The 13th Step - Just the Beginning

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

In March of 2022, Lauren publishes her first story detailing allegations against Eric Spofford. The events of the next several months illustrate the ways powerful, wealthy people can intimidate sources and try to stop journalism from happening. And then, there was the vandalism…  The 13th Step is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio’s Document team. More at 13thsteppodcast.org. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, Lauren. This is really difficult because I've mulled over this for a year on whether or not I should even message you back out of fear, but I'm willing to chat anonymously. Hi, Lauren. I'm happy to talk to you about some things that have happened after I left DRC. I know I'm doing the right thing by being honest and speaking up, but then there's times where I just feel like, God, you need to put a sock in it because you're going to get yourself in trouble. Hi, Lauren. I don't want anything in writing via email that can be used against me. I'm frankly scared of retaliation from Eric and I'd rather have a phone call or meet with you. I am so filled with anxiety. I'm filled with fear. Sorry for the no contact. Can we check in tomorrow and maybe connect then? I'm just overly anxious and stressed about it all.

He has money. He has lawyers. His power and money is intimidating to me and I, don't want to end up in a courtroom. I'm honestly thinking that I'm no longer going to share my name. I honestly don't want to be involved anymore. With everything that my family is going through right now, I just don't want to be a part of it. I want to take my statements away about Eric. This is a small window into what it's like to report on sexual misconduct. These are words that multiple women said or texted to me, but those aren't their real voices. I got their permission to share even the most basic sentences with you in ways that are unidentifiable, because it's the best way I know

to illustrate something that happens all the time in every industry, not just addiction treatment. People work up the courage to contact a reporter because they want accountability, closure, justice, but then they consider all the very real downsides and they disappear. I can't tell you how many times this has happened while reporting on Eric Spofford and allegations of sexual misconduct. It's one of the most true things about sexual harassment and assault. People are terrified to come forward, and they're terrified for good reasons. And so reporters like me get stuck between two heavy responsibilities, expose wrongdoing, and protect your sources. And I want so deeply to protect these women. Because the things they feared, not being believed, threats of retaliation and expensive

lawsuits, those things happened. They happened to my sources, and they happened to me. This is the 13th step. I'm Lauren Chulgin. So I've mentioned a few times now that I've already published a story about Eric Spofford and the allegations I uncovered. I'm going to take you through what happened after that story came out. Because, frankly, it's been nuts. I learned pretty quickly that there is a whole system of tools available to powerful, wealthy people who want to shut down sexual misconduct allegations. So let's start with the day the story came out, March 22, 2022. The story included a lot of what you've already heard in this podcast. Elizabeth and the Snapchats Eric allegedly sent her starting the day after she left

his treatment center. Employee A, alleging that Eric sexually assaulted her, in the middle of the workday. There was also employee B, who didn't talk to me, but her allegations of a relationship with Eric that wasn't always consensual and the effort to silence her, it led a bunch of people to quit GRC. I actually spoke with nearly 50 people for that story, and through all those hours of conversations, it became clear that Eric was not only the success story that he shared widely around the internet. Turns out, for many people in the recovery community, New England, Eric's alleged behavior was an open secret. He prayed on vulnerable people, and he wielded his power to avoid consequences. Eric denied all this through his lawyer and threatened

to sue us. We published anyway, and almost immediately, my phone blew up. By this point in history, we've all seen the way these stories usually go. One allegation or one expose comes out, and then more people speak up. That's the point of Me Too. There's a little. There's a liberation that comes from seeing someone else go first. I had a hunch that would happen here, and it started to. Someone's dad wrote me saying, I think my daughter has a story. Then I got Facebook messages and emails and texts from the women you heard from earlier. I also had multiple people tell me that the story was long overdue and that I should look into other addiction treatment companies. But as all that is happening, I'm also seeing these other emails,

come in. Emails about how Eric Spofford is such a good person. Emails that say the story I wrote can't be true. It's clear that Eric has asked people to put in a good word for him. I saw a text message he wrote. It says, if you would be willing to write a positive note for me, I'd be grateful. And then he included my contact information. Let me read you a sample of the first email I got like this. I saw these allegations against Eric, and I'm shocked by them, one woman wrote me. She identified herself as Eric's former personal assistant. This is nothing short of greed, she said, by women who won a piece of the pie and the empire he has built.

