Concord School District’s alleged cover-ups was launched. Originally Robin Melone of Wadleigh Starr & Peters PLLC had been hired for the investigation.
But the school board dropped Robin Melone due to her role in defending St Paul’s School’s graduate Owen Labrie for his retrial hearing and NH Supreme Court Appeals (both denied after Congresswoman Ann Kuster made sure to insert her public influence at strategic junctures to steer judicial outcome).
Instead, Djuna Perkins, with a solo practice, completed the report on the Concord Schools. It was heavily redacted. She had been a prosecutor in Massachusetts and received a one-star rating in reviews but she spoke on NPR in 2014 regarding “consent” in campus sexual assault cases.
Mark Rufo, also of Wadleigh Starr & Peters PLLC, filed a suit against the Concord School District on behalf of Fabiana McLeod, which settled for $545,000. It would appear that the basis for this lawsuit relied primarily on the April 3rd affidavit and statements of Concord Police Detectives Julie Curtin and Sean Ford.
The essence of the Brady violation in Labrie’s trial had been that the prosecutor had made a statement to the judge about a deal made with a state witness (Labrie’s roommate, Andrew Thomson — son of Lucy Hodder, then Governor Maggie Hassan’s legal counsel) which, had it been known to the defendant and the jury, would have perjured this witness. Detective Julie Curtin had referred to this witness’s (perjury) statement in her affidavit, which she used for an arrest warrant in the Labrie investigation. The prosecutor admitted to the judge that she knew of a deal that had been made with the witness, but she believed that the police didn’t know about the deal. The state sealed this conversation at the time. It was unsealed months later and should have immediately put Julie Curtin on the Laurie list of corrupt police officers and disbarred the prosecutor. Neither happened.
Curiously, the first statement about Howie Leung’s arrest seems to appear on the New Hampshire Department of Education’s site with Tony Schinella as the contact.
Tony Schinella is also a reporter for the Concord Patch, which put out the first announcement of Owen Labrie’s arrest in July 2014 — updated and edited in 2018, right around the date of the Prout family’s civil suit settlement with St Paul’s School. Other reports originally mentioned “a ring of boys,” which then got removed. All the legacy kids’ names disappeared, leaving just the scholarship student as the lonesome boogeyman.
Tony Schinella reported several times about the Howie Leung case. Who was supplying him with the narrative and why? The police file on Howie Leung pretty much ended in April 2019, right after he was arrested — according to the Concord Monitor articles. There are no moves to prosecute him in New Hampshire even though his arrest was made in the State after an investigation by Concord police.
Primex (New Hampshire Public Risk Management Group), the insurer for Concord School district, shelled out $1–1.5 million for civil claims filed by Mark Rufo/Wadleigh Starr & Peters PLLC, according to news reports, although precious little official documentation on this is publicly available. The board members of Primex are board members of Public School Districts, including Concord’s. Why would a public school district’s insurance exchange pay out such large sums of money prior to proof of a crime having been committed that wasn’t even worthy of prosecution in New Hampshire? Concord Police and the NHCADSV as well as Wadleigh Starr & Peters PLLC, and the DA of Merrimack County were all aware of Police Detective Julie Curtin’s credibility issues. Wouldn’t they want to do due diligence — for the credibility of their own profession as much as anything else?
A “Howie Leung Loophole” law was passed, and recently, a female teacher was arrested and charged under it.
The teacher came from a private school — a school with deep pockets like St. Paul’s, like the Fessenden School, like Dartmouth College, like Phillips Exeter Academy, which have all been hit with civil suits seeking millions. Linking each of these cases, you can find the NHCADSV and/or Concord Police Detective Julie Curtin, who is trained in “best practices” by the NHCADSV.
Julie Curtin’s investigation/witness payment budget is approved by the City of Concord Public Safety Committee, chaired by Amanda Grady Sexton, the Director of Public Affairs for the NHCADSV, whose bio states that she works with police and prosecutors to shape the narrative pretrial. One of the civil attorneys she worked with on the St. Paul’s and Dartmouth suits states that they get in front of the Associated Press and arrange creative ways to get the message out when the “victims” can’t. One of their methods is to use 3rd party “experts” such as Dr. David Lisak, whose statistics he debunked himself, but that doesn’t seem to matter.
The NHCADSV appears to receive 20% of each civil suit settlement and the attorneys collect 35% of each settlement. It’s a lucrative business and when lies travel faster than the truth, fast bucks can be made while defendants get forgotten for years as the wheels of justice get hindered by money-grabbing political moves.
