Ex-Boston prosecutor indicted for raping sleeping woman at Chelsea hotel in 2017
A former prosecutor and prominent voice in the criminal justice reform movement was indicted Tuesday for allegedly raping a woman as she slept inside a Chelsea hotel room in 2017.
Adam Foss, 42, a former assistant district attorney for the Suffolk County prosecutor’s office in Boston, Mass., pleaded not guilty to rape and sexual abuse charges at his state Supreme Court arraignment in Manhattan. A judge released him under the condition he surrender his passport.
Foss is the founder of Prosecutor Impact, a nonprofit whose stated mission is to improve community safety through educating and training criminal prosecutors. Its website was down Tuesday.
Manhattan prosecutors charge that Foss met a woman he’d been speaking with on the phone and in texts for a month at the INNSiDE New York NoMad hotel on Oct. 21, 2017. He raped her as she slept and after she had repeatedly rejected his sexual advances, according to charging documents.
The 25-year-old victim “was incapable of consent by reason of being physically helpless,” according to the indictment.
Foss was publicly accused of rape in a 2020 online essay published by singer-songwriter Raegan Sealy on Medium, titled “The Wolf and the Whisper Network.” Prosecutors declined to confirm whether she was the victim in the case.
Describing Foss as “a rapist in a feminist tee,” Sealy wrote that she met him at a speaking event attended by Jennifer Garner, Cynthia Nixon, and Chelsea Manning, and a week later he followed up, wanting to hang out with her.
A month after texting back and forth, Sealy wrote, her first date with Foss ended in a nightmare. She alleged that when Foss wouldn’t take no for an answer, he had sex with her while she was unconscious.
“In 2017, I was raped — by a progressive, liberal, acclaimed social justice advocate,” wrote Sealy. “[Behind] Adam the feminist lives Adam the rapist. Not just Adam ‘the player’ — not even Adam ‘the predator.’ Adam, the rapist. Adam the destroyer.”
Sealy could not be reached for comment.
In 2021, Suffolk County District Attorney Rachael Rollins issued a public apology to two unnamed women in her office who were “treated less than professionally, if not criminally” while working under him.
Robert Gottlieb, Foss’s lawyer, could not be reached for comment.
“I thank this brave survivor, who had the courage to come forward and share her story,” said District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
