Virginia Moulton to Massachusetts Legislature November 2001

[Guest guest]

Good afternoon. Ken has just spoken to you about the local and state corruption. Our home is the perfect example of town and state corruption at its finest because it was never inspected at any of the required stages of construction.

According to your own state laws, the town must inspect every home and building during construction. If the town had been there during any of the stages of construction and had enforced the laws to protect us, our home would never have been built.

To make matters worse, the town gave the builders of this home and their realtor a certificate of occupancy so they could sell us the home. The bank required the certificate of occupancy so we could get a mortgage, which means the town, realtor and builders committed bank fraud.

Do you think the bank would have given a mortgage if they knew the home was not inspected by the town and was allowed to be built illegally and unsafe? Our home is ready to collapse because of the way the town allowed it to be constructed.

Water leaks through the collapsing roof and flows through the walls and down into the cellar. The water has contaminated much of the electrical wiring in the house.

The Centerville Fire Department had to pull down an electric smoke detector, ceiling fan and bathroom light because the water had shorted out the wiring. Shortly after that, the ceiling in my Daughter and Granddaughters bathroom collapsed due to the water saturation from the leaks.

Their bedrooms also have mold growing on the walls, doorways and floors. As I just said, their bathroom has been taken over by mold too.

Mold has now taken over the floors, walls, ceilings, beams, wood and insulation. The water and moisture has gotten in and mold has grown and taken over the sheet rock. The mold is Stachybotrys, which is one of the worst forms of mold. It becomes airborne just like anthrax does.

Breathing this mold causes respiratory problems, lung problems, constant headaches, coughing spells, hair loss and constant diarrhea. My family is suffering from all of these. It can also cause nosebleeds, coughing of blood and brain damage.

Our Federal Government considers Stachybotrys mold to be a biological weapon of war. My family and I fear for our lives.

In the living room, the fireplace was knowingly lined with wood so we can't use it or the house will burn down. It is also filled with mold from the leaking water. The living room floor has rotted through the sub flooring from the water that has leaked through the illegal roof the town allowed to be constructed.

The living room and dining room mold has also attached itself to my oriental rugs so we had to destroy them. The mold has also come through the walls and has grown on my wall paintings, which also have to be destroyed.

In our master bedroom, mold has blackened our rugs and parts of the walls, clothes and furniture. In our master bathroom, half of the ceiling had to be removed and destroyed because the mold had saturated it. You can smell the odor of the mold in the house.

Our Son's handicapped bathroom has two problems. One is the leaking water from the illegal roof the town allowed and the other is the bathroom and dining room floors are collapsing into the basement. This collapsing was caused by the state when the Massachusetts Rehab Commission had their builder cut the supporting floor joices.

They refused to fix it and told us to get a homeowners loan. They also never got a building permit for the handicapped renovations they made, as they were required to by law.

We hired specialist to come into our house at great expense to us. They have removed some of the dangerous and deadly mold. They wore special biological safety suits and breathing devices in our home. We have placed pictures of the mold, floor rot and men in their suits on the table for you to see.

According to specialist we have two options of how to deal with our home. We can tear it down piece by piece and rebuild somewhere else because the land is also contaminated. Or, we can tear it down and have all of the material burned. By the way, everything that is in the house must also be destroyed.

This means that all of our furniture, clothes, family pictures, dishes and pots and pans must be destroyed. Ken and I have been married for almost 32 years. Everything we have saved and collected must now be destroyed due to the corruption of our town.

Your chief state building inspector, Tom , saw the illegal construction and has never written any reports, as law requires him to. He has helped the town, realtor and builders cover-up their illegal acts. He has placed the health and safety of my family in jeopardy.

We have told all of the State authorities of this, including the Governor and Attorney General, but they allow him to keep his, and their, jobs and do the same kind of harm to many other Massachusetts families. WHY?

In May of 2000, I told our town manager, Klimm, that if our home burned down from the contaminated wiring, our neighbors might also be killed. Our lots are very close to each other and they have a lot of trees. His response to me was it was not his problem.

Our time is running out. Every day is precious. Who do we blame? The builders of course and realtor but they were given the green light to build and sell this illegal, unsafe and deadly house by the town and the state. Our home was not built this way by accident. It was built this way on purpose.

This is true because the town has no record that they ever inspected the house and the inspectors admitted the home had many structural and illegal problems. The state and Mr. never wrote a report or did anything about the illegal or unsafe construction. They covered-up for the town, realtor and builders.

Three town managers, all of our town councilors, our town attorneys, our health and building departments, our tax assessors and our police department have all closed their eyes to their own combined corruption.

Out tax assessors admit that the home has many structural defects but refuse to lower the assessment or give us requested tax abatements. In fact, they actually raised the value of our home by over forty-thousand dollars. This is federal mail fraud because they mailed us the bill.

This combined town and state corruption has robbed us of our life savings, retirement savings, our kids and granddaughters futures, all of our belongings and our health. If forced to leave we can only take the clothes on our back. Nothing else. How do we start over?

Virginia Moulton