I got just over a dozen emails like this. People telling me that the Eric Spofford they knew, the guy that paid for their addiction treatment, or the guy who was the godfather to their son. That Eric would never do something like this. Here's another one. Eric has been a positive influence. not only in the state of New Hampshire, but throughout the country, one woman wrote.

I have seen many women try to land him as their partner and or as their ticket out. However, I personally never witnessed him respond. The thing is, these people didn't offer any information that refutes the allegations, so there was nothing new here for me to report. But one text I got that day intrigued me. It came from a woman named Lindsay Mativier. She was the Human Resources Director at GRC just before Nancy, who you met in the last episode. I scheduled a phone call with Lindsay, and she told me she didn't want to be recorded, but I take good notes.

And as Lindsay and I started talking, I could tell immediately that she was having a hard time squaring the Eric she knew with the Eric in my story. She says as HR director, she wants to believe that if Eric had sexually assaulted someone, she would have heard about it. And in fact, she says Eric fired another colleague who Lindsay says sexually harassed her. Lindsay also made a point to tell me that Employee A got a detail wrong. Here's what Employee A said to me when I interviewed her. There were people working outside, like he is blinds in his office and his door locks. So there were people working like pretty much right outside of his office door. Employee A said Eric had blinds in his office.

Lindsay told me, no he doesn't. There were no blinds. Lots of offices in the building had blinds, she said, but not Eric's. I hope it isn't true, she told me. My gut says that it's not true, but I don't want a victim blame or call anybody a liar. But someone's gut feeling is not what a reporter changes a story for. It actually doesn't matter that Eric fired someone else. for sexual harassment. And the fact that Employee A never told Lindsay, the HR director, what happened?

Well, most sexual assaults go unreported. And even if Employee A. misremembered that blinds detail, none of this changes the fact that Employee A says Eric forced her to have sex in his office. I also corroborated Employee A's story. This is how reporting on sexual misconduct works. In Employee's case, I talked with three. separate people who all said employee A told them of an unwanted sexual encounter with Eric. But I want to be clear. I'm really glad I talked to Lindsay. It's my job. And also because later, Eric and his lawyers would show me that turns out this was coordinated. They made clear that they knew Lindsay and I spoke, and they were upset. We didn't update the story to include her comments.

Eric's lawyers even got a signed affidavit from Lindsay, notarized in every and in it she again says that employee A described Eric's office incorrectly. Except, this time, she didn't mention the blinds, the detail that she was so sure of. It changed. In this affidavit, Lindsay says, quote, to the best of my recollection, Eric did not have a couch in his office, end quote, a couch. That's the detail, she says, employee A got wrong. All those emails, the outreach from Lindsay, I started to feel like I needed some help understanding what I was looking at here. So I called Jennifer Mondino. She's the director of the Times Up Legal Defense Fund.

The program started right around the time Me Too went viral. Anyone who has experienced workplace sexual harassment can come to them to get connected with lawyers and other resources. And Jennifer says these emails? Classic gaslighting. I'm thinking about, you know, Brett Kavanaugh, for example, or, or some of these figures that have been called out in the public. And then there's this counter narrative like, oh, like, are we really going to hold this person responsible for something that happened so long ago?

But he's such a good guy. He's such an upstanding citizen. And I feel like part of that is going on in the situation you're describing too, right? Like, that makes it harder. And I could imagine that that could make people start to doubt. Doubt can be a powerful force, especially with sexual misconduct allegations, where there often isn't much physical evidence. Doubt makes it harder to believe. And as a reporter, entertaining doubt is part of my job.

But in the end, I stick with the facts. The night after the story came out, just before 9 o'clock, I was sitting at my dining room table scrolling through emails, and I got a text from Employee A. It was an attachment titled Litigation Hold Letter. It was from Eric Spofford's attorneys, and it had her real name on it, first and last, a name I never used in my story. I got this by text message right now, she added. She had no idea what it was, and neither did I. But the more I read, the further my stomach sank. The opening line of the letter is long and intense. It says that Employee A is put on notice of litigation that will eventuate because of her involvement in my story. I kept reading. It says things like it's employee A's legal duty to immediately preserve all documents related to the story. I kept thinking, but no one has sued anyone. There was no litigation going on at that moment. And yet, failure to comply with this letter, it says at the end, could lead to sanctions or adverse inference jury instructions and or liability for spoilation of evidence. And then more text came in from other sources. Peers Canoombe,

the former director of spiritual life at Granite Recovery Centers. He got one. Then Elizabeth, the former client who says Eric sent her explicit messages on Snapchat. Elizabeth also got the letter via text message with her real name on it. She actually thought it was spam and deleted it. What are they trying to do? She texted me. Pierce said they might sue us. I don't have anything to sue for. As in, she doesn't have any money, but Eric is a millionaire. Eric's lawyers would end up sending these letters to nearly every person whose name or voice appeared in the story. I shared these litigation hold letters with another attorney I reached out to. Her name is Lisa Banks, and she explained, usually litigation hold letters are a routine part of the litigation process, a housekeeping kind of thing.

