Victims Of Sexual Abuse By Ex-Boston Cop Sue DCF, BPD

BOSTON, MA — Two of the victims of disgraced Boston police officer Patrick Rose Sr., 68, who pleaded guilty last year to molesting six children, have filed a lawsuit claiming that the state's Department of Children and Families and Boston Police Department did not take proper action despite knowing allegations of abuse against Rose, the Boston Globe reported Thursday.

According to the lawsuit, which was filed at US District Court in Boston and reviewed by the Globe, the DCF investigated Rose for sexual abuse in the early 1990s, but did not take steps to prevent him from having contact with children.

Rose went on to become a police officer in 1994, and in 1995, the agency investigated him again. At that time, while they “concluded that the evidence supported the allegation that Rose sexually abused” a boy, they failed again to take the proper next steps, the lawsuit said.

Even after a police internal investigation determined the abuse allegations credible, and the city’s Office of Labor Relations later upheld those findings, Rose was allowed to remain on the force for around 20 years, according to the lawsuit.

Read the full report in The Boston Globe.

After initially maintaining his innocence, in April 2022, Rose pleaded guilty to 33 charges in connection with the rape and abuse of at least six children, spanning decades that first started in the 1990s.

Rose retired from the Boston Police Department in 2018. After the allegations came forward in 2020, then-Boston Mayor Kim Janey released 14 redacted pages of documents related to the internal affairs investigations against Rose. She also issued a statement calling the department's handling of the situation "deeply unsettling."

"Based on a review of former Officer Rose's internal affairs file conducted by the City's Law Department, it is clear that previous leaders of the police department neglected their duty to protect and serve," Janey wrote at the time.

"He actually swore an oath to protect victims from harm, instead he was preying on and harming our most vulnerable and innocent, young children," U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins previously said of Rose. "This behavior is unconscionable."

Haley Cornell contributed reporting.