A Bristol small business owner said she hoped she and her 15-year-old daughter would be treated respectfully when they pursued a criminal complaint against the teenager who sexually assaulted her daughter.
Instead, the business owner says she was sworn at by Eva Vekos, the embattled state’s attorney in Addison County. State’s attorneys are elected in every county in Vermont to lead the office that works with police and sheriffs departments to prosecute cases in court.
“Her general attitude toward victims is so derogatory,” the business owner said of Vekos. She filed a formal ethics complaint against Vekos, whose troubles have piled up since she was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol nearly two years ago.
Because of how the business owner and three other crime victims say Vekos handled their cases, they felt invalidated, belittled and demeaned. In three of these cases, the victims said Vekos denied them the opportunity to give meaningful input on plea deals she was negotiating with the defense on the sentences their offenders would face. It was “kind of like a screw you situation,” said a college student from Vermont who was a victim in a sexual assault case.
Martha Bowdish, a victim advocate at Addison County Unit for Special Investigations, which investigates sex crimes, has also filed a formal ethics complaint about Vekos with the state Professional Responsibility Board, which handles allegations of attorney misconduct.
The board of Atria Collective, a Middlebury organization that worked closely with Vekos’ office, also raised concern, saying, in a statement to media, that staff has witnessed “countless instances” of victims’ rights being violated during Vekos’ time in office.
“In case after case, our agency has observed, State’s Attorney Vekos neglecting to prioritize both the safety of victims and survivors and the well-being of the community,” Atria Collective’s board of directors wrote.
Vekos’ tumultuous relationship with victims and their advocates came to light after she was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol when she allegedly appeared intoxicated at a suspicious death investigation in January 2024.
The state investigated a medical leave she took soon after the DUI charge. Then it temporarily suspended her law license. A judge declined to throw out her case. In the fall, her attorney pushed for a deal that could allow the charge to be cleared from her record. Her next court date is set for Dec. 16.
In spring 2024, lawmakers called for her resignation, but Vekos never stepped down. She is up for re-election in November of 2026.
Vekos declined multiple requests for an interview to discuss the complaints outlined in this story. She responded to some questions via email but declined to discuss others, saying she is constrained by privacy laws.
“I stand by the work done in every case handled by my office,” she wrote.
“There is no State’s Attorney in Vermont—or prosecutor anywhere—who has been able to fulfill the wishes of every crime victim, ” she wrote, adding that prosecutors must weigh other factors like the strength of evidence and available resources.
To be sure, prosecutors routinely weigh their chances of winning a conviction as they consider making plea deals. But victims and advocates who criticized Vekos argue she did not meaningfully consult with victims before agreeing to a case’s resolution and that she treated them egregiously. Two victims said the outcomes of their cases led them to fear for public safety.
Vermont law states that crime victims “shall be treated with courtesy and sensitivity” by courts and prosecutors. To ensure victims receive support, state law also guarantees crime victims the right to a victim advocate, someone trained to walk victims through court processes.
Victims rights were adopted by Vermont and many other states in the 1980s in response to complaints from victims that they were left behind in overburdened criminal justice systems. The goal was to better support victims and create avenues for their voices to be heard in the legal system.
Victim advocates are state employees who work in every county’s state’s attorneys office. In Vermont, they often handle about 600 cases each, about double the number recommended by a study often cited by state officials. In Addison County, staff from other organizations, including Bowdish and Jena Santa Maria, who directs advocacy for Atria Collective, have stepped in to help.
VTDigger has decided not to name these sexual assault victims or their families, and does not identify sexual assault victims without their consent. VTDigger also interviewed two people who work closely with Vekos’ office who spoke on the condition their names not be used in this story for fear of retaliation.
‘She had a vendetta’
The Bristol small business owner helped her teenage daughter contact police in 2017 after she was sexually assaulted by a teenage boy who was also under the age of 16.
After police found probable cause, a deputy state’s attorney at the time, Rebecca Otey, filed charges against the teenager who assaulted the business owner’s daughter. He faced up to a life sentence, court documents show.
He pleaded guilty to the charge in 2018 and avoided serving time in prison on the condition he take part in a program for youthful offenders, court documents show.
He could remain in the youthful offender program if he made a “good faith effort at treatment” and did not commit a crime of violence, his plea agreement said.
But court records show he lost his placement in the youthful offender program and was eventually arrested in 2023. By this time, he was a 21-year-old man. Juvenile court records, detailing his time in the program, are confidential.
Vekos was now serving as Addison County’s state’s attorney. After spending most of her career as a defense attorney, often representing juveniles, she was elected to be the county’s top prosecutor in 2022.
Vermont law gives crime victims the right to get timely notifications of their offender’s release. But in 2023, the man who sexually assaulted the business owner’s daughter was released from jail, court records show. Vekos did not give the business owner any notice, according to the business owner and a person who works closely with cases in Vekos’ office.
