He’s been accused of shooting at a neighbor’s dog, texting his ex-wife 436 times over 13 hours, and calling a tenant 700 times after she complained about the way he was boarding her horses.
Before he and his Plymouth police officer wife were charged with raping their adopted son, Dan Forand had a long history of alleged violence aimed at his former wife, neighbors, police and seemingly anyone who crossed him.
He has been warned to stay away from the Plymouth public schools, Plymouth police headquarters, the Plymouth Verizon store, the New Hope Chapel and All-Wayz Towing, records show. In most cases, he was accused of harassment.
Despite having chalked up dozens of complaints, Forand faced no criminal charges until March when he and his wife, Samantha Pelrine, were arrested on charges of rape, according to a review of court records.
Now – as Forand and his wife face possible grand jury indictments charging abuse beginning when the boy was just 14 – interviews and a review of more than 250 pages of police and court records dating back years reveal an alarming history some say may have foreshadowed the charges he now faces.
“I know this sounds melodramatic, but I feel we’ve been battling evil for the past 14 years,” said a Middleborough woman whose niece was married to Forand for four years.
“We’ve collected every text message, email and police to protect ourselves over the years. They filled four large totes,” she said, describing contentious and ongoing battles over parenting time and custody of their now 10-year-old daughter.
“It’s never done any good. He’s always won,” said the woman, who asked not to be named out of fear for her family.
‘Manipulative and sinister’
Police documented dozens of disputes — with neighbors, town employees and police — when they were deciding in 2016, 2017 and 2019, whether to reinstate Forand’s rescinded gun permits. Both Carver and Plymouth police rejected his requests.
“Mr. Forand’s angry, threatening and intimidating behavior has shown that he would be a danger to public safety if his firearms license were to be reinstated,” wrote Carver police administrative Sergeant Sheri Sarmento in 2016 and 2017 reports detailing more than 20 incidents of aggressive behavior.
His ex-wife reported on June 30, 2016, that Forand had texted her 436 times, repeating the same two messages over and over again. On September 12, 2016, a woman told Carver police that when she complained that Forand placed other horses in her horses’ stall and were injuring her animals, he called her 700 times.
He also shot his gun at one of the neighbor’s dogs, Sarmento wrote, chased a dog with a machete and waved the machete at the dog owner. “He shoots his guns in the middle of the night which intimidates and scares his neighbors,” Sarmento wrote in her report.
“He is manipulative and sinister,” she wrote.
He owned nine guns, which were seized at the time, records show.
Interviewed by the Independent, police chiefs in both towns tried to explain why Forand hadn’t faced criminal charges before.
Carver police chief Matthew T. Rayner said the department would have charged him “if we had the opportunity.” They had no probable cause, he said. Plymouth chief Dana Flynn said his officers sought criminal noise complaints three times in 2024, but a clerk magistrate declined to issue them.
In October 2024, when a Plymouth sergeant called Forand as a courtesy to let him know a neighbor had obtained a harassment prevention order against him, which police had to hand him, Forand “became very upset,” a police report said.
He demanded to know if the chief or one specific captain had put the sergeant up to it, according to a police report.
Forand agreed to accept the order as long as his wife was present when it was delivered.
If the police brass didn’t like it, he said, “they can go f—- themselves,” according to a police report. The captain, he said, can “kiss my ass” and perform another sex act too graphic to print, the report said.
From that day on, Forand and his company, Pilgrim Pest Professionals, were banned from Plymouth police headquarters, according to a document obtained by the Independent.
Forand faced a similar ban from the Plymouth school department, which in 2021 ordered him to stay away from school buildings after he showed up at the school department’s central offices in August 2021 exhibiting “inappropriate and disruptive behavior,” according to letters provided by school officials.
In 2011, he was asked to stay away from the Plymouth Verizon store in Colony Place after he became “loud and demanding” over a used phone that he said no longer worked. Police told him he was not welcome at the store, an incident report said.
And in 2022, he was told not to return to All-Wayz Towing after he got into a dispute over access to his truck that had been towed there. “He was confrontational and yelled obscenities,” police wrote.
After he charged with rape, New Hope Chapel obtained a stay away order and issued a press release disavowing any affiliation with him.