But in this case, if you're talking about a potential victim or survivor of sexual assault, I think it's unusual that they would. receive a litigation hold memo. But I think in this scenario, them receiving it probably was designed to intimidate them with the idea that maybe they would stand down, not come forward, recant any number of things. Lisa is an employment and civil rights attorney in D.C. If her name is at all familiar, it's likely because she is one of the lawyers who represented Christine Blasey Ford, the California. professor who says Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in high school. And Lisa is no stranger

to the tactics powerful people use when they're facing misconduct allegations. The litigation hold memo is one way you can create a shot across the bow and let somebody know that they're in the crosshairs. And that can typically ignore to the benefit of the accused in that lots of people don't want to be involved in litigation. They're afraid, and they will disappear. Legal threats can really put a lot of pressure on a person. I started calling around to my sources to see how they were doing. I'm fucking furious.

Please fuck him with the wrong person. I was able to catch Justin Downey the day he got his litigation hold letter. Justin, you might remember, is the guy that Elizabeth met at a sober home after she left treatment. And she told Justin about the snap. chats from Eric. In this letter, it took Justin on a wild ride. My first initial reaction was I fucking laughed and I think it's funny because I think it just shows how scared he is. You know what I mean? In the letter, Eric's lawyers threatened to use past statements of Justin's against him, statements he'd made about the toll addiction had on him.

Justin has talked really openly in some interviews about his life and his recovery, kind of like Eric has. But Eric's lawyers indicated that Justin's words were all now fair game for a lawsuit, and they wouldn't make him seem very trustworthy. This win against everything Justin believes the recovery community should stand for. People share their struggles openly. You don't use someone's addiction against them, especially when many people are at risk of a relapse. And yet, deep down Justin knew a lot of people who he loved were not going to see it that way. The guys Justin got sober with, guys he bonded with in the most vulnerable time of his life.

A lot of them, Justin says, have made money with Eric. So this letter drew a thick line in the sand. Do you support Justin or do you support Eric? I'm going to be pretty much more than Wolf status down here because that's major. other than me and a couple guys that I spend time with down here that do construction. Most of my friends are all working this industry. You know what I mean? So now I have to walk away from some people that I thought with my fucking friends.

And not only am I not their friend now, now they're my enemy. Yeah. I hope I didn't ruin your entire break. Oh, you didn't. I'm fucking just, I'm sitting here fucking stewing. and I also just know that where this goes. Justin starts convincing himself. Things are going to be okay, right?

I have a good foundation, and I actually really do have a lot of really good people around me. And my faith is fucking rock solid, unshakable. But it's good. I get to lose a bunch of fucking maggots. basically. So it really works out my favor. Despite that, I couldn't get a hold of Justin for a few weeks after this. He'd later apologize, saying it just all became too much.

I also talked to Pierce Canuka about his litigation hold letter, the former spiritual director at Eric's company who quit in 2020. Clients had loved his talks about the philosophy and psychology of recovery. Pears is also the guy who told me this. The recovery industry needs a Me Too movement. The recovery industry needs a Me Too movement. I called Peers in April 2022, a few weeks after the story came out. I am off speakerphone.

Okay, cool. All right, I'm recording. We talked about the letter, how it made him anxious. I expected as much. But Pears also ended up telling me a few things that later took on a whole other meaning. Why do you think they sent this to you? Um, for it to have a, um, stifling effect on us talking. Yeah. Did it make you regret talking to me? It's okay for the answers, yes.

I had dreaded, very at times before it came out, in part, no offense to anybody that took so long. Um, and I had time to rethink it. And, you know, life had kind of moved on. But now that the story's out, I feel a sense of relief mixed with regret that I hadn't acted sooner. So no. The short answer is no, I don't. Pierce told me he was mostly worried about the women who spoke to me. Well, I feel like there's the most vulnerable people in this for having taken the greatest risk. So my main, my main, my.

