Top Skowhegan Elected Official Defends Silence On Sexual-Abuse Probe Of Now-Dead Town Manager

The Skowhegan select-board chairman says town officials had no choice but to remain silent during an investigation of their town manager.

Whitney Cunliffe says that amid the police probe of Nicholas Nadeau’s alleged sexual exploitation of a minor “it would not have been appropriate or responsible for me to comment publicly before law enforcement spoke publicly on it.”

Nadeau, 32, shot and killed himself earlier this month during a police investigation of whether he had shared graphic, sexually-explicit material with a 14-year-old girl.

During the investigation, selectmen didn’t notify the public of Nadeau’s alleged criminality.

Cunliffe said police informed him March 19, the day Nadeau took his life, that the manager was the target of a serious criminal investigation.

Police found sexually-explicit child porn in Nadeau’s house March 6 and then got a warrant to search town offices March 17, two days before he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound and a day after Police Chief David Bucknam learned of the investigation.

For several days even the chairman was apparently left in the dark, having not been told the manager was in serious trouble.

Cunliffe says, however, that once he learned of the probe, he was duty-bound not to publicly disclose what he then knew.

“Because it was under active investigation, it would not have been appropriate or responsible for me to comment publicly before law enforcement spoke publicly on it,” Cunliffe told The Maine Wire in a statement Friday.

He called it “a deeply troubling and very difficult moment for our community.”

“Out of respect for the seriousness of this matter and the proper role of the town, I am not going to comment on specific allegations or speculate beyond what has been publicly released,” the selectboard chairman added.