Sometimes charming, generous
Despite his frequent fiery outbursts, Forand, 37, could also be charming, generous and fun, and was revered by some around him, according to interviews with four people who know him. Two compared him to a cult leader, attracting people with his charisma, controlling them through coercion and fear.
He participated in the town’s July 4th parade; his float last year featured a blow-up shark to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the movie Jaws.
He helped folks shovel out after the February blizzard, one person said, and he worked to keep the Plymouth County farm open when the Plymouth County Commission threatened to close the facility in 2019.
But he was also prone to screaming fits, and could turn volatile in an instant, according to police reports and people who know him.
None of the previous complaints against Forand accused him of sex crimes. But some who know the couple say they were not surprised by the allegations.
In one affidavit Forand filed against a neighbor in October 2024, he complained that his neighbor was spreading stories about gay sex parties at Forand’s house.
And while Pelrine, 31, is charged in the rape case, a person who knows them both described her as “a great girl” whose behavior and personality changed after a few years with Forand. At one block party, she left because Forand had gone to bed, he said, even though she seemed to want to stay.
“She would do whatever he wanted,” said the neighbor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “She’s a victim and was manipulated and brainwashed.”
Neither Forand, nor his attorney responded to requests for comment. Several people who know Forand, including his mother, also did not respond to calls for comment. Pelrine’s attorney also did not return calls.
But at their March 26 arraignment, where they pleaded not guilty, their lawyers described the allegations as figments of a disturbed young man’s imagination, designed to inflict pain on the couple who graciously took him in.
They said the young man made up the allegations after the couple refused to let his girlfriend sleep over and the couple asked him to leave.
The attorneys called him “disingenuous” and “manipulative.”
Forand faces 20 charges including multiple counts of child rape. Pelrine faces four counts including aggravated rape of a child with force. She has been on paid administrative leave from the Plymouth Police Department since her arraignment. They are both free on bail.
If convicted, they could face lengthy state prison terms.
On May 10, someone anonymously posted what was described as Forand’s version of events, entitled “REALForandFiles,” on Medium.com, an online platform. It has since been taken down.
In it, the author accused the alleged victim of fabricating the allegations because Forand was “enforcing rules” in the home.
“Texts point to a father struggling to navigate having a 19 to 21-year-old adult man destroying the father’s life right under his nose, while refusing to move out of the family home under blackmail or false allegations,” the post said.
When the disturbing charges against Forand and Pelrine were first made public, many didn’t believe them.
One Facebook post shortly after the couple was arrested, read: “Please don’t entertain in the comments on Dan and Sammy. I know Dan can be an ass at times, but I can almost guarantee that none of what is being said about them has happened.”
A family in crisis
After Forand was charged with rape, his ex-wife obtained a second restraining order against him. The first came in 2016 after she told Carver police she was afraid for her safety and the safety of their 6-month-old daughter.
In late March, she asked a Plymouth County probate judge to forbid Forand from seeing their daughter, now 10, because of the pending charges against him.
Late last month, the judge rejected her request.
“The court is not dismissive of the troubling allegations giving rise to this complaint for (visitation) modification,” wrote judge Kevin R. Connelly on April 30. “The allegations do not pertain to the parties’ child.”
His ex-wife’s family was incensed.
“I feel like there’s no one protecting her, no one is thinking of her,” said the child’s great aunt.
“Even if the allegations were false, how is that household a good place for a child? The judge is trying to force her back into that. She doesn’t want to go.”
So far Forand has not seen his daughter because the girl has refused to see him, family members said.
“I’m not going. You can’t make me,” her great aunt heard the girl tell her mother.
Forand asked the judge to order his ex-wife to comply with the parenting order, saying she has turned their daughter against him. The request was denied.
A heartbreaking story
How the alleged rape victim, now 21, came to live with Forand and Pelrine is a long, sad story.
He and his sister – four and six at the time – were taken by the state Department of Children and Families because of their parents’ drug use and neglect, according to one of the boy’s biological aunts.
At first they were placed with their grandmother. But after her husband died, she needed help caring for the children, the aunt said.
