The story initially broken by Maine Wire detailed the incestuous rape and impregnation of a 13-year-old girl by her father Ronald Joseph,42, both are illegal immigrants from Haiti.
Jon Fetherston, the former shelter director, told Fox News Tuesday of the “rampant” abuse in the Massachusetts system that he described as “just a big, colossal mess.” Having served as director in 2023-24 Fetherston described the sheer quantity of crime, domestic abuse, and child neglect as “mind-boggling.”
After Maine Wire broke the story of Joseph’s abuse of his daughter at the taxpayer-funded Holiday Inn-turned-illegal immigrant shelter in Marlborough, MA, Fetherston sat down with the man. Documentation from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities obtained by the outlet stated that when he was informed he would lose custody of his daughter Joseph "got very agitated and started yelling" at the director claiming that the situation was “all his fault, and he was to blame."
The man then reportedly lunged at the Massachusetts civil servant who said he “reached across the table and grabbed me and got angry with me and started cursing and yelling and screaming and swinging at me because he realized what was happening."
He continued, "I'm going to be honest; the entire experience has shaken me to my core."
Fetherston explained, "It's not so much the lunging at me and swinging,” describing the conversation he had with the assailant as the worst part.
"The conversation was probably the most jarring conversation I've ever had in my life," Fetherston said. "His justification for having sex with his daughter was — and he did say it through an interpreter; he didn't say it in English — that in his country — which his country of origin was Haiti — if a woman bled, meaning if she had her period, you could have sex with her and that was his justification for having sex with his daughter."
In an equally startling moment he told a Fox News interviewer that, instead of placing Joseph under arrest, the Massachusetts authorities merely transferred him to another shelter. Fetherston was even instructed by his superiors to hail a Lyft for the admitted child rapist.
He would remain at large for eight months before finally being placed under arrest earlier this month.
"The Marlborough police came and calmed him down and actually had me transfer him to another shelter," he explained. "I asked the Marlborough police like: ‘Why isn't he being arrested? He admitted to this. At least why aren't you just detaining him at the very least?’ And they're like: ‘We'll figure it all out.’ It took them eight months to figure it all out."
Fetherston continued to say that although the Joseph case was particularly galling “there is a lot of undocumented violence that goes on" alluding to rape, domestic violence, sex trafficking, drug-related charges and a myriad of other crimes that have become so endemic that they’ve fallen between the cracks.
"I will tell you, unfortunately, that it happens a lot," he added. "There were times when I was running the shelter that there probably should have been times when I should have done more reporting, you just didn't have the time to do it."
"It's just a big, colossal mess," Fetherston concluded. "I've been in public service most of my adult life, either through elective office or volunteering. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine the migrant shelters would be the chaos that it is… It's a systematic problem, that there is chaos in these communities and the public has the right to know what is going on."
Citing court records the Boston Globe reported that Joseph appeared in Marlborough District Court Monday and faces charges of aggravated rape of a child.