The business owner, in a private meeting with the state’s attorney, said she told Vekos she had violated her daughter’s rights. According to the business owner, Vekos responded, “This is fucking ridiculous. I don’t have time for this.”
“That’s pretty much set the whole tone for that meeting, where she was just using profanity right and left,” the business owner said. “She was just so condescending and so arrogant,” she added later on.
The business owner went on to report the profanities when she filed an ethics complaint against Vekos in 2024 with the state board that handles allegations of attorney misconduct. She shared that complaint with VTDigger.
After that meeting, things changed for her daughter’s case. “From that day on she didn’t like that I had called her out and she was gonna do everything she could to make sure that he wasn’t prosecuted,” the business owner said.
“I would go that far, to say that she had a vendetta and like she was going to prove to me that she could do what she wanted and screw the victims,” the business owner said.
“Vekos believes she is above the law,” the business owner wrote in her ethics complaint.
Vekos didn’t address this claim directly when asked to respond to a list of complaints.
In February, Vekos agreed to give a six-year deferred sentence to the man convicted for his original sexual assault charge from 2017, court documents show. If he followed his conditions of probation for those years, he would then have a clean record.
The business owner said she considered that possibility “very very dangerous.”
The business owner wrote in her ethics complaint that Vekos violated her and her daughter’s rights by entering into the deferred sentence agreement with the defense before consulting her. A person who works closely with the cases in Vekos’ office confirmed that the business owner and her daughter were not consulted.
In conversations with the business owner, Vekos did not know basic facts about the case and admitted she did not have time to read the entire file, the business owner wrote in her ethics complaint. The complaint is still pending before the state’s attorney misconduct board.
A few months later, this June, the man was cited for violating his probation conditions by moving to a different part of the state, according to court documents. Typically, when someone convicted of a crime violates their probation conditions, the person is sentenced after they admit to the violation in court. In this case, the man could have seen up to life in prison on his original charge.
Instead, Vekos dropped the violation of probation he was facing this summer, court documents show. That was despite the business owner’s insistence that Vekos prosecute the violation, the business owner said. The man was able to continue serving his years of probation outside of jail.
“I have zero faith in the Addison County court system because of Eva. Like, zero faith,” the business owner said, using Vekos’ first name. “Every time I go to court, I always expect the worst. Always. Because that’s probably what’s going to happen.”
Vekos, asked to respond to the business owner’s complaints, said she could not do so for confidentiality reasons. In an email, she said: “My office is dedicated to supporting crime victims in all cases, which we do every day.”
Complaints of retaliation
After advocates for the Middlebury special investigations unit and Atria Collective complained about Vekos’ behavior, Vekos largely declined to communicate with them, surfacing concerns that victims weren’t being served.
“Eva Vekos has instructed her staff not to communicate with my organization,” Santa Maria, the advocacy director for Atria Collective, wrote in an email in May. She called Vekos’ behavior an example of retaliation.
In that email, Santa Maria said, Vekos’ behavior “violates the spirit, if not the letter, of Vermont’s victims’ rights laws.”
Similarly, after Bowdish filed an ethics complaint about Vekos in April, the prosecutor told her office not to communicate with Bowdish, according to an annual report from Bowdish’s investigations unit describing the fallout.
Bowdish declined to comment on her ethics complaint.
Vekos restricted Bowdish’s badge access and removed her from a state’s attorney software platform, preventing Bowdish from getting updates on cases, the annual report said.
Instead, Vekos was sending information on cases to other staff in Bowdish’s office, according to the report. That information was “often late and inaccurate,” the report said.
“Bottom line victims are suffering,” the report said.
At least five victims in cases investigated by Bowdish’s office retained their own attorneys due to lack of support from Vekos, according to the report. “This is something that has never happened before,” the document said.
Vekos, in responding to questions via email, said the decision to cut off contact with Bowdish was based on advice from her attorney. Vekos said she took Bowdish off the court’s software systems back in 2023 because Bowdish, as a member of the public, shouldn’t have access to the platform.
When asked to respond to Santa Maria’s claim, Vekos said, “There has never been any sort of retaliation against advocates in the community.” Santa Maria declined to comment.
While conflicts between Vekos and the two community partners stewed, the only advocate directly employed by Vekos’ office, Katie Dutton, resigned in April. Dutton declined to comment.
After Dutton left Vekos’ office, the position sat vacant for about three months. “When the office is understaffed, the whole team pitches in to make sure the job gets done,” Vekos wrote in a July email in response to a request for an interview.
During those months, Vekos’ strained relationships with Bowdish and Santa Maria bubbled to the surface. During that time period, emails sent from Bowdish describe instances in which Vekos declined to meet with victims if Bowdish was present. Those emails were obtained by VTDigger through a public records request.
Maggie Zraly, who was hired as the victim advocate in Vekos’ office this past summer, declined a request for an interview but said her office has been a “supportive environment” where she can serve victims.
Bowdish’s ethics complaint is still pending.
