A Town Councilor whose past was brought to light last week wants to set the record straight, and wants to keep working for Derry.
Council Vice-Chair Albert Dimmock was the subject of fliers posted in downtown Derry on the weekend of July 11.
Dimmock served six months in a Connecticut jail for sexual assault in 1985. While rumors about his conviction have circulated for years, the fliers were the first aggressive attempt to bring the issue to the forefront.
The fliers include a current picture of Dimmock, a Connecticut address and an inmate number. The offense is listed as third-degree sexual assault. The flier includes the question, “Does he have the right to be a Town Councilor or even have the right to vote?”
In a phone interview Friday, Dimmock said the fact of his incarceration was true but the facts on the fliers were wrong. The flier listed Dimmock as serving a year in jail, which is not correct, according to Dimmock. “I served less than six months,” he said.
The flier also had him listed as incarcerated in 1989, and Dimmock said, “I was in New Hampshire by then. I was in Raymond, then Hudson, then Derry.”
The earlier rumors suggested that Dimmock was incarcerated for sexual abuse of children, and that is an outright lie, he said. Both of the women accusing him were over 25 and he has not been required to register as a sexual offender.
As Dimmock tells it, the facts are: He was working on a farm in Connecticut in 1985 when two women accused him of sexual assault. He was sentenced to one year in jail, but there were “extenuating circumstances,” Dimmock said.
The charges were not brought by the two women who made the allegations, but by a feminist group, the Susan B.
Anthony group. Dimmock said the judge in the case “didn’t want to be picketed by the Susan B. Anthonys,” which he described as an aggressive group, and advised Dimmock’s attorney to have him plead guilty.
“I can get you off for a year if you cop a plea,” Dimmock remembers his lawyer saying. “If you don’t, the judge will send you away for 20 years.”
Dimmock took the advice and pleaded guilty, he said, adding that he was released for time served in less than six months.
Dimmock is current vice-chair of the Derry Town Council. He and three other Councilors, Chairman Tom Cardon, Mark Osborne and David Fischer, have been under fire in recent weeks for a budget they voted to approve on May 19, which effected cuts to police, fire and public works in exchange for a $1.21 drop in the tax rate.
The anonymous fliers were posted Sunday, July 12, on several downtown businesses on West and East Broadway and in the Hood Commons shopping center on Crystal Avenue. They were removed the same day by the Derry Police Department.
Dimmock said he thinks the flier distribution was a direct result of his stand on the vote and the tax cut. “It is definitely related,” he said. “I ticked someone off, and they’re getting back at me.”
He said he plans to run again for the Council, pointing out, “Unless you’re running for President, U.S. Senate or the House of Rep- resentatives, you can run if you served your time. I served my time.
“I was elected by the people,” Dimmock added. “You can’t get rid of me – unless you vote for someone else.”
And he has been a model citizen in his 32 years in Derry, Dimmock added, saying, “In 32 years, I got two parking tickets.”
Dimmock represents District 4 and was elected in 2013.