My main feeling is that they feel safe and that they feel that they have support and that they're not going to be abandoned by the larger community. In the weeks after this conversation, Eric's lawyers went after peers hard. And then one morning, I got an email. It was addressed to my news organization's board of trustees, and it was from Eric's lawyers. It said that peers had, quote, effectively recanted and, Because of that, they demanded that we immediately take down the story we published. I kept scrolling and saw they had attached a letter from Pierce. Well, this can't be good.

In the first paragraph, Pierce says he was writing to clarify and correct statements he made in our story. He goes on, quote, Specifically, I am concerned with your use of my statement comparing Mr. Spofford to Harvey Weinstein and my statement that Mr. Spofford should be prosecuted. At the time I made those statements to Ms. Chulgin, I naively assumed that I would have been provided an opportunity to vet any statements I made and to provide permission for them to be used prior to their publication as part of the article. I regret making those statements, Pierce said. I did not have any direct personal knowledge concerning any sexual abuse, misconduct, or any other inappropriate behavior by Mr. Spofford with employees, clients, or former clients. That's how it ends.

I stared at Pears's signature at the bottom of the page for a few seconds. It was clear. Eric's lawyers had gotten to him. I read it again. And I realized that nothing in the statement even made sense. He assumed I'd let him approve his statements ahead of publication. Peers and I talked about this. We had discussions about what it meant to be on the record. He was now saying he didn't have any direct personal knowledge of abuse, What even is direct personal knowledge? I had reported what peers told me and corroborated it with other people. He'd heard rumors about Eric's behavior with women. He heard directly from employee B, and he quit because of her allegations.

And finally, the part about regretting making these statements? I mean, you heard what he said when I asked him if you regretted talking to me. Now that the story's out, I feel a sense of relief mixed with some regret that I hadn't acted sooner. So no. The short answer is no, I don't. I contacted Peers before we put out this podcast to see if he wanted to comment further.

He didn't respond. I showed Pears' letter to Lisa Banks, the lawyer in D.C. I think this is strange. I've really never seen this where somebody who is seemingly such a solid source quoted extensively in your article would then turn around and write this kind of letter. I mean, he's not recanting, which I think Spofford tries to suggest he is, or he says that he is, but he's not. but this was clearly and carefully drafted to satisfy Spofford. Lisa called this letter a non-denial denial.

But while the content of the letter was strange, the tactic at play here from Eric's lawyers was clear to her. Step one, use legal threats to intimidate. Step two, use that pressure to get what they want. If they can start picking off the witnesses one by one, pretty soon their case gets better and better, and your story looks thinner and thinner. Eric even posted the Pears letter on his personal Facebook page, and he wrote, When my lawyers told Peers' lawyer that we were going to sue him for his defamatory statements,

he negotiated a settlement. Eric has since deleted the post. Still, the recovery community in New England is small, so posts like this, they really get around. Lots of people saw this. Sources called me, and they did not see a non-denial denial like Lisa Banks did. They saw that Eric got to Pierce, someone they trusted, someone they thought was standing up for all these women, and that Eric spent a lot of money on lawyers doing it. They saw hundreds of supportive comments on Eric's post, people cheering him on.

Any negative comments about Eric were quickly deleted. I know because I watched it happen in real time. Meanwhile, Eric's lawyers kept insisting that we take the story down. And if we didn't take the story down, they said Eric would, quote, have no choice but to file suit against an HPR. We did not take the story down. Lisa Banks was right. Eric did try to pick off my sources one by one.

The next thing his lawyers did was contact employee A, the woman who told me that Eric sexually assaulted her in his office. Eric's lawyers took Pierce's letter and emailed it straight to employee A. The subject line of the email was Spofford versus employee A's real name, like the name of a lawsuit. But there was no lawsuit at this point, just threats of one. Spofford versus Employee A did not exist. It still doesn't, actually. And yet, employee A's email asked for her address, so, quote,

We can serve you with the summons and defamation complaint that Eric intends to file against you, and quote. And if she didn't share her home address, Eric's lawyers wrote, they would serve her at work. Lastly, they told employee A that she must email me, as in me, Lauren, and retract and revoke my permission to rely on her as a source. They even included a sample email that she could copy, paste, and send to me. And then one of Eric's lawyers tried to call her and left her this voicemail. My name is Misty Merrick. I'm an attorney from the law for Gordon and Reese. I sent you an email yesterday regarding a potential litigation in federal court brought by Mr. Spofford against you. If you could please return my call. As you may be able to

guess by now, the lawyers I spoke with Jennifer Mondino and Lisa Banks, they categorize this as just another pressure tactic. Lisa Banks says it's actually super common. A quick example, Lisa is currently representing 40 women who worked for the Washington commander. the NFL team. Lisa's clients say that workplace was toxic. Sexual harassment and abuse were pervasive. And here's what happened to some of Lisa's clients. People started getting phone calls and visits from private investigators asking all sorts of questions.

