Bedford settles decades-old abuse claim for $55K

BEDFORD, N.Y. - The Bedford Town Board has quietly issued a $55,000 apology for alleged sins committed decades ago by a Bedford police officer.

Resolving a five-year-old lawsuit, the board voted a cash settlement for the widow of a man who accused Police Officer Joseph Peters of repeated sexual assault from the late 1970s to about 1985. The man charged that the town police department had ignored his complaints about Peters, allowing the abuse to continue.

But the board's unanimous vote was taken without public discussion of the matter and with scant information on the meeting’s consent agenda, raising questions whether the action met the spirit of state open-meeting requirements.

Supervisor Ellen Calves, addressing the meeting after the consent agenda vote, acknowledged the agenda’s description of the settlement had been “pretty vague, but it’s a very sensitive lawsuit issue.” She went on in her remarks to outline how the case had been brought and included the $55,000 amount of settlement.

The names of the man, who died in 2022 at the age of 53, and his wife are being withheld by Halston Media; Peters was 54 years old and a 24-year veteran of the police department when he was arrested in 1996. Charged with committing third-degree sodomy on an unidentified young victim, Peters killed himself with a gunshot to the head near Muscoot Reservoir.

David Marden, the police chief at the time, was quoted shortly after Peters’ suicide as calling his officer’s “association with the boys” a positive one, saying, “We try to get involved in the community."

The man’s complaint, however, filed in State Supreme Court in August 2021, maintains that he had first alerted the department’s youth officer and later the police chief himself to Peters’ abuse. “No investigation was conducted into the acts of sexual abuse and assault reported by Plaintiff,” the complaint asserts. “The sexual abuse by Peters against Plaintiff and other similarly situated children was open, obvious and notorious.”

Legally, the assertions remain unproven. Because of Peters’ suicide, the allegations against him were never adjudicated. And his accuser suddenly died less than a year after suing the town. That removed the man who could both testify to the abuse he alleges and face cross-examination challenges of his assertions. Marden died in 2023, foreclosing the best opportunity for informed rebuttal from the Bedford Police Department.

At the Town Board’s April 7 meeting, an innocuous description of one item, “Request To Adopt Resolution Regarding Settlement Of Litigation,” offered no hint of the dispute that had been quietly worked out.

In an email exchange with this newspaper, the supervisor said, “The Town Board found the settlement to be reasonable and in the best interest of the taxpayers.”

Calves noted the expense of defending a case that includes the passing of time—almost 50 years—and many of the principals as well as “unknowns with respect to witnesses and evidence.”

“This means that costs of litigation, even in just discovery alone, could far exceed the amount of this settlement,” Calves said.

Still, New York’s Open Meetings Law calls it essential “that the citizens of this state be fully aware of and able to observe the performance of public officials and attend and listen to the deliberations and decisions that go into the making of public policy.”

“The people must be able to remain informed,” the law insists, “if they are to retain control over those who are their public servants.”

Asked why the April 7 agenda caption and its electronically available Word document provided so few specifics, Calves said, “Disclosure of expenditures of town funds for a settlement is required under Open Meetings Law, but the details of the settlement do not need to be posted on a town board agenda.”

Referring in the email to her remarks at the April 7 meeting, Calves pointed out that she “did state the general substance of the lawsuit being settled and explained due to the sensitive nature of the allegations, the names of the parties were not included on the resolution.” 

The supervisor said she “did not feel it is necessary to go into details of names and allegations of abuse and misconduct that are 50 years old when the settlement sets aside this lawsuit.”

“Nothing alleged has anything to do with our current, well-trained and highly professional operations,” Calves said, “and the suit was settled for a reasonable amount that protects taxpayers from a costly legal battle.”

SENIORS’ TAX BREAK

Facing a May 1 deadline to apply, as many as a dozen elderly Bedford residents are seeking 65 percent reductions in their homes’ assessed value, Assessor Harold Girdlestone said last week.

The bigger tax break, up from the existing 50 percent reduction, was voted by the Town Board earlier this month.

Applications still must be vetted to assure the homeowners meeting the income-eligibility standard—less than $47,000 a year—to qualify. Exemptions are calculated on a sliding scale of income/assessment percentages for homeowners 65 and older.

All told, 81 Bedford seniors now receive exemptions. Fifty-five receive the previous maximum 50 percent break granted for incomes of less than $47,000. Under the adopted change, 50 of them would qualify for the 65 percent exemption; two, with income of less than $48,000, would receive a 60 percent break; and three, at less than $50,000 income, a 50 percent reduction.

Girdlestone said he has received 10 to 12 applications so far and expects more to arrive before the deadline at month’s end.