Pro-life activist arrested, beaten, and accused of bomb plot
by Jeremy Kryn
Fri Aug 26, 2011
FRANKLIN, MA, August 26, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A pro-life activist in New England says he was unjustly beaten, arrested, and accused of a bomb plot while passing out pro-life bookmarks at a local town fair.
“I’m at peace because Our Lord and Savior was by me the whole way,” D’Attilio told LifeSiteNews in an interview. “I was shocked when it did happen. It was completely unexpected and out of the blue because I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I never got so much as a warning. They basically just grabbed me and cuffed me without a crime.”
In his account of what happened, published online by the pro-family group MassResistance, pro-life activist Peter D’Attilio says that police approached him on the evening of August 11 when he was handing out two-inch-wide pro-life bookmarks to six teenagers. D’Attilio was at the annual St. Rocco fair on the grounds of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Franklin, Massachusetts.
Peter D’Attilio with the black eye that he says he received after being punched by Officer Burchill.
According to D’Attilio, the police asked him to present identification. After asking why, the police officer reportedly responded that by law D’Attilio had to identify himself when asked by an officer.
In the police report filed by Officer Robert Burchill, Burchill says that he approached D’Atillio only after the chairman of the festival, Peter Brunelli, asked him to. The officer says that Brunelli had received several complaints about D’Atillio and that he wanted him removed from the property.
The pro-life activist says that when the officer prevented him from leaving the property after he offered to leave voluntarily, “I told him he was illegally detaining me.”
“He then put his hand in my back pocket to grab my wallet, but I also put my hand in my back pocket to hold my wallet, so he gave up trying.” At that point D’Attilio was put into handcuffs.
The pro-life activist says that after he was handcuffed he suddenly found himself pushed to his knees while the police officer “started choking me,” after which the officer reportedly punched him in the face, giving him a black eye.
In the police report, Officer Burchill claimed that D’Attilio repeatedly resisted arrest. “While I was trying to place the handcuffs on him, he pulled away and had to be physically restrained and handcuffed,” he said.
The officer said that D’Attilio again resisted when the officers were placing him into the police cruiser, and that “he had to be physically put into the cruiser.”
D’Attilio, however, denies the charge. “He claimed I tried to resist that, which I didn’t,” he said.
At the police station, D’Attilio says that the sergeant who did the booking asked him if he had planned to blow up the fair, telling him that pro-life people “are known for that kind of thing.”
When D’Attilio got out of jail, he found that his truck had been thoroughly searched with “bomb-sniffing dogs.” The pro-life activist says he has been told that he has been put on a “terrorist watch list.”
Read More: http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pro-life-activist-arrested-beaten-and-accused-of-bomb-plot