And these were women with families and kids and were extremely intimidated by this, which may have been the purpose. purpose. And maybe not. Sometimes you need to do some investigation, and that will involve calling people on the phone or sometimes knocking on doors. In our case, it felt like intimidation. In this case, it certainly seems like intimidation. And it seems like something that had worked for them previously, at least with respect to peers. So it seems like an MO for them. But not a unusual. You do need to do investigation, but you don't necessarily have to be intimidating and scary in doing it. The messages from Eric's lawyers were definitely intimidating and scary for employee A, but she didn't back down. It seemed like she was trying really hard to focus on seeing

it all for what it really was. No matter what Pierce did, she told me, she and Elizabeth are still the one speaking. Pears just heard about it. He didn't experience it like they did. As for Eric, employee says, quote, he's just trying to scare us more than he's scared right now. Coming up, everything gets more personal, to say the least. About a month after the story came out, so late April 2022, I was on vacation with my husband and my daughter. We were figuring out what to make for breakfast when this weird text came in from my mom. It said, any chance Matt, that's my husband, any chance Matt would have a few minutes to talk to dad about a security camera? Sadly, we had something happen at the house last night and need one.

I obviously called her right away. And my mom told me, that morning she woke up suddenly and realized it felt really cold in the house. She went downstairs to check it out, and she saw glass all over the floor. Someone had thrown a rock through my parents' basement window, shattered almost the entire thing. And when she and my dad went outside to see the damage, that's when they saw the garage doors. On one of my parents' bright white garage doors, someone had spray painted the C word. The second garage door just had a letter C on it, like someone started to write it again but stopped. I immediately thought this had to be in rest of it.

response to my reporting. I told her, Mom, I know what this is. What? She was like, Lauren, no, no, no, no. This is just some young kid doing something stupid. Don't be in that headspace. Don't think like that. How could I not? My parents live in a small town in New Hampshire, like 9,000 people. And they live at the very end of a very quiet cul-de-sac. It's not on the way to anything. I mean, there is no way someone randomly comes down there with a can of red spray paint. I told my mom I had to call my news director right away. His name is Dan Barrick, and it would be an awful phone call. I told Dan what happened to my mom and dad's house, and Dan, it was like he almost whispered, Lauren, that happened at our house too.

Dan wasn't home at the time, and that morning his neighbor texted Dan's wife, saying, I'm so sorry, and then sent a picture of their front door. It was the same thing my mom told me. Seward, painted in red. Dan had a chunk of concrete thrown at his house, but it missed the window and dented the siding.

There were a lot of phone calls back and forth with the police and each other. My husband and I were hundreds of miles away, so we had to send someone to check out our house. Thankfully, everything seemed fine. I remember my mom, and especially my dad, cycling through so many feelings. It was easier to hear my dad angry, like no one flux with my family.

It was harder to hear him sound so afraid. The next morning, I sat outside by myself to try and take a breather. I was supposed to be on vacation for God's sake. And as I'm mindlessly scrolling my phone, I notice an email from the neighborhood listserv in a town I used to live in, Hanover, New Hampshire. The subject line is Incident on Stores Road. I scroll quickly, and my eyes,

rest on the words, glass in a dog bed, and then C-word. You have got to be kidding me. Sure enough, the house my husband and I rented four years ago was also vandalized. Seaward on the door, brick through a window, and the neighbors were all in a frenzy trying to figure out what was going on. Hanover is an hour from Dan's house and nearly two hours from my parents. Three houses in three different towns, all in the same night. And the only common denominator was me. Yet, for some reason, the house I actually live in was unscathed. What was that about? Local police were investigating, but none of the houses had security cameras, so there weren't many leads. For most of my career, I've been really proud of my ability to detach, to distance myself from the material I'm reporting on

as much as humanly possible. I sharpened that skill for many years of political reporting. Just report the facts, not my feelings about them. I was good at it. But then, all this happened. This vandalism has pushed me into an unfamiliar and uncomfortable place. I'm not detached from this story. I'm in it now, with my colleagues, even my own parents. But that's what happened. Those are the facts. I tried to touch. talk all this out with my colleague Jason Moon. He's been on this journey with me since the beginning. So once I was back in town, this is a few days after the vandalism now, we sat in a studio, and I filled him in on the latest updates.

