By DAMIEN FISHER, InDepthNH.org
Newly reinstated Brookline Fire Chief Charles Corey harassed his administrative assistant and ordered her to create fake billing invoices, but that doesn’t seem to matter to town officials.
Corey is now back on the job after a six-month suspension. Despite a town investigation finding that Anais Molina’s complaints were valid, Corey was allowed to return to his post last month.
“No one knows how much of a monster he is. I did nothing wrong and I’m the one paying for it,” Molina told InDepthNH.org.
Molina quit her job as the department’s administrative assistant on May 24, four days before Corey returned. She felt she had no option to stay as Corey turned the department into a toxic environment. Molina started in October of last year, the seventh administrative assistant in recent years. She soon became Corey’s target.
“He was just gunning for me as a Hispanic female. He said a lot of racial things,” Molina said.
Corey declined to comment Wednesday and referred questions to his attorney, Bob Parodi. Parodi did not respond to a request for comment.
Corey frequently talked about Molina’s weight and body shamed her in the office, she said. He would constantly tell her she’s getting fat, and warned her that her husband would leave her because of her weight.
“Be careful, you’ll end up getting fat and your husband will leave you,” Molina said.
Corey even started taking photos of her during her lunch break, saying he wanted to send them to her husband. Molina began taking her breaks in her car to avoid Corey’s harassment.
“I cried for days,” she said of the photo incident.
Corey also refused to let Molina attend the state’s Firefighter 1 academy, telling her firefighting is not a job for women.
“He told me I couldn’t become a firefighter because I’m a female, and females don’t last in this profession,” she said.
Corey made inappropriate comments about the underwear of someone in the fire station, made comments about the way “people in Boston” wear pants to expose their “asses,” and engaged in name calling, such as calling another town employee a “bitch,” according to a town letter obtained by InDepthNH.org.
The final straw came when Corey demanded Molina create a fake billing invoice from Foundation Medical Partners in Nashua, including a forged signature, so that he could submit it to the town for reimbursement. When Molina balked at the order, Corey exploded, she said.
“I refused to do that, that’s why he screamed at me,” she said.
Firefighters are required to get regular physical exams, and the department covers the cost. But Molina said the hospital has instead been billing the health insurance companies for the individual firefighters.
Interim Town Administrator and Selectman Brendan Denehy told InDepthNH.org that two invoices were deemed forgeries. One was an invoice from Dec. 28, 2020 for $1,323, and the other from Dec. 27, 2021 for $4,958.
“These are invoices which were created by the Brookline Fire Department in an attempt to pay FMP for physicals which were being charged to the individual fire fighters instead of the Fire Department. This was brought to the attention of the Brookline Selectboard in March 2024,” Denehy said via email.
Molina went to Selectmen with her complaints, and the board brought in its attorney to conduct an investigation. Corey reports to the town’s Board of Fire Engineers whose members are referred to as Fire Wards.
In a March letter to Molina, the Fire Wards explained that while most of her allegations were found to be true, Corey would be returning to the department after he wrote an apology for the harassment. During a meeting with the Fire Wards and the investigating attorney, Molina was told to move on.
“I was told ‘people make mistakes’ and ‘we ask that you forgive him,’ ‘we just can’t dismiss the many years he’s been a fire chief,’” Molina said. “They are saying what he did to me is OK because of who he is. Anybody else would have been fired.”
The investigation found in regards to the harassment Corey’s conduct violated policy and fell below standard. The investigation also found that while Corey did tell Molina it would be hard for a woman of her age to become a firefighter, and that comment violated town policy, Corey never acted on the comment.
Molina is finishing her Firefighter 1 training in the next few weeks after Assistant Chief Dave Joki got her into the class. Joki is also one of the town’s Fire Wards.
As for the forged invoices, the Fire Wards determined that Corey was “misguided,” but had good intentions. Good enough to keep his job.
“[S]ince the preponderance of the evidence demonstrated that the Chief’s motivation was to see expenses actually incurred by the Department was paid to the appropriate party, not to enrich himself or some other inappropriate purpose,” the March letter states.
As Corey gets back to running the Brookline Fire Department, Molina is now looking for a new job.
“He just keeps getting away with it,” Molina said.