7 | To America

I don't know whether it's true that Nicholas Rossi was abusing other kids in the care homes, but what I do recognize is that charm and manipulation he appears to deploy to this day.

I don't blame Brian Coogan for not adopting Nicholas Rossi, but my producer, Helen, tries to persuade me to be more sympathetic when we talk in the car later.

If you were 14 and you were being abused or living in homes, and then you approach someone and beg them to adopt you, and they just end up saying no, and everybody you turn to for help just says no, wouldn't you, at that point, be a little bit angry?

No, of course you would be angry, but it can't excuse him for w- what it's all led to.

Nicholas stays in care.

He gets sent out of state.

He has said he was in care in Nebraska and Florida, and we know as a young adult, he was living in Dayton, Ohio, which is where, at the age of 21, he attacks fellow student, Mary Grabinski, and becomes a registered sex offender.

So he pinned me up against the wall, and he started violently kissing me.

So I was trying to push him off me and get away.

I was begging with him.

Nicholas disappears from the State House scene every now and then, but he never stays away for long.

In 2011, he turns up claiming to be a student at Harvard.

What he doesn't reveal is that he's been convicted of a sexual assault in Ohio, and his Harvard claims are a bit of an exaggeration.

Although he does take a number of literature courses at Harvard, they are at the extension school, a night school that is not Harvard University and does not have the same rigorous admission requirements.

One tutor remembers him as an earnest, intelligent student, and somewhat anxious generally.

In 2012, his Harvard experience is abruptly cut short when the Harvard University Police Department arrests Nicholas on an outstanding warrant for crimes he allegedly committed in other states, and he leaves the campus in disgrace.

This is the same man who publicly talks about and builds a public profile of his experiences of being abused in care homes.