Sandra Birchmore: A Youth Program Turned Predator Pipeline

About this episode

The episode discusses the exploitation of Sandra Birchmore by multiple police officers involved in a youth mentoring program.

Sandra Birchmore wanted to be a cop. She walked into the Stoughton Police Explorers program at twelve years old full of admiration for the badge, looking for belonging, looking for guidance, looking for the kind of structure her difficult childhood hadn’t provided. What she found instead were predators wearing uniforms. Federal prosecutors allege that Matthew Farwell, an instructor in the program, began grooming Sandra almost immediately. By the time she was fifteen and he was twenty-seven, he had initiated a sexual relationship with her. Text messages uncovered during the investigation show him acknowledging that he took her virginity. One month later, he married his wife. The exploitation continued for nearly a decade. But Farwell wasn’t the only officer involved. His twin brother William admitted to a sexual relationship with Sandra and allegedly encouraged her to record her encounters with others and send him the material. Their supervisor, Robert Devine, the man who created the Explorers program, communicated with Sandra under the alias “Marty Riggs” and engaged in sexual encounters with her while on duty. A fourth man, former animal control officer Joshua Heal, acknowledged…

Topics covered

• youth programs
• sexual exploitation
• police misconduct
• mentoring programs
• predatory behavior

Keywords

• Sandra Birchmore
• Matthew Farwell
• police exploitation
• youth mentoring
• sexual abuse
• predators
• Stoughton Police

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Stoughton Police Explorers, Sandra’s estate

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