BAD, Maine — Maine’s attorney general has filed a civil rights complaint against a couple he says racially harassed their black immigrant neighbors for months.
Attorney General Aaron Frey is using the complaint to ask a court to bar the Bath residents from having contact with their neighbors, who are originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The complaint alleges that the couple has been hostile toward the neighbors since they first moved in next door in April and has repeatedly hurled racial slurs at them.
Frey said residents also banged on the communal walls of the Congolese family’s apartment at all hours of the day and night, and that the victims’ children are afraid to play outside because of the intimidation.
Frey filed the complaint under the Maine Civil Rights Act. Violations of a cease-and-desist order under the law are punishable by up to 364 days in jail and a $2,000 fine. Frey said the victims in the case were “relentlessly attacked in their homes because of who they are and where they come from.”
The residents who are the subject of the complaint did not respond to our phone call requesting comment.
