Judge hands Roxbury sober home owner two-year sentence in sex-for-drugs scheme

A judge told a sober home operator he committed the ultimate “betrayal” by preying on vulnerable clients left in his care as he handed down a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence.

Former Roxbury sober home operator David W. Perry, 58, of Reading pleaded guilty to 15 counts of evidence tampering, 15 drug charges and six counts of sex for a fee on Wednesday.

“This was a betrayal of those people who turned to Mr. Perry for help at a time that they were suffering and believed that he could help them. A betrayal… that’s the only way I can take this: a betrayal,” Suffolk Superior Court Judge William F. Sullivan said of the sober home operator’s schemes to trade drugs for sex with clients.

Perry will complete three years of probation following his sentence in the House of Correction. The judge also ordered him to surrender his license to practice law, and remain drug and alcohol free.

Perry formerly owned and operated Recovery Educational Services Inc., a Roxbury sober home until a 2017 complaint to his hometown police department unraveled a scheme where Perry would ply his sober home clients with drugs, legal work or free rent in exchange for sex — a criminal ploy prosecutors said was meant to keep addicts hooked on drugs and in his program.

“The defendant calculatedly and callously manipulated male substance abusers entrusted to his care,” prosecutor Kristyn Kelly said, noting Perry profited “financially, sexually and emotionally” from his victims.

Defense lawyer Robert Goldstein painted a picture of man also in the throes of addiction in asking for a lenient sentence.

“When free from the grips of his drug addiction, Mr. Perry has done amazing things with his life,” he said.

But Kelly said Perry had already taken advantage of his “second chance from the court.”

The prosecutor added he “used that opportunity to resume bad behavior that was not only harmful to himself but also to inflict enormous harm onto others.”

Perry avoided jail time, but lost his law license for a 2003 federal cocaine trafficking conviction and instead sought drug treatment. Soon after he launched his sober home business, eventually opening Recovery Education Services where the crimes occurred.

Perry’s law license was reinstated a decade later after turning his life around but triggered renewed scrutiny after seeking police assistance.

He filed a complaint with Reading police in 2017 saying a man he invited to his home had stolen a watch from him. The focus of that investigation quickly shifted to Perry when police found out he was holding sex parties at his home with other men where he’d offer them methamphetamine, cocaine and date rape drugs, prosecutors said.

Police said they tapped Perry’s phone and intercepted thousands of text messages detailing a scheme to exchange drugs for sex at the sober home and uncovering at least four victims and found he had written false letters to a drug court on his behalf of sober home clients.

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/2pxzqov