Contempt Charge Hangs Over Man Who Claims Wrongful Conviction; Broken Family Speaks Out

By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH

A man convicted of heinous crimes. A family ripped apart. Children subjected to a life in abusive foster care. Grandchildren struggling to navigate the world after growing up in unstable homes. And all of it may have been based on lies.

Robert LaMontagne spent 10 years in prison for reportedly molesting his three children. He’s maintained his innocence throughout his trial and post-conviction life, but it’s hard to get people to listen to his story. He’s a convicted child sex offender.

“Nobody likes a child molester,” LaMontagne said. “When you have that stigma, nobody wants to hear it."

But things are starting to change. LaMontagne’s daughter, one of his alleged victims, is now backing him up. Becky Meattey told InDepthNH.org on Monday her father never abused her.

“I had a lot of things hidden from me,” Becky Meattey said. “I was four when they took me away.”

Becky Meattey was in Cheshire Superior Court in Keene on Monday to support her father as he struggles with a criminal justice system that always seems to have him at a disadvantage. After fighting for years to prove the lead detective who helped put him behind bars has his own troubling past, LaMontagne is being threatened with contempt of court.

“It doesn’t make any sense to me,” LaMontagne said.

LaMontagne’s supposed new crime is talking about the information withheld from his defense in an online group chat and in an internet site comment section. LaMontagne’s been fighting for the past two years to get access to the records, mostly without the aid of an attorney.

According to Grafton County Attorney Martha Ann Hornick, some of the information LaMontagne shared came from sealed documents. LaMontagne said he never got a clear explanation about what was sealed and what wasn’t.

At the center of LaMontagne’s push for information is former star-investigator, now retired Keene Police Detective James McLaughlin.

McLaughlin was the investigator who put LaMontagne away in 1990, and whose record of lying on the job had been kept secret. Later that decade McLaughlin would become nationally famous for spearheading new ways to go after child sex offenders in the Internet age. He taught other detectives how to lure potential sex offenders online, and get them arrested. He even got into Rolling Stone for his then-novel techniques.

But what no one outside of upper echelon local law enforcement knew is that McLaughlin was on the county Laurie List, now known as the Exculpatory Evidence Schedule. InDepthNH.org uncovered two disciplinary incidents in McLaughlin’s record in 2022 after filing a Right-to-Know Request. One 1986 incident involved McLaughlin getting caught in a lie about discharging his service revolver. The other incident, which took place in 1987, involved McLaughlin possibly tampering with evidence.

McLaughlin didn't respond to request for comment. According to a 1988 letter from then Keene Police Chief Thomas Powers, McLaughlin was involved in a heated verbal confrontation with a civilian on the phone, and later inside the police station. It was during this incident that the audio recording of the phone call was destroyed under suspicious circumstances, according to Powers.

“In the subsequent interview concerning the incident, no reasonable reason for the blank tape was found and an electronic examination of the tape revealed unintelligible voices,” Powers wrote. “You provided statements that you had ‘words’ with the complainant and had rewound the tape to get his name yet did not purposefully erase any part thereof. You could not explain the misfiling of the tape, nor why the log did not indicate the tape cleaning or changing at 2400 hours.”

Powers indicates that McLaughlin already in 1988 had a record for bad behavior as a police officer.

“I reviewed your personnel files and several internal affairs investigations. While you have accumulated a number of praises in your career, a disproportionate number of serious accusations and violations have significantly detracted from your record, including a one-week suspension,” Powers wrote.

The investigation into LaMontagne’s reported abuse of his children would kick off in 1988, according to available records. McLaughlin made the original arrest and testified at the trial. His past discipline for lies was never mentioned to LaMontagne’s attorney, Bruce Jasper.

“There was no Laurie or Brady disclosure made about McLaughlin,” Jasper told InDepthNH.org in 2022. “I’m sure it would have potentially changed the outcome.”

Jasper has since died, as has the original prosecutor, Cheshire County Attorney Ed O’Brien.

McLaughlin’s name appeared on the very first Exculpatory Evidence Schedule released by the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office in January of 2022, but was redacted within hours. A lawsuit challenging placement on the list was cited at the time. Last year, a John Doe police officer whose biographical details match McLaughlin was able to get removed from the EES, according to court records.

After the 2022 InDepthNH.org story came out, LaMontagne renewed his crusade to get his conviction overturned. Hornick took over LaMontagne’s complaint to avoid a conflict of interest given McLaughlin is the current investigator for the Cheshire County Attorney’s Office. After years of being frustrated by the process, LaMontagne filed an unsuccessful complaint against Hornick this year with the New Hampshire Attorney Discipline Office.

As part of that process, however, Hornick sent a letter to the ADO last month that for the first time confirms the fact McLaughlin was a Laurie List cop at the time of LaMontagne’s trial. Hornick’s investigation could not find any record that McLaughlin’s record was ever disclosed to Jasper and LaMontagne. There’s also no record indicating that O’Brien was aware of the potentially exculpatory discipline record.

“In the end, I am not convinced that the particular records, even if they were deemed relevant and discoverable, would have resulted in a different outcome in Mr. LaMontagne’s trial. Nevertheless, Mr. LaMontagne and his attorney were entitled to this information and would have been entitled to that information had their existence been known,” Hornick wrote.

The problems with LaMontagne’s conviction go beyond McLaughlin. Becky Meattey told InDepthNH.org she and her two brothers were coached on what to say to police and on the witness stand by social workers with the Division for Children, Youth and Families. If the children made the right accusations against their father, they would be rewarded with trips to McDonalds or the movies, she said.

“When we went to court, I was, I think I was seven, and my little brother was five,” Meattey said. “I was seven years old. And I didn't know what this stuff was that they were telling me to say.”

Some of the alleged abuse they were directed to disclose happened after the children were already removed from their home and not able to see their father, Becky Meattey said.

In the end, their father was sent to prison, and they were sentenced to a life in state care. The siblings were soon split up and put in different foster homes approved by the state where Becky Meattey said they were actually abused. One brother ended up in at least 80 different foster homes, she said.

“I was ten years old when they threw me in a group home. And I didn't do anything wrong,” Becky Meattey said.

Becky Meattey was 17 when she had her first child, and began her own life as an unstable parent. The trauma that scarred Becky Meattey impacted her children, including Emily Meattey.

“I had it in a bad way where my mom didn't know how to be a parent,” Emily Meattey said.

Her cousin, Amber Meattey, grew up with a father who struggles to reconcile his past and what was done to him. She said the emotional cost of her childhood left her unable to be a regular adult. She’d like to see justice for her family after it was so damaged by the state.

“I think that my grandfather and my dad and all the other kids should try to come together and, like, get justice for what's happened to them, because we've suffered,” Amber Meattey said.

Emily Meattey said the whole saga, including the new threat of contempt charges, show the brokenness at the heart of the entire system of policing, courts, and child services.

“They have too much power,” Emily Meattey said. “I know that there are people out there, and there are kids out there who do have that, and are in actual horrible situations. Situations where, you know, there is abuse and there are these terrible things going on, but I feel like a lot of people see children as dollar signs … They get paid when a child gets taken away from their parents and they get paid for the child trafficking. That’s what it is. It is child trafficking.”

LaMontagne will be back in court for a contempt hearing in October. By then he hopes to have finalized an agreement with a lawyer. His daughter and granddaughters have been making sure he does not lose hope. The fact they were able to see past the criminal charges and reconnect with him has meant everything.

“They believed me. And they want to get some peace, like me,” Lamontagne said.

This article first appeared on InDepthNH.org and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.