I quote now from that column, adding italics to make his
words stand out from mine:
The investigation was
started when my aide approached House leadership with a request to be
transferred to work in a different office.
I knew about this request as she was interested in a full-time position,
which would include maternity leave, something that she didn’t receive as a
legislative aide.
What I didn’t know at
the time was that to reinforce her need to transfer she told the legal office
in the Statehouse that she had discovered a photo on an email. She had found it while looking at sent
messages while searching for some information relevant to a constituent issue. Her discovery of the image was accidental and
its existence in the Statehouse electronic file system was unknown to me at the
time.
The image had been
taken on my personal cell phone at my home, by the woman I was seeing at the
time, and she texted it to her own personal phone. It was a bit of foolishness between the two
of us, but it was a private image that she took and sent to herself.
Neither of us thought
much of it at the time, and it didn’t occur to us that as a result of my
personal cell phone being linked to my Statehouse computer, it was stored in a
computer.
When my aide was doing
some research of sent messages, and opened this file, she was startled – as you
might well expect – to see the picture.
She closed the file and for months said nothing to myself or anyone, except
some personal friends with whom she worked at the Statehouse.
As her pursuit of a
transfer continued, and she was asked why she wanted to be transferred, she
made the claim that inappropriate material had appeared on a Statehouse
computer and she felt she needed to work somewhere else.
She had no way to know
that the image had been a private picture, sent accidentally through a system
that parked the image on the Statehouse computer. But, having raised the tantalizing prospect
that I was engaging in inappropriate behavior with Statehouse property, those
in leadership who have made no secret to a dislike for me saw the opportunity
to embarrass me – or worse.
As it turned out, in
order to defend myself I would have had to drag the woman I was seeing and
others into a sordid investigation process, most likely filled with graphic
depictions of the image and our personal foolishness.
My defense rested upon
the possible humiliation of many people, not just me. I did not want to have to go through that
process. My female friend had no intention
of showing this to anyone else. My aide
had no intention of seeing the texted image, but was understandably shaken by
seeing it, not knowing how it came to be there.
Her consultation with
friends about it would mean they would have to testify, and my enemies in
leadership would have the chance to unload any other vitriol they wanted to,
while I was left with little to defend myself.
It was a
lose-lose-lose proposition. Thus, I
decided to let it drop with my resignation.
At the time of his resignation, John Fresolo was 48. He’d been in the House for 15 years and was
serving his eighth consecutive term.
Politics and public service were his life.
The departure had to have been doubly traumatic, first because
he was leaving a way of life he loved, second because he was going away on a
downward path, a way made slick by vague and “tantalizing” ethical questions.
The House Ethics Committee was not required to issue a
report on its investigation of Fresolo.
Unless a matter the committee is investigating is brought
before the full House, for example, to gain the approval of the House for a
committee-proposed sanction on a representative, House rules stipulate that the
subject and content of an Ethics Committee proceeding be kept secret.
With the matter permanently sealed, Fresolo decided to fill
in some of the blanks, using as his sketch pad the pages of the Worcester Telegram
& Gazette. The question is, why now?
Was he hoping to remove the cloud over his head just to
facilitate entry into a new field? He’s
still a fairly young man, with many years of earning potentially before him.
Or was he hoping, more boldly, to lay the groundwork for a
political comeback?
In either case, his narrative of personal “foolishness,” as
opposed to violations of ethical and legal strictures, and of resigning to
spare many people from “possible humiliation," is potentially quite useful.
Perhaps it’s best simply to view the narrative as a trial
balloon.
A lot of time has passed since Fresolo resigned. Memories have faded, emotions cooled. People have moved on. No longer is he serving as a human lightning
rod.
So he puts out the best possible version of his story and
holds his breath.
If no one close to the case shoots holes in the story -- and, so far, no one has publicly -- he will have taken a step successfully toward
vindication and regeneration.
If things remain quiet, the next step would be for Fresolo to have friends spread a
story, say late in 2015, that he’s going to be a candidate for the legislature
in 2016. (Watch out, Dan Donahue.)
If the press was unable at that point to elicit facts and
comments contrary to Fresolo’s narrative -- if the woman who took that
compromising photo and the woman who found it declined invitations from newshounds
to revisit the case -- Fresolo could convince himself the time is ripe to
regain his life on Beacon Hill. 
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