How you doing? I'm not doing very good. I felt like I was like I was like kind of holding it together. Like relatively speaking, Like, I definitely had a lot of feelings, obviously. But last night, I was talking to my parents who both have COVID now. Right. Great timing. That's not helping anything.

To add to all this excitement, my poor parents got COVID. My mom got it first and apparently pulled the short straw because she was quarantining downstairs. They, you know, my mom's like quarantining. in the basement with a broken fucking window, which is like she says it doesn't bother her, but just is like quite the image. But I was talking to my dad and he started being like, look, I don't think you should do another story because whoever did this is like not rational and is not, you know, is likely to do more violence. and, you know, we don't want that. And, you know, I was, like, kind of struck by that, but then I, like, tried not to, like, I don't know, I just was like, what do you even say, you know? What did you say?

I think I said, like, well, that's why we're talking to police about what they think. And, you know, that's why I want to meet with the AG to ask them what they think. But at the same time, Dad, like, no one can tell us. like what and I just was like okay and then I was talking my mom separately because you know they're in two separate floors of the house now and um she was like saying something about my dad and I was like well yeah he just like told me he doesn't want me to do any more stories and she said like well Lauren like I don't know if I do either like why do you why do you want to keep doing it you know like what if they do something worse it's just awful because like

I don't want to do something that they don't want me to do because they're scared, something bad could happen to them. But, like, it's just kind of, you know, absurd that you can't, like, write about the truth because you're afraid that someone's going to hurt you. I wish I could tell you that was the end of the vandalism. On May 21st, so it's now a month after the initial incidents, I woke up and saw a text from my dad. Weirdly, we weren't home again. We were out of town visiting friends.

I remember my dad saying, it happened again. Again. The seaword, spray-painted red on my parents' garage door. A brick. This time, though, whoever threw it missed the window. Dad found it lying on the mulch in the garden. But the next few minutes are actually missing from my memory. I've learned this is a common trauma response. my brain was trying to protect me. My husband Matt remembers it vividly. He says as I was texting my dad back, he rolled over to grab his phone and saw multiple notifications from our home security app.

And that's when he saw the videos from our doorbell camera. The first video is about a minute long. A guy in a bright blue raincoat with his hood up slowly walks into our front yard and looks around. He stops for like 10, seconds and stares at our house. Then he turns around and starts walking away from my house down the street. The video cuts off. And when it comes back on, he's standing, brick in hand, right in front of the big picture window on the first floor of my house. He brings his right arm back

and throws. I hate this video. I only watch it if I have to because it makes me feel so many of the things I tried to block out, like fear and sadness. I loved that window. You did it in broad daylight. So what time was that? 4.50 a.m. I have some audio from that morning, mostly of Matt and I trying to piece together what had happened, and me swearing a lot. You can also hear my daughter babbling away like it's just any other morning. I called Dan, my news director. Thankfully, his house was fine this time. Matt called the police, and he stayed on the phone with. them while they went to our house and walked around, checking things out. And that's how we learned.

It wasn't just a broken window. Where is it say that? Can you tell you say that to me one more time? It says just the beginning under the window? That's what my start has just told me. That is so fucked up. That is really fucked up. On the front of our house, in big capital letters, the words, just the beginning with an exclamation point, were spray painted in red underneath the shattered living room window. Originally when this first happened, it was devastating. But like, this is, this is unbelievable. I know, you can't say anything about that.

I just, like, like, we, like, oh my God, fucking assholes. And did the sergeant take photos? I can't, I can't believe it. Okay. Is it possible for us to see? It was raining that morning. Thankfully, my neighbors tacked up a tarp over the broken window, so our living room wouldn't be soaked by the time we got home.

And once my dad finished painting over the seaward on his garage again, he drove down to our house to clean up the glass in our living room. Unlike my parents and New Hampshire Public Radio colleagues, I actually live in Massachusetts, just outside of Boston. And law enforcement here took the vandalism really seriously. Good afternoon, everybody. Thank you for being here. The district attorney of my county, Marion Ryan,

she called a press conference with the chief of police in my town, and they even played the security camera footage from my house. We are here to ask for your help in identifying a man who both spray-painted and broke a window with a brick. a home on in Melrose. And I'll give you some details and then we'll show you some video. We are beeping the name of the street I live on because, obviously.

