August 2024
District Judge Zaino of Salem, New Hampshire, ruled last month that Kelly Birchall Frazier, Lawrence’s homeless outreach coordinator, cannot use a harassment injunction and the Violence Against Women Act to prevent Valley Patriot publisher Tom Duggan from reporting on her attempt, as a public employee of the city of Lawrence, to divert $200,000 in federal funds to her own nonprofit organization (IVCS).
Duggan had been forced to remain silent for 127 days by the judge after initially ruling that he could not publish his story.
After Kelly told the court that she had suffered a stroke on a Friday and lost her sight, preventing her from attending a hearing the following Monday, she went live on Facebook the next day (Saturday) and rode around on a motorcycle with her husband. The court did nothing to stop the deception.
When the delayed hearing actually took place, the judge ruled that Frazier could not use the injunction to suppress Duggan’s rights to free speech and freedom of the press.
“This order does not prohibit the defendant from posting and commenting on the plaintiff’s public duties, as allegations of malpractice or negligence may be made publicly,” Judge Michael Zaino concluded the second hearing.
FRAZIER TRIED TO STOP THE INVESTIGATION
REPORTS OF HARASSMENT ORDERS
On March 8, Valley Patriot editor Tom Duggan posted on Facebook that he would release the results of his year-long investigation into Lawrence homeless coordinator Kelly Birchall Frazier the following day (see article on next page).
Within hours, a North Andover police officer knocked on the Valley Patriot’s door and served Duggan with a harassment warrant from Salem, NH, where Frazier claimed Duggan had threatened to kill her on his podcast.
One of the provisions of the order was that Duggan was not allowed to post anything about Frazier, especially on social media, which would have devalued Duggan’s story.
Frazier claimed in court documents under penalty of perjury that Duggan revealed her home address on his podcast and told people to come to her home and harass her. The video below shows what Duggan actually said on his podcast.
She also claimed that Duggan posted a photo on Facebook “of me and my husband with threats.”
The photo Duggan posted simply showed her husband, Debo Brown, at Duggan’s charity party the year before. Kelly Birchall Frazier was not in the photo, and there was no threat of physical violence.
She further claimed that she was “fearful for my life” because Duggan had drawn an analogy between the Facebook war between him and her husband Debo and the war in Gaza – where Duggan said there would be no more ceasefires between them (because Debo had violated their agreements multiple times in the past) because he said he had tanks rolling across the Gaza border!!
Women in fear do not seek out their attackers
After claiming she was so afraid for her life because of Tom Duggan that she needed a restraining order against her, Frazier appeared at the Valley Patriots’ 20th anniversary charity event on March 26 while the restraining order was still in effect.
Kelly and her husband Donald (aka Debo Brown) walked by the open door of Duggan’s party when he awarded scholarships at Relief’s In in Lawrence and sat at the bar with Jackie Marmol, knowing that every year after scholarship night, the after-party takes place at the bar.
“She was going to take me to jail. If nobody had come and told me they saw her come in, we would all have gone to the bar afterwards like we always do and she would have called the police and said I was harassing her and violating the order,” Duggan said that night.
When a hearing was held on April 1 to determine whether Duggan posed a danger to Frazier, she failed to appear and Judge Zaino lifted the restraining order.
Frazier appeared hours later and asked for a rehearing because she was late, but Judge Zaino denied the request.
“COME TOMORROW”
ANOTHER ORDER
After the dismissal, Duggan published an article on the Valley Patriot website detailing how Frazier used a chicane arrangement in New Hampshire to prevent him from exposing their activities as city employees in Lawrence.
But hours after Duggan posted the story on Facebook under the caption “Tomorrow comes the story Kelly Frazier didn’t want you to hear,” he received the following message: another Harassment order with the same factual allegations that had already been dismissed twice.
This time, Frazier actually admitted in writing that she had only filed the order based on Duggan’s news report that he had “spread lies about me.”
During the hearing on that harassment order, Frazier told the court that she also feared for her life because “he spread lies about me and accused me of stealing $3 million from homeless people.The homeless in Lawrence are violent, they are criminals and they are mentally ill. I’m afraid they’re going to attack me because of what Duggan said.”
Frazier claimed that she could no longer do her job for fear of homeless people, but she had to return to work the following Monday with a busy schedule.
The case is now before the Supreme Court of New Hampshire.◊
RELATED STORIES (COMING)
Valley Patriot publisher Tom Duggan arrested/found not guilty on false charges
Kelly Frazier, a homeless coordinator in Lawrence, tried to transfer $200,000 in federal funds to her own nonprofit
