Boston police officer charged with rape

By Travis Andersen, Globe Staff

A veteran Boston police officer who has been suspended in the past for a domestic altercation pleaded not guilty on Monday to charges of raping and indecently assaulting a woman, officials said.

Henderson Parker, 45, of Roslindale, entered his plea in West Roxbury District Court and was ordered held on $1,000 cash bail, though prosecutors had requested $2,500, said Jake Wark, a spokesman for Suffolk District Attorney Daniel F. Conley.

Telephone numbers listed for Parker were out of service on Monday night.

His lawyer, Thomas Drechsler, said in a phone interview that Parker “absolutely denies those charges.” He said Parker was in the process of posting bail after his arraignment, but it was not immediately clear if he had posted as of late Monday night.

Drechsler said that Parker’s accuser has not taken out a civil restraining order against him, which Wark confirmed.

The alleged assault occurred at about 11 p.m. on Sunday at a Roslindale residence, according to Wark. He declined to confirm whether Parker lives at the address.

Cheryl Fiandaca, a Boston police spokeswoman, said she did not know whether he lives there.

She said that Parker turned himself in to the Roxbury district station on Sunday night, and he has been placed on paid leave while the case is pending. She said that Internal Affairs is also investigating, and that Parker has surrendered his service weapon.

“We take them very seriously,” Fiandaca said of the charges. “We investigated the case, and we did arrest him. He did turn himself in, and we will let him go through the process.”

Neither Boston police nor the district attorney’s office released additional details of the incident.

Parker, an 18-year veteran of the force, was suspended for 30 days in 2002 following “a physical confrontation of a domestic nature that resulted in injuries,” according to a police record released to the Globe in 2008. The record did not provide any more details, but Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis said at the time that the confrontation did not happen while Parker was on duty.

Parker was one of nine officers involved in the 2008 arrest of David Woodman, a 22-year-old man with a heart condition who stopped breathing after being taken into police custody during a Celtics championship celebration. Woodman died 11 days later.

Boston police and separate investigations by Conley and an independent panel found that Woodman may have stopped breathing for several minutes before officers realized his condition, but that his death was not a consequence of a violent struggle that he had with them.

In 2010, the city paid $3 million to Woodman’s family to settle a civil rights lawsuit.

Davis has said that Parker had no physical contact with Woodman during the arrest. None of the officers involved were disciplined in the matter.

Parker is due back in court on Feb. 22, Wark said.