My name is Michael Lyle and the police chief in Melrose. For us, I want to tell everybody for the Melrose residents that are maybe watching this tonight, this is clearly not a random act. This was a targeted event. A reporter asked D.A. Ryan if she thought the vandalism was connected to my reporting. Obviously, it's very pressing that you would find out who is doing this for whatever reason. But does the potential that it's connected to what she does and the work that she's doing, does that... It makes it much more disturbing.

It makes it much more disturbing. Anybody coming home and finding... The DA basically tells this reporter this would be disturbing for anybody to experience. It's one thing when it's random. At least it's detached from you. But in this case... It is certainly of a different level when somebody targets you for whatever reason. And then a third level when somebody would target you...

for the report, in this case she's a reporter, for the reporting kind of work, if in fact that's the motive. You know, there are obviously First Amendment considerations, and then it just brings it to a whole other dimension in your life. It isn't just I'm worried about my property, but actually am I going to be affected in doing what my work is because I'm worried about my own family or my own home. Now, because this was a press conference, that meant word was out. I started getting tons of requests for comment, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, but at the time, I really wasn't up for talking. Actually, this is the most I've ever said publicly about any of this. My news organization,

NHPR, also covered it. The station hired an independent reporter and editor. That happens sometimes in journalism when an organization has to report on itself. And the NHPR reporting, it ended up becoming a new source of fuel for Eric and his lawyers. Here's what happened. The reporter is named Mayor Rindy. Mayor called the police chief in my town for an interview. And as they talked, the chief tells Mayor that the police may interview Eric in the course of their investigation. The chief says Eric, quote, may have some information that might support a case. It would be too early to say he would be a person of interest. Then the chief went on and said, after the article came out, all this trouble started for the reporter or the news organization. So Mayor then takes the

this to Eric Spofford and asks for comment. And in response, Eric called the coverage of the vandalism a, quote, coordinated attack, a move to keep him from suing us. It's a long statement, but here are some of Eric's main points. Eric says, quote, NHPR is trying to draw a speculative connection to me and has corralled its media buddies to pick up the vandalism story so that it can point fingers at me in another article. As for the actual vandalism, Eric says he was, quote, completely uninvolved, adding, quote, I also don't need to vandalize someone's property. I have truth on my side, and I will vindicate myself through lawful means.

But Eric also offers a theory. He says, quote, many people in recovery have credited me with saving their lives. Perhaps one of them felt compelled to do these acts in a misguided attempt to defend me. I would never condone it, but I have no control. over what other people do. This feels like a good time to say, I do not know who did this to my house. I do not know who did this to my parents' house twice,

or to Dan's, or to that random house in Hanover I used to live in. I obviously would like to know. It's been more than a year now since it happened. So I really hope that the law enforcement officials who are investigating figure it out soon. There's so much more that happened. Like the time Eric's lawyers, asked the New Hampshire Attorney General to open a criminal investigation into NHBR, or the time

Eric threatened to sue the mother of his oldest son for defamation. He claimed she was a key source in my story, despite the fact that she is never even mentioned. And finally, Eric and his lawyers made good on their legal threat. In September of 2022, Eric filed a defamation suit against me, my colleagues Dan and Jason, and also three of my sources. Justin Downey, former HR director Nancy Borg, and former COO, Brian Stays. The complaint Eric's lawyers filed is 396 pages long, including exhibits. A few lawyers have told me, Lauren, I have never seen anything like this. Eric's lawyers start by calling my reporting a baseless assassination of Eric's character. They write, unburdened by truth or ethics. The NHPR defendants drop this guillotine of a story

on Eric's reputation with a robes Pierre-like arbitrariness. Eric's lawyers then repeat their claim that peers recanted his statements, although he didn't. And they include Lindsay Mativier's affidavit, where she says employee A was wrong to remember a couch in Eric's office. If you file a defamation suit, you have to prove that the thing someone wrote about you is not true, that the writer was negligent and didn't check the facts. But the bar gets much higher if a judge determines that you are a public figure. Then you have to prove what's called actual malice, that the writer knew what they published was false,

or they published it with so-called reckless disregard for the truth. I can tell you, that is not what I did. So our lawyers responded to the lawsuit, asking the judge to dismiss it, and I kept on reporting. But getting sued certainly made my job harder. I think it's safe to assume that was the point. Now, I don't tell you all this to scare you. All this is working hard in that sentence.

