EVERETT, Mass. — Wayne A. Matewsky held elected office in Everett for most of the last 45 years: on the Common Council and City Council from 1981 to 2007, as an alderman from 2007 to 2013, in the State House from 2013 to 2015, and on the City Council again from 2015 until he resigned on May 26. He was elected at 20 and left at 68.
He was never charged with a crime and never sanctioned by the State Ethics Commission. His record does include a formal reprimand by his own council, two small-claims judgments sought by people who worked on his campaign, an arrest on a civil warrant, and a federal fugitive found living on his property. It ends with a resignation that came five days after Everett police interviewed him about a childhood sexual abuse allegation he denies.
This is what the published record shows, with his responses.
2013: The Texas Roadhouse reprimand
On March 6, 2013, two weeks before he won a special election to the State House, Matewsky was at the Texas Roadhouse in Everett. Witnesses told Fox 25 he got into a heated argument with the father of a child with special needs because the child, at a seventh birthday party, was noisy. The restaurant wrote the Common Council that he used foul language toward employees, berated them, and threatened to leave without paying a $60 bill.
Matewsky denied the account and said it was politically motivated. He later apologized to the staff. The Common Council voted 16 to 0 to send the matter to its ethics committee, which found he had committed “misconduct, to wit, abuse of his official position,” and voted to reprimand him, the most severe sanction it could impose. He accepted the reprimand. The Boston Globe’s editorial board called his conduct “appalling.”
2013 to 2014: The campaign workers
That fall, two people who worked on the special election sued him in Malden District Court. Brian Durkin, an Everett contractor, sought $2,700 for campaign signs; a clerk-magistrate ordered Matewsky to pay $842 plus $100 in costs. Rose Osterofsky sought $775 for two campaign videos and a website. Former campaign workers launched a website and Facebook page called “Wayne Matewsky MA Step Down Today,” saying they “were deceived, lied to, and used for the sole purpose of getting Matewsky elected.” Gerry Osterofsky said Matewsky had promised to resign his council seat and to hire him as a legislative aide, and did neither.
“I paid what I thought was reasonable,” Matewsky told the Globe.
On a Friday morning at the end of January 2014, Matewsky was arrested at his home on a civil warrant for failing to pay the $446 balance still owed to Durkin. He was arraigned in Malden District Court, paid the bill in court, and the case was dismissed. He called the arrest a “smear campaign” and said Durkin had not cashed a second check. Durkin said there was no second check. That September Matewsky lost the Democratic primary to Joe McGonagle by 323 votes.
2019: A fugitive in the garage
On April 25, 2019, federal agents arrested 14 members of the Primeiro Comando da Massachusetts gang on drug and firearms trafficking, robbery, and kidnapping charges. One of them, Joao Pedro Marques Guimares Gama, 21, was found in Matewsky’s garage. Police said he appeared to have been living there for about a week. Matewsky said he had hired the man to landscape his yard. “I had no idea he was in there,” he said. The man pleaded guilty to a cocaine conspiracy and was sentenced to four and a half years. No allegation was made against Matewsky.
2020: “I personally have not experienced racism in Everett”
In June 2020, Councilor Gerly Adrien, the first Black woman on the Everett council, proposed a committee on racism. The council rejected it. “I personally have not experienced racism in Everett,” Matewsky said during the debate, describing himself as a Polish-American minority and saying he hoped to move on from “the issue of the day, besides the virus.”
2022 to 2026: The allegation and the resignation
In 2022, Everett’s mayor and councilors received anonymous emails accusing Matewsky of molesting a boy at 12 and abusing at least two others. The sender was Scott Merchant, who grew up in Everett and told the Globe this year that he met Matewsky through his father at about age 10 after Matewsky asked him to help at a Halloween party. Matewsky has run a free children’s Halloween party in Everett every year since 1980.
Merchant said he spent years in and out of Matewsky’s Lewis Street house as a troubled teenager, hid there for three months after running away from foster care, and was molested and offered to adult men. Matewsky’s friend and employer at the time, Stephen “Stat” Smith, told the Globe he found the amount of time Matewsky spent with the boy “odd” and asked Merchant if everything was all right. Merchant said it was.
In September 2025 Merchant posted bomb and death threats against Matewsky, was arrested, pleaded guilty, and received probation. He then took his allegation to the Middlesex district attorney, along with a childhood friend, Corey Gordon, who said Matewsky offered him beer and cocaine at about 15 and urged him to expose himself.
Matewsky denies all of it. “Never happened,” he told the Globe. His lawyer, Alfred P. Farese Jr., says Merchant invented the story to help his criminal case, and acknowledged that Everett police interviewed Matewsky on May 21. Five days later Matewsky resigned, citing his health. The district attorney’s office has not announced any action.
Everett MA News is continuing to report on this story. Anyone with information can contact the newsroom at editor@everettmanews.com. We do not publish the names of people who report sexual abuse without their consent.
