Maeghan Maloney, district attorney of Kennebec and Somerset counties, is seen in her Augusta office in 2019. Maloney is facing allegations before the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar that she violated rules of conduct in her dealings regarding an Oakland woman. Joe Phelan/Kennebec Journal file

The district attorney for Kennebec and Somerset counties is facing allegations before the Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar she violated rules of conduct in her dealings regarding an Oakland woman who has alleged she was drugged and raped in a Waterville bar and authorities failed to properly investigate.

Pamela Boivin of Oakland filed a complaint last year with the state Board of Overseers of the Bar, which oversees attorneys in Maine, alleging District Attorney Maeghan Maloney improperly reached out to Boivin’s friend who also worked for the Family Violence Project and offered to share confidential information about a criminal case against Boivin and the separate investigation into her alleged sexual assault. Boivin alleged Maloney did so in order to bypass Boivin’s attorney and seek a plea deal with her, and to silence Boivin’s online criticism of authorities for not sufficiently investigating or prosecuting her alleged rape.

Prosecutors aren’t allowed to contact defendants directly if they have an attorney representing them.

An initial investigation by a committee of the Board of Overseers determined, according to a petition from an attorney for the board, that there is probable cause that Maloney violated rules for professional conduct for attorneys in Maine and the board’s Grievance Commission should hold a hearing to consider disciplinary action against her.

The petition, which among many other documents in the case posted online by Boivin, was filed by Zachary Paakkonen, assistant bar counsel for the Board of Overseers of the Bar, and states Maloney violated rules of conduct by attempting to reach out to Boivin without going through Boivin’s attorney and offering to share confidential information about her case with a woman who works at Family Violence Project. The petition alleges that was an effort to reach out to Boivin to get her to strike a plea agreement to resolve an operating under the influence case against her.

Paakkonen wrote a board panel “found probable cause to believe that Attorney Maloney had engaged in misconduct subject to sanction under the Maine Bar Rules.”

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Maloney, in an interview and in a motion filed with the Board of Overseers seeking to dismiss the case, says she did nothing wrong and only reached out to the woman at the Family Violence Project, whom the petition identifies only by her initials, and whom Maloney described as meeting the definition of a “victim advocate,” because she thought she might be able to help Boivin cope with her alleged sexual assault. She said she did not provide any confidential information to the woman, who declined Maloney’s request to intervene. Maloney said if the woman had agreed to serve as an advocate, she would have been allowed to have access to information about her case.

“I reached out to ask a victim advocate to contact an alleged sexual assault victim, something I have done in many, many cases,” Maloney said. “The only purpose of my reaching out (to the woman at Family Violence Project) was to help Ms. Boivin with her underlying complaint of sexual assault.

“When sexual assault allegations do not lead to a suspect, a victim advocate is even more important than when a criminal case proceeds. The Waterville Police Department did everything possible to investigate her case, but Ms. Boivin remains upset that there is no one against whom criminal charges can be brought. Like in many other cases, I have referred victim advocates to victims in cases where we could not prove the allegations.”

Boivin said the woman Maloney contacted is not a victim’s advocate and primarily works as a domestic abuse educator in schools. She suspects Maloney reached out to the educator because she and Boivin were friends.

She alleges that Maloney hoped to silence Boivin’s numerous online complaints about her being drugged and raped not being taken seriously by authorities. Boivin said her main goal in filing her complaints with the board was to raise awareness of not just her own rape, but also the reports she said she’s received since then that dozens of others have reported being raped in rape rooms at bars and restaurants in Waterville and not had their allegations property investigated by police.

“I want the mass drugging and raping of women in Waterville, Maine, to be investigated,” Boivin said. “I want answers to the significant discrepancies in my rape ‘investigation’ and in all those that came before me and after me. This has been going on for years and these victims of drug-facilitated rapes deserve justice.”

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Waterville Chief of Police William Bonney has said, in response to Boivin’s allegations, there is no evidence to support that there are rape rooms in Waterville. The owner of the tavern where Boivin says she was raped has denied any such incident happened there, and threatened legal action if Boivin continues to make such public accusations.

Boivin has said she was drugged, raped and robbed on Easter Sunday, April 9, 2023, at a Waterville bar, and later was found by police in her car in a ditch, unable to tell them where she lived or to answer questions or follow simple commands, due to being drugged earlier.

Boivin was arrested that day on Route 139 in Fairfield after the Fiat she was driving was seen swerving. She was charged with operating under the influence, failing to stop, and refusing to sign a uniform summons and complaint, according to Somerset County Sheriff Dale Lancaster. Asked if Boivin had reported to deputies she had been sexually assaulted, Lancaster said she had not.

According to documents posted on her social media, on April 25, 2023, Boivin reported to Waterville police that she was sexually assaulted the day she had been arrested. She claims police didn’t take her report seriously, and later declined to update her about any progress on her case. She eventually pleaded guilty to operating under the influence, with the other charges against her dismissed. No sexual assault case has been brought on her behalf.

Attorney Joseph Jabar, a former justice in the Maine Supreme Judicial Court who is representing Maloney against the allegations before the board, said the board counsel’s findings are flawed. He said Maloney was acting within her role as a prosecutor when she tried to reach out to an advocate because she was concerned for Boivin’s well-being after reading her online posts about how the rape and lack of investigation into it had negatively impacted her life.

He argues the board should dismiss the case without holding a hearing to consider disciplining Maloney, whom he said did nothing wrong and was only trying to help the woman, not silence her rape allegations.

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“The conspiracy, that’s all background noise, the real issue is whether Maeghan was legally allowed to refer the case to an advocate for her help, which she does all the time,” Jabar said. “I don’t understand why they’re proceeding versus a district attorney who acted in compliance with the law and should be cleared.”

Maloney has once previously been the subject of a Maine Board of Overseers of the Bar disciplinary hearing. Maloney was admonished by the board, the lowest level of sanction the board can issue other than dismissal, for meeting with then-Superior Court Justice Donald Marden, at his request, without a lawyer for the defense present during the sexual assault trial of Eric Bard, a Sidney man initially convicted and sentenced to 50 years in prison for raping a 4-year-old girl.

The state’s highest court ruled Bard was deprived of due process by Maloney meeting with Marden without his lawyer present, and granted him a new trial. Bard, rather than face a new trial, agreed to a plea deal in 2023, pleading guilty to 21 charges against him and receiving a negotiated 28-year sentence.

Both Jabar and Boivin said a hearing before the board has not yet been scheduled.

Jabar and Maloney have also sought to have Boivin ordered to remove her online posts of the documents filed with the Board of Overseers, which Jabar said are confidential until the board’s process moves into a public phase. Jabar said the board has not taken action on his request.

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