‘She doesn’t care about me or community safety’
Three crime victims, in addition to the business owner, told VTDigger that Vekos mistreated them. They said Vekos was disrespectful and did not take their input into their cases seriously.
A 45-year-old Starksboro woman is the mother of one of those victims. The Starksboro woman said she has advocated for her daughter since she was sexually assaulted at age 15.
Police affidavits describe how a 24-year-old man groomed the woman’s daughter and started picking her up late at night while her parents slept. The Starksboro woman contacted police when she looked at her daughter’s phone and found pictures of the man sexually assaulting her.
The man was charged with four felony sexual assault counts, each of which could could carry up to 20 years in prison, along with other charges.
The Starksboro woman and a person who works closely with cases in Vekos’ office said the assigned advocate, Bowdish, would email Vekos multiple times asking for updates about the case days before a hearing and oftentimes Vekos wouldn’t respond until minutes before court.
The mother and her daughter told Bowdish they opposed a plea deal, and Bowdish shared their opposition with Vekos, the Starksboro woman said.
“Even though Eva heard the things we were saying, she still went ahead with her plea deals as she made them,” the Starksboro woman said.
In September, Vekos scaled back the charges against her daughter’s assailant to just one misdemeanor, court records show. He pled guilty and was sentenced to five years of probation, court documents show.
For the man’s sentencing in court, the Starksboro woman’s daughter wrote a statement to the judge, saying she did not agree with the outcome and that Vekos had never consulted her. It was the third time Vekos made a plea agreement without consulting her or her mother, the daughter said.
“This man destroyed my life. There are videos of me out there — god knows where. Do you know how terrifying that is? Do you care? It’s very clear Ms. Vekos doesn’t,” the daughter wrote.
“She doesn’t care about me or community safety. Ms. Vekos cares more about giving him the best deal than actually upholding the law,” she wrote.
Another case handled by Vekos played out similarly.
In May 2022, a young woman who grew up in Vermont and goes to college in Virginia sought help from police after she was sexually assaulted at age 18, she said in an interview. The man she reported was originally facing a felony charge that could carry up to five years in prison, court records show.
In December 2024, Vekos reduced the charge to a misdemeanor that only carried up to a year in prison, according to court documents. That was despite the college student’s vocal opposition, she said.
“Everything just went smaller and smaller and smaller,” the college student said.
The man agreed to plead no contest and, in exchange for a recommendation that he not serve any time, agreed to follow several probation conditions. None of those conditions agreed to by Vekos were geared toward preventing sex crimes, such as not working somewhere that regularly serves minors, court documents show.
The college student and a person who works closely with cases in Vekos’ office said she found out that Vekos had agreed to the probation conditions only seven minutes before the man’s sentencing in court — meaning she did not have time to give meaningful input to Vekos or argue against his punishment.
“Then I can’t change anything because the attorneys already made the agreement. They’ve already given it to the judge, and if they don’t inform us, it’s kind of like a screw you situation,” the college student said.
Like the Bristol business owner, the college student said when she complained that Vekos was discussing deals with the defense that she opposed, Vekos dismissed her concerns. Instead, Vekos complained about how much work it would create for her to push for the outcome the college student wanted, she said.
Asked about the college student’s complaints against her, Vekos said via email that she could not discuss that case and others because she’s constrained by privacy laws.
“Also, there are several other additional sex assaults with child victims that I have prosecuted, including one involving a serial offender whose trial I personally conducted, leading to a guilty verdict and a sentence of 20 years to life,” Vekos wrote in an email. When asked what cases she was referring to in a follow-up email, the prosecutor did not specify in her reply.
Beyond Vekos’ prosecution of sex offenses, other victims take issue with Vekos’ emotional insensitivity in their cases.
Tina Galante-Cram, a nurse who lives in Bristol, said Vekos was insensitive in her daughter’s case.
Galante-Cram’s daughter, Jaida Cram, died after being injured in a car crash in April. Police affidavits say that Cram’s boyfriend was driving under the influence of marijuana with a suspended license.
It’s been hard to know how to live without her daughter.
“I’m not supposed to outlive my daughter,” Galante-Cram said in an interview in downtown Bristol, wearing a pink shirt printed with a picture of her daughter’s face.
Galante-Cram was 14 years old when she gave birth to her daughter and she put everything she had into raising her, she said. She wears her daughter’s ashes in a pendant around her neck.
After her death, Cram’s boyfriend was charged with three felony crimes related to the crash, including manslaughter, court documents show. The case has since been moved to juvenile court.
Without first consulting the mother, Galante-Cram said Vekos surprised her by proposing in court to amend the boyfriend’s probation conditions to allow him to attend Cram’s memorial.
Galante-Cram said she was shocked. Vekos should not have ever proposed such an idea to the court, especially without consulting her first, she said.
“I don’t want the killer mourning my child,” Galante-Cram said.
“She’s just looking at it like it’s another case,” she said of Vekos. “She doesn’t care.”
Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Tina Galante-Cram’s last name.
