Another Brockton resident spoke out at a recent government meeting about what she called a “very inappropriate” interaction with Mayor Moises Rodrigues.
At a Brockton City Council finance committee meeting on June 8, recorded by Brockton Community Access TV, Alba Cordero Soto described meeting Rodrigues last year when she was pregnant.
“Eight months ago, I met Moises Rodrigues, and he made a comment regarding my pregnant belly, and that somehow upon meeting me and holding my hand, that he was the one that impregnated me,” Cordero Soto said.
Cordero Soto then continued to speak as an official told her she needed to restrict her comments to budgetary matters.
“It was very inappropriate and very concerning,” she said. “So now I am asking: will more be done to ensure that Brockton parents feel comfortable regarding who is heading the decisions that involve our children?”
Under Brockton’s city charter, Rodrigues is the chair of the school committee as well as mayor.
Rodrigues declined to comment on the record when reached by GBH News.
In recent weeks, Rodrigues has been accused of inappropriately touching a graduating senior during an annual Brockton parade and of inappropriately touching an different girl during a photo op at a Youth Health Advisory Council meeting in May. In an interview with the Brockton Enterprise, Rodrigues denied doing anything wrong in both cases.
On Monday, a judge said Rodrigues’ behavior toward the girl at the parade was “unwelcome, offensive and certainly unprofessional.” But he declined to extend a temporary harassment prevention order issued in that case, saying the events in question did not meet the legal criteria for such an order. That case is also the subject of investigations by the Brockton Public Schools and Massachusetts State Police based out of the Plymouth County District Attorney’s office.
In the second case, the girl’s family has made a formal complaint with the Brockton Public Schools, and a source with knowledge of the situation says the school system is currently investigating.
GBH News is not identifying the complainants because they are minors.
Related Stories
In an interview with GBH News, Cordero Soto elaborated on her her recollection of her interactions with the mayor. She said the incident occurred at a ribbon-cutting event at Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, where she is a nurse.
As the event last October drew to a close, Cordero Soto said she was introduced to Rodrigues by a mutual acquaintance.
“I put my hand out to shake [Rodrigues’] hand,” she said. “He held my hand, and while he was holding my hand — like, for a period of time he just kept holding my hand — he mentioned a comment about how I wasn’t pregnant a second ago, and now I have this big belly, and that he didn’t know that he had that effect on me. Something along the lines of, he didn’t know that he had the effect to be able to make my belly big like that, in the sense of referring to my pregnant belly.
“In the moment where he made that comment, I didn’t laugh, I didn’t find it funny,” Cordero Soto added. “I just took my hand back in the moment. I think he was trying to be funny but it wasn’t funny at all.” She described her demeanor at the time as “stone-faced.”
Before that interaction, Cordero Soto said, she had never met Rodrigues, who was then a Brockton city councilor.
“He didn’t know me at all, so for him to feel so comfortable as to make a comment like that with a person that he’d never met ever in his life, I found it to be just unprofessional,” she said. “Unprofessional and inappropriate.”
Before her interaction with Rodrigues, Cordero Soto said, she had not been a supporter of Jean Bradley Derenoncourt, Rodrigues’ opponent in the mayoral race. But afterward, Cordero Soto said, she encouraged everyone she met to vote against Rodrigues because of her experience with him, which she described to them in detail. When Rodrigues was elected mayor, she said, she moved on — until she saw what happened at the Brockton High School graduation.
At the ceremony, Rodrigues was speaking from the stage when the mother of the graduating senior who’d accused him of inappropriate conduct approached him. She yelled, “You have to [expletive] get out of here. You know what you did to my daughter. You know what you did to my daughter. You have to [expletive] get out of here.”
GBH News subsequently reported that Rodrigues had beentold to stay away from the graduation due to the student’s allegation of inappropriate conduct but chose to attend anyway. Rodrigues has said he opted not to give out diplomas to avoid making inadvertent contact with his accuser, who he claimed not to know by sight, and that the schools lacked the authority to keep him from attending the event.
After witnessing what happened at the graduation, Cordero Soto said, “I decided to go public with what had happened because I thought that this person was just inappropriate or distasteful or that way with adults. As a mom of eight, it was concerning that this person has access to children and had the ability to make children feel uncomfortable. Because it’s one thing for an adult to experience that, and it’s another thing for children who are completely vulnerable.
“I would like for him not to have access to our children,” Cordero Soto added. “I would like for people to at the very least be vigilant and observant when he is around vulnerable individuals, whether it’s a child or whether it’s anyone that works beneath him or anybody who’s around him that could potentially be victimized ... and if you see something to say something.”
“I personally felt uncomfortable, but I didn’t feel victimized by him,” Cordero Soto added. “I’m an adult. I have every capacity to keep my distance from this person that I feel like is inappropriate, and I don’t have to be in the same room with him. I’m more so speaking to the vulnerable individuals such as our children that he shouldn’t have access to.”
