Massachusetts- Five years ago, Matt Gongola [pictured] was a young carpenter-in-training when he took a side job for a New Bedford politician that would forever change his life. Now a 21-year-old full-time carpenter living on Martha’s Vineyard, Gongola recalls the humiliation and anguish he endured after he came forward with allegations that former state Rep. George Rogers showed him gay porn and made inappropriate advances. Rogers later was cleared by a judge. “I think of the things I had to deal with with the trial and dealing with people. It was everybody whispering,” Gongola said, recalling the reaction when word spread around New Bedford that he was Rogers’ 16-year-old accuser. `It just made for a crummy situation. I think it’s made me stronger, but it’s not something that I’d want to deal with again.” But Gongola is going public for the first time in the Herald because, he says, he is upset that Rogers is again seeking public office. Rogers, who lost his House seat in 2002 and failed in a 2004 attempt to reclaim it, is again running for New Bedford City Council. The 71-year-old pol, who served 10 months in jail for bribery while a state senator, lost a 2003 bid for New Bedford City Council. “He’s just honestly not a man fit to be a politician or a public leader,” Gongola said. “A politician is someone like a role model. Someone with his history is not really fit to be a leader.” Rogers did not return calls seeking comment for this story. Gongola said the sordid tale began in December 2000 when Rogers invited Gongola, then a carpentry student at Greater New Bedford Vocational Technical School, to rebuild the porch on his home. Gongola said he was stunned when he arrived to find Rogers watching a tape of two men engaged in oral sex. “The TV had a gay porn on it. He was standing there looking at me. He didn’t say anything, he just gave me a look to see if I approved of it,” Gongola recalled. “I didn’t say anything. He quickly went over and turned the TV off. Then there was kind of a silence. He broke the silence with a comment about the weather.

Gongola also alleges Rogers made references to him being “buff” and once tried to grab his hand. Police arrested Rogers March 3, 2001, and seized hundreds of porn tapes, magazines and pictures. Although Judge Kevin J. O’Dea called Gongola “truthful,” the justice acquitted Rogers of one count of dissemination of pornography to a minor after a two-hour trial. Since the trial, Gongola has moved to Martha’s Vineyard, where he lives with his girlfriend and runs his own construction business. Despite Rogers’ acquittal, Gongola says he thinks he “did the right thing” by going to police. “I could have let it slide under the table, but there’s a difference between right and wrong,” he said. “You commit a crime, you get caught and you go to jail for it. It shouldn’t be any different because you’re a politician.”