The aunt took in the young girl because she had a daughter herself and the two girls could share a room. She didn’t feel she had the financial wherewithal to care for both the girl and the boy, so another aunt took in the boy, she told the Independent.
Over time, the aunt who was caring for the boy was faced with her own challenges — she was divorced with four children of her own. She reached out to family for help finding the boy a long-term living arrangement.
What happened over the next few years was detailed in a written statement his aunt provided to the authorities and shared with the Independent.
The family knew Forand from church — the New Hope Chapel in Plymouth, the aunt said. They confided in Forand, who offered to take in the boy on a trial basis, she said.
“He can stay and see if he likes it with the understanding that if he’s comfortable, we could discuss formal guardianship,” she recounted. Forand was appointed the boy’s legal guardian in 2018 when the child was 14, court records show.
“At that time we thought it was in (the boy’s) interest,” said the aunt, who asked her name not be used to protect her family.
“We trusted Dan, and Sam was an aspiring police officer. We had no reason to think he was in any danger,” she said, fighting back tears.
She said at first the situation was great.
“We did things as a family,” she said. “We went on fishing and boating trips. I didn’t have any worries.”
But when the boy turned about 16, his relationship with Forand changed, she said.
“He would call and say ‘I can’t stand him. Will you come get me. I got to leave. Can I stay with you?’” she recounted.
“I picked him up and brought him to my house. I asked: “What’s going on?”
“We’re arguing,” he told her. “He’s being mean, verbally abusive.”
She told him he could remain with her as long as they went through the proper channels and made a formal request to DCF.
But he was put off by the prospect of a bureaucratic quagmire and changed his mind, she said.
And Forand, she said, threatened to call the police if she didn’t return the boy to him.
After a few hours, he went back — “situation resolved,” the aunt said.
From that point on, however, his aunt said she was on high alert and observed behaviors that raised concerns.
Forand was monitoring the boy’s phone calls and texts, she said, and the boy became increasingly isolated from his family. He was forbidden from attending family gatherings without them, she said.
And there was “excessive” gift giving — he bought the boy two cars and took him on vacations, she said.
“For a teenage boy,” she said, “money talks.”
When he turned 18, his family encouraged him to move out — though by then he had been adopted by the couple and was tied to them financially, the aunt said.
Some neighbors of Forand and Pelrine reacted to the charges filed against the couple.
“They basically owned him,” she said. “He was second in command at the job now. He had a lot of financial ties and was scared to leave.”
But after the boy and Forand got into a fight on Jan. 20, 2026, the details of his alleged abuse began to trickle out.
The boy’s sister told their aunt Forand had tried to enter the boy’s room as he was getting out of the shower.
Forand kicked in the door, the boy told his sister, and the boy put Forand in a headlock. Forand bit him on the arm.
A week later, on Jan. 27, he revealed to his family he had been sexually abused since age 14 — allegations the couple has vehemently denied.
“His sister was devastated,” his aunt said. “She called me and my mom and we all cried.”
They urged the young man to go to the police. But he was afraid and for about two weeks he vacillated, she said.
He described the alleged abuse to his aunt “in a very matter-of-fact way,” she said.
“They were trying to put rules on me,” he told his aunt. He said he told Pelrine: “You’re telling me to obey rules while your husband is raping me in the bedroom?”
He left the couple’s home but then returned to work at Pilgrim Pest Professionals on March 11, pretending nothing was wrong, the aunt said.
Finally, on March 16, accompanied by his sister, the boy went to the Middleborough State Police barracks and told his story.
Since then, he has been repeatedly interviewed by prosecutors, his aunt said, and he hasn’t wavered.
Besides his own testimony, authorities have worked with the alleged victim to recover his deleted Snapchat account containing potential evidence including photos, text and videos, a family member said.
The family has been told Plymouth County prosecutors will seek grand jury indictments against the couple — elevating the charges and potential penalties – as early as this week.
But the boy may not be around to see how the case turns out.
He has signed up for the Marines and is leaving soon, his aunt said. Joining the military is his way of asserting control over his own life, she said.
Forand, she said, has “hurt so many people over the years. This time he’s not getting away with it.”
Andrea Estes can be reached at andrea@plymouthindependent.org.