Former Everett schools superintendent Frederick F. Foresteire has been released from jail fewer than three weeks into his 90-day sentence for indecent assault and battery on three women who worked for him after an appellate judge ruled on Tuesday that the 79-year-old was sickly and did not pose a flight risk, court records show.
Foresteire, who served 19 days, will remain free pending an appeal of his trial conviction, according to a Feb. 28 order by Judge James R. Milkey of the Massachusetts Appeals Court.
“Certainly, the crime for which the defendant was convicted was a serious one, and the theoretical risk that a defendant might attempt flight is ever present,” Milkey wrote. “But, the Commonwealth has not shown how this defendant, a seventy-nine year-old man with serious health issues, poses a particular danger to the community or that the risk that he will flee is so significant as to justify his continued incarceration pending appeal.”
Foresteire was scheduled to be released Tuesday, the same day as the court order, and was slated to go to a hospital, Foresteire’s appellate attorney Dana Alan Curhan said when reached by telephone Wednesday evening.
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“That was the order of the court,” Curhan said. “My understanding is that that did happen.”
A spokesman for the Middlesex sheriff’s department, Kevin Maccioli, said Wednesday evening that nobody by Foresteire’s name was in custody at the House of Correction.
Foresteire was handcuffed and taken into state custody on Feb. 9 after a Malden District Court jury found him guilty of touching a 41-year-old payroll clerk’s buttocks when she worked for him at the Everett Public School administration building in 2017 and 2018.
Foresteire was ordered to register as a sex offender and sentenced to serve 90 days of an 18-month sentence in the Middlesex House of Correction by Judge Emily A. Karstetter.
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Foresteire took the witness stand during his three-day trial and vehemently denied groping, harrassing, and humiliating the victim.
A week after his trial, Foresteire pleaded guilty to two more felony counts of indecent assault and battery against two other women who worked for him in 2015. The two new convictions did not result in additional jail time.
Foresteire must continue to stay away from the victims and the witnesses in the cases, as well as Everett public schools and school events, according to Tuesday’s court order.
Foresteire, a lifelong resident of Everett, was the superintendent from 1989 until December 2018. He retired after he was placed on leave — one month after his trial accuser filed a complaint with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
Tonya Alanez can be reached at tonya.alanez@globe.com. Follow her @talanez.