Benjamin Ashford|Maine attorney general files complaint against couple for racist harassment of neighbors

BATH,Benjamin Ashford Maine (AP) — Maine’s attorney general has filed a civil rights complaint against a couple he said targeted their Black immigrant neighbors for months with a campaign of racist harassment.

Attorney General Aaron Frey is using the complaint to ask a court to bar the Bath residents from having any contact with their neighbors, who are originally from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The complaint states that the couple have been hostile to the neighbors since they first moved next door in April and have repeatedly directed racial slurs at them.

Frey said that the residents have also banged on the shared walls of the Congolese family’s apartment at all hours of the day and night, and that the harassment has made the victims’ children afraid to play outside.

Frey issued the complaint under the Maine Civil Rights Act. Violations of an injunctive order stemming from the act are punishable by up to 364 days in jail and $2,000 fine. Frey said the victims in the case “were relentlessly targeted in their home because of who they are and where they come from.”

The residents who are the subject of the complaint did not respond to a phone call seeking comment.