By Nora Mishanec, Times Union, Albany, N.Y.
Jan. 7—POUGHKEEPSIE — In early December, Frankie Flowers was busy alerting his 10,000 Facebook followers to hot meals, donated Christmas trees and other charitable opportunities for which he and his prominent family had become known.
But on Dec. 15, the daily posts abruptly stopped.
Local news stations reported Flowers’ arrest for domestic violence — his second in a little more than two years — and his mug shot ricocheted across social media. His sister, Poughkeepsie Mayor Yvonne Flowers, told reporters she did not want to comment publicly on her brother’s arrest. A handful of picketers protested outside Flowers’ court appearance that day.
Flowers, 52, was charged with strangulation, assault and endangering the welfare of a child, misdemeanors to which he pleaded not guilty, his attorney Joseph O’Connor said. The arrest came one year after he pleaded guilty to criminal trespassing in Connecticut court after he was accused of breaking into a woman’s home, grabbing her by the hair and repeatedly slamming her head on the floor while a 3-year-old watched.
The public fallout from Flowers’ latest arrest was swift. It was a rapid unraveling for a man whose charitable endeavors had earned him the local nickname “Community Santa.” For the family charity that had survived Flowers’ previous arrest, the backlash was fierce and unexpected.
Within days, organizations began to cut ties with John Flowers Community Events. The charity, named for the Flowers’ father, had operated in the city since the 1990s and become well-known for hosting community events and helping vulnerable Poughkeepsie residents. Dutchess County Sheriff Kirk Imperati, the county government and local businesses said they would no longer work with Flowers.
“I’m glad they are doing the right thing now, but why did this take so long?” said KarissaLee Thompson, one of several women who protested at Flowers’ court appearance last month.
O’Connor, Flowers’ attorney, said he understood the public backlash but called for patience until his client “gets his fair trial.”
Flowers did not respond to calls or emails requesting comment.
A series of arrests
When John Flowers died in August 2015 at age 71, he left behind a long track record of public service. He hosted a radio show in Poughkeepsie and organized popular events, including an Easter egg hunt for children that he started in 1995, according to his obituary. Over the years, his charity work grew to include Thanksgiving turkey giveaways and Christmas toy drives. His local renown was hard to overstate, several people told the Times Union.
“Everybody knew who he was,” said Andrew O’Grady, CEO of Mental Health America for Dutchess County.
When his father passed away, Frankie Flowers “took a more active role with the events” while the rest of the large Flowers family assisted, Yvonne Flowers wrote on her public Facebook page last month.
Until recently, Frankie Flowers’ criminal history did not appear to have hampered his involvement in the family charity. He has been arrested five times, O’Connor said, citing criminal records provided by the district attorney’s office. He was convicted of assault in 2000 but avoided jail time. A 2023 arrest for driving while intoxicated was reduced to a violation, O’Connor said.
In 2024, Flowers faced two criminal cases stemming from incidents involving a woman in Salisbury, Conn. According to an affidavit by a Connecticut state trooper, the woman reported that Flowers had entered her home on New Year’s Eve without permission and left a Santa Claus photo on her bed and a knife on her kitchen table. The woman produced video evidence from her son’s motion-activated baby monitor that showed Flowers entering the home through an unlocked bathroom window, the trooper attested.
The woman went on to explain that the Santa Claus photo “was a joke, as Flowers works for a charitable foundation that delivers toys to kids and he is often called ‘Santa,’” the trooper added.
The woman did not press charges. But in July 2023, she reported a second incident, and Flowers was arrested a few days later. According to an affidavit by another Connecticut state trooper, Flowers grabbed the woman and repeatedly slammed her head on the floor following an argument. When the woman’s child began to cry in the bedroom, the woman ran to her son and grabbed him, her keys and her phone, at which point Flowers grabbed her and her son, taking them both to the floor, according to the trooper’s recollection of her account. She said Flowers again began to slam her head on the floor with her hair as her son screamed, the trooper reported.
