Former Suffolk assistant district attorney indicted on rape charge in New York

Adam Foss, a former prosecutor in Boston, was brought to his arraignment in State Supreme Court in lower Manhattan on Tuesday.Jefferson Siegel/NYT

A former Suffolk assistant district attorney who was previously accused of sexually harassing young women in Boston has been indicted in New York on charges that he raped a sleeping woman in 2017, officials said.

Adam Foss, 42, who now lives in Los Angeles, was charged with first-degree rape and first-degree sexual abuse in a New York State Supreme Court indictment, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin L. Bragg Jr. said in a statement Tuesday.

Foss worked in the Suffolk DA’s office from 2008 to 2016, during Daniel F. Conley’s term as district attorney, and later became a public speaker and the founder of Prosecutor Impact, a criminal justice training organization, according to officials.

Foss is accused of raping a 25-year-old woman who he met at a midtown Manhattan hotel on Oct. 21, 2017, after they had exchanged texts and calls for about a month, according to the statement.

After the woman repeatedly rejected Foss’s advances, they both fell asleep, and Foss raped the woman as she slept, prosecutors said.

“I thank this brave survivor, who had the courage to come forward and share her story,” Bragg said in the statement.

It was not immediately clear if Foss had hired an attorney in the case.

Foss was accused in 2020 of sexually harassing young women in Boston and was found by an independent investigation last year to have engaged in behavior with female interns that violated the expectations of his office but did not constitute criminal activity.

Attorneys Roberto M. Braceras and Jennifer L. Chunias, who led that investigation, said in a letter at the time of its release that they did not find that Foss violated any law, office policy, or ethical rule.

“That being said, our review identified evidence that Mr. Foss engaged in concerning conduct with at least two female Office interns and students that violated informal SCDAO expectations and norms,” Braceras and Chunias said.

Leaders in the DA’s office during Foss’s tenure said they were unaware of any misconduct, and the attorneys found no evidence that it had been reported to them.

“Our investigation … did not identify any evidence that the Office’s then senior management team failed to respond to any allegation of misconduct by Mr. Foss during his tenure,” they wrote.