Boston Red Sox employee Peter Tolan was arrested Monday on the charge of child enticement.
“When we learned of the allegations against Peter Tolan, involving events unrelated to his Red Sox employment, he was suspended without pay from his position. We will have no further comment going forward,” the spokesperson said in a statement to media.
Tolan, 58, was arrested by police in East Bridgewater, Mass., after sending sexually explicit text messages to someone he thought at a 15-year-old girl.
Police said he agreed to meet up for sex with the recipient of those messages, who turned out to be an East Bridgewater detective.
Using the social media app SKOUT, Tolan sent explicit pictures of himself to the person he believed was a high school freshman female and arranged a meeting.
He later told NBC News Boston that, if he’d actually met up with the 15-year-old girl, he would have just talked with her and nothing sexual would have happened.
Police records show Tolan had a condom in his back pocket when he was arrested.
Tolan is not the first Red Sox employee to be arrested for sex crimes involving minors.
In 2010, a Red Sox statistician was arrested for child pornography. In 2020, the Red Sox suspended club house attendant Stephen Murphy after he was charged with raping a young boy at New Hampshire in the late 1990s.
The Red Sox have also been dogged with allegations that former clubhouse manager Donald Fitzpatrick sexually abused dozens of young black men while working with the organization. Fitzpatrick pleaded guilty in 2002 to criminal charges of attempted sexual battery.
Tolan, who was released on $500 bail after his arraignment in Brockton District Court, also worked as a janitor in the Rockland Public Schools in Massachusetts.
