News: Criminal records law assailed

Cape Cod Times
By Hilary Russ
STAFF WRITER
November 09, 2007


BOSTON — With deeply personal stories, two Cape mothers testified on Beacon Hill this week hoping to change state laws that cover access to criminal records.

Dr. Maryanne Bombaugh and Heidi Scott-Reynolds, both of Falmouth, told a smattering of state senators and representatives, and the state's secretary of public safety, Kevin Burke, about their sons. The two young men — Keith Bombaugh and Jarrod Scott-Reynolds, both 18 — were arrested and charged with aggravated rape in May after a female classmate at Falmouth High School said the pair had a sexual encounter with her in the woods against her will.

But after the young men were hauled into court — their pictures printed in the paper — several informants told police that the girl had bragged about the encounter and had consented to sex, according to police reports. The girl recanted, and charges against both boys were dropped, Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe confirmed.

Scott-Reynolds' son was not allowed to attend his last two weeks of high school or to graduate with his class. She's afraid that unless she can get the charges against him expunged — completely wiped out of the court system — the false accusations will haunt him.

"My son's life will be continually barricaded with suspicion and speculation," Scott-Reynolds said at the Statehouse. If an employer, for example, asked for a check of her son's Criminal Offender Record Information, or CORI, it would show that a charge of assault and battery (the rape charge was reduced to that offense) was dismissed. Yet even the mere mention of the arrest could be enough for a potential employer to chose a different candidate.

When the case began, Bombaugh's son had been drafted into the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League in 2006. But this season, he's playing for a different Canadian league. News of his arrest made its way into hockey publications.

"Can I tell you for sure (the case) is the reason he left one league and went to another? Did it affect his future in hockey? It could have," his mother, an ob/gyn in Plymouth, told the Times. Both mothers want to clear their sons' names.

The Beacon Hill hearings are part of ongoing efforts, and Gov. Deval Patrick's campaign promise, to reform the state's system for checking criminal backgrounds. Several proposals are before the Legislature now, and plenty of parties — employers, schools, citizens — have a stake in their outcome. Employers want details about job applicants' criminal pasts. But others have argued that CORI access is broad and limits low-level ex-offenders from finding jobs after release from jail.

And Bombaugh appealed to legislators, "Please allow cases where defendants are not guilty of criminal charges to be expunged."

Hilary Russ can be reached at hruss@capecodonline.com .