The former Canterbury police chief accused of sexually assaulting a young cadet 16 years ago was found not guilty Tuesday after two hours of jury deliberation.
John LaRoche, now 45, was accused of multiple counts of aggravated sexual assault and misdemeanor sexual assault, stemming from what he said was an inadvisable but consensual relationship between him and a 16-year-old Police Explorer when he worked for the Boscawen department in 1999 or 2000.
His attorney, Nick Brodich, said the jury’s speedy decision “says to me this wasn’t a close case. It says to me that they weren’t in there really agonizing. They saw the truth right away.”
Brodich said LaRoche, who resigned as chief earlier this year, is “completely vindicated” and can return to police work.
“John’s going to be able to put this behind him,” Brodich said. “It was gut-wrenching to watch him and his family go through this. He’s got a 16-year-old son and a 14-year-old daughter who had to hear all of this and watch it on the TV. It’s just taken a toll on his family, on his life. It’s a nightmare.”
Brodich added, “I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a person more relieved. They were such horrible charges and such serious charges, and he was innocent of them.”
The seven-day trial came to a close about 2 p.m. Tuesday, after attorneys for both sides made their final arguments to the seven women and six men of the jury, including an alternate. Brodich described it as a “he said, she said” case from 16 years ago.
The prosecutors said LaRoche conveniently had no memory of the most egregious allegations during what they described as a string of sexual assaults against his subordinate.
The defense said the woman was disappointed with how her life turned out and looked for someone to blame, or maybe was betting on a lucrative future lawsuit.
LaRoche, then a new officer in Boscawen, was accused of pressuring the 16-year-old mentee to perform oral sex on him outside his cruiser in 1999 or 2000.
The woman, now 33, also claimed LaRoche touched her intimately twice more at Boscawen’s old police headquarters and once directed her to perform a sexual act on herself when they were inside his cruiser.
LaRoche, who was arrested in August, admitted two of the encounters and said the other two, inside the old headquarters, might have occurred. But he says they were entirely consensual.
The prosecutor, Assistant Attorney General Jay McCormack, said LaRoche told investigators before he was charged that he didn’t remember the events described at the old headquarters, but he wouldn’t go so far as to call the woman a liar.
“Before he’s charged with the crimes, he’s not willing to call (the alleged victim) a liar, and it’s not until he’s on trial that his entire defense is (she’s) a liar,” McCormack said.
The defense, in turn, suggested that when she took the stand, the woman used a “highly polished and produced . . . performance” to play up the aggravating elements of the more punishing charges against LaRoche; namely, that he coerced her by using his authority as her mentor and as a police officer.
The woman, who went to police 14 years after the assaults allegedly occurred, claimed to have experienced exactly the behaviors that the state’s victim expert testified about – for instance, freezing and not thinking she’d be believed, Brodich said.
“It’s almost like she ticked down the list,” he said during his closing argument. She “made herself out to be the textbook example of a victim – I suggest too well.”
Brodich emphasized the woman’s decisions at the time to continue going on ride-alongs with LaRoche. She cited her desire to bolster her work experience and preserve a good employment reference on her way to a career in law enforcement.
He said her behavior later contradicted that ambition, however, when she quit a part-time job with the Allenstown Police Department to attend her prom and was kicked out of the Police Explorers program for refusing to remove her facial piercings.
The prosecutor, on the other hand, said the woman had no motive to lie. LaRoche corroborated every piece of the woman’s account about their first encounter, McCormack said, except the criminal elements.
In an interview with investigators, LaRoche’s equivocation about two other encounters – during one of which the prosecutor said he implied threat of force by showing his baton – “are the equivalent of him admitting it happened,” he said.
“If this didn’t happen, he absolutely would have said, ‘She is a liar; those assaults didn’t happen.’ He never said that. He said, ‘I’m not going to call her a liar’,” McCormack said.
Brodich said the woman went to police in 2014 after “looking at her career path,” holding LaRoche responsible for her not having a career in law enforcement and her decision to drop out of college.
“I suggest to you this sounds precisely like a lawsuit being keyed up,” he said, adding that the woman admitted she was worried LaRoche would sue her if she couldn’t prove the charges. “Without a doubt (she) has been thinking about lawsuits in this case.”
(Nick Reid can be reached at 369-3325, nreid@cmonitor.com or on Twitter at @NickBReid.)