MONTICELLO, NY — In a case brought and then quickly dropped by the Sullivan County district attorney’s office, two business owners were charged with “unlawful dissemination or publication of an intimate image.” The incident was the latest in years-long war between restaurateurs who say they’ve been subjected to a series of homophobic hate crimes, and a father and son who insist they’re having “just a neighborly dispute.”

Wade St. Germain says his neighbor Joseph Peters Sr. — while an order of protection was in place against him — urinated on his business property, Cabernet Frank’s in Parksville. The district attorney, Brian Conaty, says the restaurant owners then posted on social media a video clip from the restaurant’s security camera showing Peters in the act. The clip was removed “shortly after posting,” according to Conaty. 

Peters’ son, Joseph Peters Jr., told the River Reporter that his father was actually on his own property. “My father was urinating in our backyard and he posted it on Facebook,” he said. “You can’t do that, period.”

St. Germain said he showed the images captured by his security camera to Michael Sussman, the civil rights lawyer representing him, and that Sussman showed the images to the judge.

The judge asked that the county’s probation department be notified that Peters had violated another order of protection. However, the district attorney and the sheriff declined to arrest or prosecute Peters.

The second charge, St. Germain said, “is that two of our security cameras are pointed into our stalker’s bedroom and bathroom.” But, he said, one of the cameras was broken “and obviously dead for over five years. We had discussed this in court several years ago.”

The district attorney’s office held a hearing on the case at Liberty town court on January 31. Both charges against St. Germain have been dropped, said Brian Conaty, the district attorney.

“At bottom, this is a neighbor dispute that has drastically escalated out of control,” Conaty wrote in a February 1 letter to Troy Johnstone, the town of Liberty justice. “The victim in this case has persistently harassed the defendants, in violation of both criminal and civil courts, for many years.”

That persistent harassment has driven St. Germain and his husband and business partner, RJ Baker, to put the business up for sale. This will add Cabernet Frank’s to the list of post-pandemic restaurant closures (see related story on the closing of Hennings Local on page 2).

Musician Kathy Geary said the restaurant’s closure would be a setback for local talent. “They’re the most important promoters of musicians in the whole county,” she said. “They have more music here than almost anywhere.”

Another musician, Caswyn Moon, works at Cabernet Frank’s. “RJ saved my life,” he said. “They gave me a job when I was kind of unemployed and homeless, and they gave me a job hosting an open mike here, about six years ago now. That’s how a lot of these musicians came in, Wade and RJ employ us throughout the winter so when other venues shut down for the winter, when the tour seasons are over, they keep us employed.”

‘Eight years of constant harassment’

Conaty told the River Reporter that he doesn’t have “the authority to make an arrest or not make an arrest. My authority only begins as a district attorney after an arrest is made. The arrest was made unbeknownst to our office,” and without knowledge of “the complex legal history in both civil and criminal courts. I believed it was in the interest of justice not to proceed criminally on that charge.”

St. Germain said the deputy who arrested him had no prior knowledge of “the eight years of constant harassment we have undergone. Nor the order of protection we have had since 2018 that extends to 2030. Nor was she aware that our stalker and his son were given injunctions in civil court for the easement — they are only permitted to pass without delay between the two houses.”

Baker says the district attorney is responsible for the charges against St. Germain. He shared with the River Reporter an email he received from Blake Starner, a sergeant in the Patrol Division of the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office, in response to a complaint against Peters Sr. Starner writes: “I have received these, as the others in the group, I will defer [to] the District Attorney’s Office whom is handling the cases presented and pending thus far.”

There remain pending charges against Peters.

“I intend to prosecute them, but I can’t really give a statement at this time on how we are going to proceed with it,” Conaty said.

“We have been prosecuting him,” he continued. “We have been prosecuting him for years.”

Over the years Peters Sr. has been charged with head-butting the owner of Beaverkill Studio, which is next door to Cabernet Frank’s; with violating an order of protection; with violating a noise ordinance; and with disorderly conduct related to an incident with a sheriff’s deputy, according to reporting by the River Reporter. In 2021 he served time in Sullivan County Jail for stalking.

More recently, St. Germain said, his security camera caught Peters “shoveling cat food and dirty litter under our home with his bare hands.”

‘I want this out of my life’

Joseph Peters Jr. told the River Reporter he’s unhappy the charges against St. Germain were dropped. 

But, he said, he is happy with the district attorney more generally. “The order of protection against my father was so restrictive,” he said. “Thank God Brian Conaty is a lot more fair. Previous DAs made it so restrictive.”

Peters Jr. said he believes Conaty dropped the charges against St. Germain because he wants to see the neighbors come to an agreement. “He is going to try to get both parties together to end this neighbor dispute, that everyone says is a neighbor dispute, outside of Wade St. Germaine, who says it has to do with homophobia,” he said. “Everybody outside of his camp says that it’s just a neighborly dispute, and that’s what it is.”

He said he’s looking forward to an agreement with St. Germain. “I want this out of my life. I’ve always wanted this out of my life, and I’m tired of dealing with it,” he said.

He said it all depends on St. Germain. But he said he and his father do not believe St. Germain wants to end the conflict “because he gets free press, he gets free advertisement out of it, he loves it, he’s doing the rounds. If you go locally and do an interview with his neighbors, 90 percent of them don’t like him because of his attitude, how he acts, and his loud music at night.”

St. Germain does not hold out hope that any agreement will work.

“He’s incapable of honoring an agreement,” he said. “If Hannibal Lecter says he won’t eat people anymore, would you have a dinner party?”

“We have compromised in court over this,” he continued. “They’ve broken it. They’ve broken every agreement they have ever made.”