Running for re-election in the City of Concord as an “at-large council member”
Here is a link to Amanda Grady Sexton’s profile for her re-election campaign to the City of Concord.
I was pretty shocked to see a “No” as her answer to the question asking if any family member of hers worked in politics or government.
In addition, instead of naming her employer, the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic & Sexual Violence (NHCADSV), she merely states that she works for a non-profit helping victims of crime. (This may be due to the fact that she finally admitted, in 2023, to Concord’s new mayor, that she had a conflict of interest with the Central Crisis Center for New Hampshire (CCNH) because she worked for the parent organization. Or it could be because Dem Rep Ellen Read has filed an LSR relating to: “establishing a committee to investigate the New Hampshire Coalition Against Domestic Violence& Sexual Violence and requiring funding only be provided for the direct services materially benefiting survivors of sexual and domestic assault.” (2026-3062).
The profile also lists all of Amanda’s previous and present positions, many of which are directly tied to the Government. The NHCADSV is over 99% funded by the Government. It is the Government, even though it calls itself an NGO. It is also a Government Contractor for the Department of Defense, complete with a Federal CAGE number.
Here is some fact-checking and other information that is lacking in Amanda Grady Sexton’s profile on Patch.
On one of Amanda’s bios, she includes the following:
“In 2016, Politico named Amanda one of “the most plugged-in activists and elected officials” in NH, and the Boston Globe called her one of NH’s “most desirable endorsements for candidates seeking the Presidency”.
Indeed, Amanda Grady Sexton is still listed on Senator Jeanne Shaheen’s re-election campaign committee board of directors, which she established in May 2014.
The NHCADSV, her employer, weighs in on bills in the State House and is involved in writing them as well as lobbying for or against others. She is deeply involved in this process. It’s political.
According to statements she has made, she “has provided national training to prosecutors, civil attorneys, law enforcement officials and victims advocates on crisis communications, message development, and effective strategies for working with the media”. In other words, she is an agent for the police and prosecutors, which should require her to operate under Miranda laws, which would extend to the journalists (eg, Susan Zalkind) she works with to corner the defendant.
Censorship and pretrial propaganda are Amanda’s specialty. “The Public Affairs team at NHCADSV has developed strategies for proactively working to shape the media’s coverage of crime. Publicity of any kind can be a mixed bag, but when used effectively, pretrial publicity can be a powerful tool for creating a narrative and controlling a message.”
Amanda Grady Sexton’s husband, Adam Sexton, is the Political Director at WMUR. You will notice coordination between Amanda and Adam Sexton when it comes to the coverage of sexual assault cases in New Hampshire. This presents a conflict of interest that is hard to overcome. WMUR has announced arrest warrants for high-profile criminal sexual assault cases and has been granted exclusive TV access to criminal & civil trials in which the NHCADSV and Amanda Grady Sexton have a financial or political interest.
Inside these trials, Amanda Grady Sexton has acted as a go-between for the prosecutor and witnesses for the State while also being the spokesperson for the “victim” in the media – editing out what she doesn’t think people should hear about. Since she lobbied successfully to get rid of the word “alleged” before “victim”, the consequences are significant.
“Amanda Grady Sexton, public policy director for the New Hampshire Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence, pointed to the dangers of live reporting, noting that reporters “don’t have that opportunity for editors to weigh in on important journalistic decisions.”
“It is very likely that things are being published that wouldn’t have otherwise made it to print because a discussion would have taken place about what is the fair thing to report,” she said,”
“We have an opportunity to set the tone for the national press about our expectations.”
Regardless of where you stand on sexual assault trials or victims’ rights, I believe that we can all agree that rigging criminal cases for lobby interests of Amanda Grady Sexton and the NHCADSV is a dangerous activity and works directly against the rights of citizens laid out in New Hampshire’s constitution. Using her position on the City of Concord Council to provide herself with the platform of a public official exacerbates the problem. She has used both titles under Op-Eds, thus conflating the two positions while also influencing judicial outcomes with these.
But changing the constitution is something that Amanda has been hell bent on doing: in 2017, she had secret meetings with then Concord Mayor Jim Bouley, attorney Chuck Douglas, Lyn Schollett of the NHCADSV, and members of AG MacDonald’s office. What were these about? “Marsy’s Law,” for which she was being paid $48,000 as Executive Director, to promote. They knew they were changing the constitution to eliminate due process and the presumption of innocence, according to right-to-know emails I uncovered. Thankfully, the New Hampshire voters didn’t back the proposal. It would have been dead on arrival at the Senate had Amanda Grady Sexton not told people to ignore the news articles on Marsy’s Law sponsor, Henry T Nicholas III, who has a long history of abuse and fraud, including domestic and sexual violence, drug trafficking, and securities fraud. She stated that she felt perfectly comfortable with him and his organization and failed to report her earnings from it, in violation of NH Lobby Laws (RSA 15A).
