Press Statement — 7/23/2021

The redacted report disclosed by the Town on Thursday, July 22, 2021 if carefully reviewed supports the allegations contained in the Complaint filed by Bill Fahey against the Town of Andover and its Town Manager, Andrew Flanagan, last month.  The Report starts with the “Scope of Investigation.”  The scope, as defined by the investigator, Regina Ryan was to investigate the allegation that Bill Fahey “engaged in sexually inappropriate behavior while he was her supervisor at AYS.”  The investigator concluded that those allegations were not credible.  Nevertheless, the Town found other reasons unrelated to the original allegation to fire Bill Fahey.  As stated in the Complaint, firing Bill Fahey was the real goal of the Town.  Additionally, some of the redactions made by the Town were not necessary to protect anyone’s confidentiality and appear to have been made to support the Town’s position. 

As an example, at the bottom of page 19, the statement made by the accuser “I loved Bill and he never hurt me” is redacted.  Yet, in the next paragraph, the statement “he never hurt me” remained un-redacted.  Also, redacted on page 20 is the statement made by the accuser against Fahey, “‘expletive him,’ she said toward the end of the interview.”  Those redacted portions of the report as well as others, do nothing to protect anyone’s confidentiality. 

On the other hand, even the report as currently redacted shows that, contrary to the statements repeatedly made by the Town, the investigation was not initiated by the Essex County District Attorney, but was initiated by the accuser and Town of Andover employee, Sobhan Namvar.  Further, the redacted report makes clear that the investigator concluded that the accuser was an “unreliable historian” and that her “lack of support for these serious allegations reveals a cavalier disregard for the truth and appears motivated more by emotion than fact.” 

The redacted report also shows the obvious flaws in the investigation.  While it clearly shows that the serious allegations that were initially made by the accuser were without foundation, the investigation somehow became enlarged to investigate Fahey’s general competence to lead Andover Youth Services.  Yet the only people who were interviewed were those involved with the original accusations and Fahey detractors.  The AYS staff was not interviewed, the AYS foundation board was not interviewed, nor were any of the AYS past or present participants interviewed.  Indeed, unbelievably the individuals whose texts messages were included in the Report were never interviewed. 

We are confident that as additional facts surrounding the Report and investigation are disclosed it will become even more evident to the public that Bill Fahey’s reputation has been wrongfully maligned and that he should never have been fired from his position as Director of AYS.

— A statement for Bill Fahey written by his attorney Dan Murphy