The woman said Flowers then told her son to “say you’re sorry for your mom causing this to happen,” while he held his hand over her face, making it difficult or impossible for her to breathe, according to the trooper. Flowers’ attorney at the time disputed the woman’s account and said his client had a “completely different version of what happened.”
The Poughkeepsie-based nonprofit Family Services announced it would no longer serve as the fiscal agent for the Flowers’ charity. John Flowers Community Events is not registered with the IRS as a tax-exempt organization and cannot accept donations or disburse funds on its own. CEO Leah Feldman said Family Services cut ties in December 2023 to “protect the safety and trust of the survivors and community members we serve.”
Flowers was charged with several felonies in Connecticut Superior Court in Torrington, including violating a family violence protective order and unlawful restraint. But court records show he accepted a plea bargain in September 2024 in which he pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree criminal trespass. The woman who accused Flowers did not want to testify at a trial. He received a two-year conditional discharge that is set to expire in September 2026.
‘Something much darker’
Fourteen months after accepting that plea, Flowers was arrested again following another domestic violence incident, this time in Dutchess County.
On Dec. 9, prosecutors allege that Flowers “obstructed the breathing or blood circulation of the victim and struck the victim several times in the face and head in front of a 6-month-old child.” He was arrested in Poughkeepsie the following day.
The allegations ignited a firestorm online, as dozens of people took to Facebook to condemn Flowers and his charity. As news of his arrest spread across social media, KarissaLee Thompson and Sara Dragula were among those who expressed outrage. Within hours, they hatched a plan to protest outside the Poughkeepsie courthouse where Flowers faced Town Justice Steve Klein on the morning of Dec. 15.
Thompson said she was motivated to speak out after a series of negative interactions with Flowers when she said she was “a vulnerable person escaping domestic violence.” Thompson said she initially reached out to Flowers for help, but that he bullied and belittled her over the course of several years “because he believed I was isolated and didn’t have support.”
Thompson said she believes Flowers used his charity work to burnish his reputation and shield himself from criticism.
“Good deeds can often be under the guise of something much darker,” she wrote last month in a public Facebook post detailing their interactions.
Dragula said she wanted to protest outside the courthouse to show support for victims of domestic violence and apply public pressure to ensure the court takes the allegations against Flowers seriously.
“There are a lot of people who might not be vocal because his sister is the mayor of Poughkeepsie,” Dragula said. “There is a lot of caution, of not wanting to blow up personal and professional relationships.”
But there are signs that the community is paying attention.
An online petition demanding justice for Flowers’ alleged victim took off. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had gotten nearly 2,000 signatures. On Dec. 27, Dutchess County District Attorney Anthony Parisi published an op-ed in the Mid Hudson News calling domestic violence “a profound public safety crisis” and detailing his plans to carry out “smart prosecution” that does not rely on victims’ testimony.
Parisi criticized the justice system’s longstanding barriers to building criminal cases against domestic abusers. Prosecutors often decline to file charges, despite changing attitudes and updated laws that make it possible to prosecute cases where a victim has recanted or withdrawn their testimony.
“For far too long, the justice system approached domestic violence reactively,” Parisi wrote. “We waited for victims to come forward again and again. We waited for injuries to worsen. We waited until violence crossed an arbitrary threshold that justified intervention. By the time the system responded, the opportunity to prevent serious injury, or loss of life, had often already passed.”
In response to questions about the timing of the op-ed, Parisi’s spokesperson, Sinead McLoughlin, told the Times Union that it was “not directed at, or in response to any matters relating to Frank Flowers.”
Yvonne Flowers did not directly address the allegations or respond to multiple Times Union inquiries sent to the mayor’s office. But in a lengthy statement posted to her public Facebook page last month, Yvonne Flowers wrote that her brother had “decided to step back” from the family charity “when he noticed his legal matter was creating problems with what my dad created.”
The Poughkeepsie mayor also wrote that the Flowers family’s usual Christmas giveaways moved forward “despite the efforts made to ruin it.”
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