Convictions Based on Lies: Defining Due Process Protection
Truth has very little to do with the process: Concord Police Detective Julie Curtin refers the selected “victims” (many victims of domestic violence and sexual assault have reported being completely ignored by both police and the NHCADSV) to the civil attorneys and the NHCADSV. She must have had a financial incentive to spend her days, months and years investigating St Paul’s School and Concord School District while ignoring claims of sex abuse where there’s no prospect of a kick-back. If there’s no financial reward involved, it’s not worth bothering with.
It looks as though there is a system of kick-backs from the civil attorneys who rely on Police Detective Julie Curtin’s statements for blackmailing schools into lucrative settlements. It helps that Amanda Grady Sexton’s husband is the political director and reporter for WMUR while Debra Altshiller’s (HAVEN)’s husband, Howard Altschiller, was chair of the New Hampshire Press Association. It also helped when Gordon MacDonald was Attorney General and blocked the release of names of dishonest police on the Laurie List. Geoffrey Ward, assistant Attorney General, made sure to delete the files of 28 corrupt police officers before the Laurie list was ordered to be made public. One of the names that briefly appeared on the public list was that of New Hampshire’s top sex crimes investigator: James F McLaughlin — who taught others of his unlawful tactics, which included federal entrapment and lies. Father Gordon MacRae is languishing in Concord Prison 28 years after he was framed by McLaughlin. He is unable to get justice because from top to bottom of New Hampshire’s justice system, too many people are compromised by the money that was involved in framing him and extorting the Diocese of Manchester. They literally cannot afford for the truth to come out. Payments were made to witnesses to frame Father Gordon MacRae — per several reports — but evidently, judges and prosecutors don’t seem to care, so we must presume they, too, are getting rewards.
Chessy Prout stated in her “memoir” with an introduction by Congresswoman Ann Kuster and co-authored by Boston Globe’s Jenn Abelson- that Detective Julie Curtin told her to “not worry about the details” and to not discuss what had happened with Owen Labrie with anyone, not even her mother.
Julie Curtin’s method seems to be to fabricate as she goes along and hope everyone gets out having made a few million without having to go to trial and get exposed. It is likely for this reason that Concord Police Chief refused to give St Paul’s School alum Lacy Crawford her student file, which Julie Curtin had obtained without a warrant, and then refused to give it to its rightful owner. What is Concord Police Chief Bradley Osgood hiding?
And where is all the money going? It transpires New Hampshire is home to $932.5 billion in Pandora Papers hidden accounts — shell non-profits, shell companies, and trusts.
After the lawsuits against Concord School District following Howie Leung’s arrest were settled, another lawsuit was filed against the Fessenden School in Massachusetts. That lawsuit was dismissed by a judge in August 2022. It failed to meet the most basic standards required to move forward. I understand that the lawsuit also relied on information from Concord Police Detective Julie Curtin’s and Sean Ford’s original statements in April 2019. Those statements included allegations of sexual assault in other states that have declined to prosecute. Could it be that the statements were fabricated to guilt schools & their insurers into coughing up millions for ambulance chasers receiving a referral from Concord Police?
There has been no further action taken against Howie Leung by Paul Halvorsen, DA for Merrimack County, Concord New Hampshire. Halvorsen was endorsed as a candidate by the NHCADSV and he used to be a board member on the City of Concord Council. Coincidentally, he shares the same last name as Truna Halvorsen who allegedly made a complaint about Howie Leung but was never interviewed for Djuna Perkins’ report. This article is also by Tony Schinella of the Concord Patch:
Concord Police Lt. Sean Ford said investigators were aware of Halverson’s claims but he said he could not speak about the Leung case since it was an open investigation.
Halverson was not questioned by the Concord School District’s private investigator, Djuna Perkins of DP Law, a former Boston prosecutor.
Howie Leung’s trial in Massachusetts has been delayed until the fall of 2023. Concord Police Detective Julie Curtin no longer works for the City of Concord’s police. She’s moved to Epping police department. She and Sean Ford were the police officers who were the investigators for the Attorney General’s Grand Jury Criminal Investigation into St Paul’s School after he’d been lobbied by the NHCADSV. That report was ordered to be kept private despite the school’s waiver of privacy. It yielded several civil suits.
The NHCADSV’s legal counsel, David Vicinanzo, praised Judge Richard McNamara’s decision to keep it private. The NHCADSV benefited from several civil suits and a contract with the school.
Transparency doesn’t suit the public officials’ shady enterprise. After extorting the Diocese of Manchester, St Paul’s School, Phillips Exeter Academy, Dartmouth College, Concord School District, and Fessenden School for nebulous claims, I wonder who the next target will be.