THE SALEM NEWS, Jun 14, 2007

"‘Savior’ hailed for turning in Beverly child rape photos to police"
(Julie Manganis)

SALEM — Jill Pena didn’t know Richard “Rick” Lapham the first time she went to his Salem apartment to give a friend a ride one night in July 2004.

But when Lapham asked her if she wanted to see some pictures, she politely said sure, imagining photos “from a camping trip or something.”

What Lapham showed her, however, was so disturbing it brought Pena to tears: photos of himself with a pretty, dark-haired little girl performing sexual acts on him.

“I had tears coming down my eyes,” she said.

Even through the haze of the drugs she was using at the time, “I knew that I needed to get help for her.”

If not for that decision, a prosecutor said yesterday, a little girl might still be suffering horrific sexual abuse at the hands of her crack-addicted mother, Mary Jean Armstrong, who traded sexual access to the 9-year-old for drugs.

Prosecutor Elizabeth Dunigan yesterday called Pena “the savior” for her role in bringing one of the area’s most shocking sexual abuse cases to light by getting those pictures and giving them to police.

“If she hadn’t done that, we wouldn’t be here today, and (the victim) would still be in one of those apartments,” Dunigan told a judge during yesterday’s sentencing of the final defendant in the case, Lapham’s friend Robert “Bobby” L’Italien.

At the time, Pena didn’t view herself as a hero, as she waited for a chance to get back into the apartment, climb onto a kitchen counter and snatch the Polaroids from the top of a cabinet.

“I had to do it when no one would see me,” Pena, now 33, recalled yesterday in the only interview she has ever given in the case.

She was so nervous, she said, that she left her purse behind.

It wasn’t an easy time in Pena’s life, either. Caught up in drug addiction, she had just surrendered her parental rights and custody of her children, a memory that brings her to tears.

“I knew I did the right thing for my children,” Pena said. “I also knew there was another child that needed my help. Somebody had to do something.”

Pena knew what would happen to that little girl if she didn’t act.

As a girl, Pena said, she was sexually assaulted by a stranger who was never identified or caught.

“I think that’s why it hit me so hard,” she said. “I feel like if I wasn’t raped, I would have been a different person. I ran with the drugs to hide the feelings.”

Pena has little patience for the excuses made by Lapham and by Patrick Doyle, who both blamed substance abuse for their roles in the child’s abuse.

“I was high at that moment, but I knew what was right and what was wrong,” Pena said. “During this whole case, they tried to use it as an excuse.”

They also tried to blame Pena. After the arrests, she received a series of harassing and threatening phone calls and notes.

One day someone broke into her apartment and laid in wait to attack her. The attacker mistook her roommate’s boyfriend for Pena and jumped him. No one was ever charged with that assault. Doyle later pleaded guilty to witness intimidation for threatening her over the telephone and is serving a year in jail.

She was forced to move out of her apartment.

Pena, 33, has been clean for 131/2 months.

“I just got tired of being tired,” she said.

Pena made a guardian angel doll for the little girl and gave it to the victim-witness advocate in the case, Kathy Draper, so that it can be delivered to her at her new home.

“I would love to meet her,” Pena said.

Pena said she also feels for the other victims of the case — the families of the four who were charged. She said she felt sad to see L’Italien’s elderly parents sitting in court yesterday, clearly anguished.

“I feel bad for the parents,” Pena said.

Asked how she felt when Dunigan called her a savior in court, Pena said she felt “that I did something good, that I should be proud of myself, that I helped a child who couldn’t get help from her own mother.

“I would do it again in a heartbeat.”


Original article:
www.salemnews.com/archives/savior-hailed-for-turning-in-beverly-child-rape-photos-to-police/article_5adac6c1-7936-502f-a08c-ff5f1a97bd0a.html
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October 9, 2023:
This afternoon, I was shopping in Market Basket in Lynn and none other than Ricky Lapham was shopping by himself in the store. Outrageous. I can not comprehend as to why is he not still in jail, let alone allowed to shop in close proximity to children.

He's a sick fuck and I made sure the manager of Market Basket knows it. In the meantime, I'm making this track a free download permanently and hoping the lyrics will someday become a house party chant. You can also download the single version for free from the compilation Sit On A Single.

Download what thou wilt.
JMS