Eaton Vance executive may be girls' school flasher

FWR Staff

24 March 2009

Police looking at former marketing director as possible college raincoater. Stephen Barrett, an Eaton Vance executive who was arrested earlier this month for exposing himself on the campus of Wellesley College in the Boston suburb of Wellesley, Mass., has emerged as a suspect in a series of "flasher" incidents on the campus.

Wellesley College is an all-women's post-secondary school among whose alumnae are U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton, former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and news anchor Diane Sawyer. Wellesley College cops arrested Barrett on 11 March 2009 and charged him with indecent exposure and open and gross lewdness after they allegedly saw him fondling his exposed genitals in public, according to Town of Wellesley Police Department deputy chief William Brooks.

Barrett was arraigned and then released.

Trustee

Now it seems that Barrett is under investigation for a rash of flashes at the college going back to September 2008, prompting at least six 911 calls and resulting in a recent campus-wide "crime alert" publicity campaign by the college's security arm, according to the Boston Herald newspaper.

Barrett left Eaton Vance two days after his arrest. A spokeswoman for the firm declined to say whether Barrett resigned or was terminated.

Eaton Vance's chairman and CEO Thomas Faust happens to be a trustee of Wellesley College.

A house in Wellesley for which Barrett paid $1.04 million six months ago was put up for sale last week with an asking price of $1.02 million, according to the Herald.

Barrett joined Eaton Vance last spring as chief marketing officer of Eaton Vance Distributors, the Boston-based asset manager's broker-dealer subsidiary, as a report to the unit's president Matt Witkos.

Prior to that, Barrett was director of marketing at Shawnee Mission, Kan.-based Waddell & Reed Financial.

Eaton Vance managed $121.9 billion at the end of January 2009. -FWR

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