It’s troublesome that a member of the City of Concord Council who is the Chair of the Public Safety Committee, which approves the budget for Concord Police, including payments to witnesses for Grand Jury statements, can be so influential inside the courtroom.
There must be a separation of powers between the City of Concord Council, the AG’s office and the legislature. With Amanda Grady Sexton, there is not. As much as she downplays it in her profile, there is no getting around the fact that she is working across all branches of the Government. Right to Know emails obtained from the Attorney General’s office reveal just how intertwined the NHCADSV is with the AG’s office. From her own statements, it’s clear how intertwined she and the NHCADSV are with the police, the rape crisis centers, and they refer claimants of sexual and domestic violence to their own “pro bono” civil attorneys, who then take a large percentage out of the settlements, with the NHCADSV getting a cut in some cases. With the City of Concord police being less than forthcoming about corruption in its ranks, having a City Council Member who is too close to them does not benefit the safety of the community, but rather works against it because there are no checks and balances, only favors and cover-ups. One judge was shocked to find that Concord Police paid a witness for a Grand Jury but failed to let the defense counsel know. Who would be approving these payments? Amanda Grady Sexton in her position as Chair of the Public Safety Committee.
In April 2021, Amanda and her husband paid down a large chunk of their mortgage. One wonders where the windfall came from. Just a few months earlier, the NHCADSV was a financial beneficiary in the class action lawsuit settlement for Rapuano & Does v. Dartmouth College Board of Trustees. Curiously, Judge Landya McCafferty agreed to the “cy press” award amount for the NHCADSV proposed by Steven J Kelly (Amanda’s co-author in the guide to pretrial publicity in the link above) but the amount has never been documented on the publicly visible portion of the IRS 990 for the NHCADSV. It’s estimated that it is between $2-3 million. The total settlement was $14 million, and the lawyers received $4.9 million, while the nine complainants received a measly $75-80k each, and WISE (also part of the NHCADV) received $ 500,000.
The Rapuano & Does case was in mediation in July 2019 when Amanda Grady Sexton and the NHCADSV led a very public national social media, media, and phone campaign to block ABC from airing an interview with Owen Labrie, who’d been framed for sexual assault at St Paul’s School in July 2014. It was Adam Sexton who announced the arrest. The Concord Police told him they were taking two mugshots because his name would be famous. Amanda Grady Sexton, who had penned multiple statements defaming him while promoting herself as a member of the City Council and the NHCADSV, was also involved. What she failed to mention was her own financial interest in the criminal case and her organization’s financial interest in the St Paul’s School Grand Jury Criminal investigation that followed.
Even convicted felons have the right to free speech, but not in Amanda Grady Sexton’s world. Why not? Had Owen Labrie’s interview aired in July 2019, it would have exposed the underhanded tactics of the civil attorneys she was working with, who attempted to bribe Owen Labrie for dirt on St Paul’s School while he was waiting for his appeals. In return, they offered access to exculpatory evidence, including police evidence to which they had access but to which he had been denied. Additionally, the attorney who called Labrie in August 2017 admitted that the actual victim of statutory rape at St Paul’s School was the son of the senior administrator, not his client, Chessy Prout, and not by Owen Labrie. Amanda Grady Sexton had a financial incentive to get that interview shut down – her interest in the Dartmouth settlement, which was in mediation when the show would have aired.
Truth is not Amanda’s forte. In the above link, she calls Owen Labrie “a convicted rapist” and quotes the judge for saying ‘you’re a very good liar”. She was at the trial. She knows that Owen Labrie was acquitted of felony rape and that the police admitted that everything Labrie had told them turned out to be true.
When public officials misrepresent themselves or others in media that they control, lives are put in serious danger. Owen Labrie’s life was put in so much danger by the media, which Amanda Grady Sexton and her affiliates controlled, that he had to be put in solitary confinement for his own safety because he had a “target on his head”. What did Amanda do? She wrote a statement thanking the judge.
Recently, I was invited by former Rep. Leah Cushman to speak in Concord about my discoveries regarding corruption in New Hampshire. I found out later that Amanda Grady Sexton had wanted to attend the meeting, which was oversold. It’s not that I would have minded her attending the meeting, but it is ironic that I would have had a concern for my safety had she been present. Why? Because in 2020, after I wrote to the LEACT commission about my concern with the coercion of minors in sexual assault investigations, Amanda cyberstalked me. My letter was then taken, posted on social media, and I was doxxed. Who are you supposed to call if you get cyberstalked? The NHCADSV.
Concord needs a candidate who is not so spread across branches of Government and media that public interest and safety are compromised.