I mean the vandalism, the retaliation, the lawsuit, all of it. I am certainly not here to discourage anyone from coming forward if they've been harmed. I guess I just wanted to show you what's out there. because this is so much bigger than Eric's Bofford. This is what you can face when you try and go public about wrongdoing that you've experienced. Or in my case, you try and report on it. Anytime you make big strides, like I think we did with, you know, Me Too becoming a household phrase and all these people speaking out about workplace sex harassment,

you kind of know that you are making strides when there starts to be backlash. This is Jennifer Mondino again with the Times Up Legal Defense Fund. I chose Jennifer and Lisa Banks as my legal guides in this episode for a reason. These two are deeply in the trenches of this post-me-2 world, so they not only were able to identify common tactics, they could also see a bigger picture here. They both told me that my experience, my sources' experience of retaliation, it lines up perfectly with this particular moment we are all living in right now.

And both Jennifer and Lisa were clear. The most powerful part of retaliation is its chilling effect. It keeps others from coming forward. I know that chilling effect all too well. There's one woman in particular that I can't shake. She reached out to me after my initial story came out. She agreed to come to our studio for an interview on the condition that it would be anonymous

because she was afraid of Eric. We could record her voice but not use her name. So she comes to the studio, we turn the microphones on, and as our conversation was winding down, she suddenly stops and is like, you know what, fuck it. I'm not afraid. And she said her name into the microphone, her real name. But then over the next few weeks, she saw how peers had been threatened with a lawsuit, how Eric posted Pierce's letter on Facebook, and then she saw the pictures of the broken window at my house. And she dropped out. She told me, I don't think anyone can protect me, not even you. I told Lisa Banks, that DC lawyer,

about what happened with this source. And she said, it's disappointing, but can you blame her? Of course not. How could I blame someone for doing something so rational? It's why I continue to be blown away by the sources who are still sticking around. This certainly hasn't been easy for them either. But in my first conversation with Elizabeth, the former client, she reminded me that despite all the very real risks, there is a bigger purpose here. If I can do anything to make at least like one treatment center better, I'm happy to do that.

On the next two episodes of the 13th step, when bad things happen, who is supposed to protect people in addiction treatment? I'm going to take a deep dive into, the industry. Most states have got really, really loose, lax regulations around substance use disorders. Shut up, follow the rules, don't complain. When you take that and extrapolate that into the entire system, you understand why people with addictions are treated as inhumanely as they're treated and are perfect victims. And I'll tell you about a case where someone finally got caught.

I mean, there was no freaking way I could not investigate and find out. There is just not even possible. If you know me, it was no possible way. I was going bonkers. I mean bonkers, like literally banging my head against the wall. Like, how can nobody be paying attention to this? Why doesn't anybody care? The 13th step is reported and produced by me, Lauren Chulgin.

Jason Moon contributed reporting. He also wrote the music you hear in this show and mixed all the episodes. Alison McAdam is our editor, additional editing from senior editor Katie Culinary and news director, Dan Barrick. Fact-checking by Danya Suleiman. Sarah Plourd created our artwork and our website, 13th Steppodcast.org. That's the number 13. Our lawyer is Sigmund Schultz. N.HPR's director of podcast is Rebecca LaVoy.

Special thanks to Casey McDermott, Taylor Quimby, Ariana Lake, Max Green, Ilya Merritt, Cooper Mall, and Michael Castaneda. And a big shout out. to Meg James and Amy Kaufman of the LA Times. They've done some incredible reporting about Randall Emmett. Vanderpump Rules fans know who that is. And in the course of that work, they and their sources also faced an incredible amount of pushback,

and they were kind enough to share their experiences with me. There's a new Hulu documentary about their reporting called The Randall Scandal. And lastly, to the many people who have helped keep us safe, including John O'Connor, Colin Pereira, Ed Davis, Joe Lawless, and Steve Byron. The 13th Step is a production of the document team at New Hampshire Public Radio. Hello, this is Jack Wilson, the host of the History of Literature podcast.

For the past 10 years, I've been talking to novelists, biographers, and scholars about the greatest books in the history of the world and the men and women who wrote them. Like our recent episodes on Dante in Love, a starter pack of 10 Indian classics, the pop culture that influence. Silvia Plath and a talk with scientist and novelist Alan Lightman about the wonders of nature. Join us at the History of Literature podcast wherever you get your podcasts.