ST. JOHNSBURY — Community members are calling on the Caledonia County sheriff to fire a deputy facing allegations that, in exchange for sexual favors, he paid money or promised legal help to vulnerable women he encountered as an officer.
“We are here to denounce law enforcement officers who cause the public to distrust your brothers and sisters in blue,” former St. Johnsbury police officer Sophie Patenaude said at a demonstration downtown Tuesday directed at Sheriff Dean Shatney. “You are destroying their relationship with us, their community.”
Deputy Stephen Bunnell — who has been on paid leave since April — is being investigated by Vermont State Police over potential charges of extortion, prostitution and more, according to court records unsealed Friday.
“If these allegations are true, I am very upset about it,” Shatney told VTDigger. “His personal actions do not represent this agency or the employees here. I’m floored, and I’ve been floored, and I want something done but I can’t right now.”
Shatney said he’s waiting for results of the investigation to take further action.
Bunnell’s attorney, Corby Gary, denied the claims against his client.
“Stephen Bunnell did not pay anyone for sex,” Gary said. “Stephen Bunnell could not make anyone’s traffic tickets go away even if he wanted to, and he does not want to.”
Bunnell came under scrutiny after a multi-agency drug raid Feb. 21 at the home of a St. Johnsbury woman charged with selling cocaine and possessing heroin, according to the Caledonian Record, which first obtained the newly unsealed documents.
VTDigger does not identify survivors of abuse and is withholding the identities of women allegedly involved with Bunnell.
VTDigger is underwritten by:
Bunnell assisted in that raid, records show. Officers obtained a warrant for the woman’s Facebook messages and saw she had been talking to the deputy, according to police documents. That spurred state police investigators to step in, and court papers lay out the core allegations against Bunnell.
The most detailed account came from a different St. Johnsbury woman, who spoke to investigators April 13.
She told investigators that Bunnell met her years ago through police interactions, and last summer he promised he would make her traffic tickets disappear if she had sex with him. Her license had been suspended because of unpaid fines, she told police.
The woman said she drove to meet Bunnell about half a dozen times for sexual interactions — sometimes while he was on duty — and that each time she had to get drunk to go through with it because he made her uncomfortable. She believed he knew she was driving drunk and with a suspended license, the woman told investigators, but he never arrested her.
She told detectives Bunnell had also given her between $300 and $400 in several payments to have sex with him, and claimed he once gave her loose change for the act.
“She also believed that Bunnell had engaged in similar activity with other women, in particular drug addicts,” investigators wrote in an April search warrant affidavit.
The woman also told investigators that Bunnell had threatened to tell the state Department for Children and Families about her alcohol and drug problems, and that he had once driven her to pick up drugs.
Naked pictures
Investigators spoke with Bunnell about some of the allegations April 7, records show.
He said he had arrested that woman once, state police reported, “and he knew she was struggling, was into using drugs and was claiming to be trying to get clean,” so he had given her money to help her out.
The deputy said the two also had sex once or twice at his St. Johnsbury home, detectives wrote in court filings.
Court records show Bunnell also spoke to detectives about the woman involved in the February drug raid. He said he met the woman while working as a St. Johnsbury police officer years ago, and knew her both personally and professionally.
He told police that last summer, he noticed her account on Facebook and messaged her to ask how she was doing. He said he thought she was trying to stop using drugs and was struggling, so he bought her a cellphone and started giving her money, records show.
The woman told him she wouldn’t be able to pay him back, and “Bunnell told her that he knew that and requested she send him pictures,” according to court documents. “He claimed he did not intend for her to send naked pictures, but she interpreted this request as him asking for naked pictures and she sent some to him.” Bunnell told investigators he and the woman were “barely friends.”
He said he would show detectives his Facebook messages with her, if he had not already deleted them after talking with superiors about the situation, court records show.
VTDigger is underwritten by:
Investigators were unable to speak with that woman, according to affidavits. But documents detail some of the Facebook messages between her and the deputy.
On Jan. 4, the woman wrote that she “was kinda hoping maybe you could come help me out and I’d do whatever you wanted for payment in return,” records show, ending her message with a winking emoji.
“You said that before but never followed through tho,” Bunnell replied. He wrote that he was in Newport at the moment but the woman “could always start with those pics you were gonna do.”
The chat logs didn’t show any pictures being sent, according to the documents.
State police talked to St. Johnsbury Police Chief Tim Page on April 6, records show.
Page said Bunnell “confessed that he was giving (the woman whose home was raided) money in exchange for naked photographs, in an effort to try to help her out financially,” according to the records.
Bunnell denied any other involvement with the woman and Page believed him, the chief told investigators.
Page told detectives he was confident Bunnell had not tipped off the woman about the raid “due to the amount of money and drugs which were seized during the search warrant,” records show.
Bunnell also told investigators he had given a Cabot woman money for naked pictures last fall. He said he had taken her shopping, paid for her clothing and in return asked for naked pictures, according to state police.
When investigators talked to the Cabot woman April 9, she said Bunnell had transported her to jail once before, records show. She confirmed she would send him nude photos for money, according to records, but said he never gave her law enforcement information or offered help avoiding tickets and arrests in exchange.
The woman said Bunnell was “not a bad guy,” according to state police, and she didn’t want him to get in trouble. Public records and news reports indicate that, like the other women, she has had run-ins with local law enforcement over the past few years.
Gary, the deputy’s lawyer, said people should consider the source of the allegations, pointing to the women’s alleged involvement in drugs and other crimes.
“Oftentimes it seems that those people who are in trouble always point to someone else,” he said.
He said Bunnell hates being on paid leave. “That man is practically begging to go back to work,” Gary said.
Demonstrators: Sheriff complacent
At the demonstration Tuesday morning, about 30 people gathered to demand Shatney ask Bunnell for his badge and to support the women named in the investigation.
Patenaude, the former police officer who organized the event, said the sheriff had been complacent by not doing more than placing Bunnell on leave.
Patenaude and former state representative Michelle Fay called for a police oversight committee to address broader questions of police abuse of power.
Amanda McFarland, director of advocacy for domestic and gender violence group Umbrella, called Bunnell’s alleged conduct an “egregious abuse of power.”
“Just because you may struggle with substance misuse, have a criminal record or are in severe economic hardship does not make it OK for anyone to demand sexual favors from you, use you or abuse you,” McFarland said.
Umbrella’s executive director, Amanda Cochrane, said incidents like this erode her organization’s partnerships with law enforcement agencies.
In a statement Tuesday, the Vermont Department of State’s Attorneys and Sheriffs said it takes the allegations seriously and has been helping investigators.
“Sheriff Shatney placed Deputy Bunnell on administrative leave when allegations of misconduct first became known,” department director John Campbell said in the press release. “At the same time, Caledonia State’s Attorney Zaleski transferred the matter to State’s Attorney Shriver in Windham County to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the decision of whether criminal charges would be filed.”
Campbell said Shatney has been following the required procedures with the Bunnell case, aiming to avoid legal challenges about due process.
According to court records filed April 30, state police seized Bunnell’s work iPhone and his personal iPad and requested a search warrant to analyze data on the devices related to the three women involved and “any female criminal court defendant.”
State police investigators wrote in an April 22 warrant application that they had probable cause to believe the devices will show evidence of extortion and threats, prostitution, neglect of duty by a public officer and obstruction of justice. They requested a warrant that day to search and seize data from the Facebook accounts of Bunnell and the three women.
Judge Robert Bent granted both requests.
