Her badge of courage

She recalls following the sound and discovered it was coming from the squad room. There she discovered a police dispatcher, Katherine Baldelli, crying and cowering as a group of male officers fired pencils, rulers, and staplers at her. It was the latest episode in what had become their habit of harassing her.

“They were using her for target practice,’’ Moran said.

That was the day Moran, who had just become the department’s first full-time officer, went to the chief. “I told him if he didn’t do something to stop the harassment, I would,’’ she said yesterday. “Though I didn’t know what the heck I was going to do.’’

Last week Moran became the chief of police in Southborough, a department that barely tolerated the presence of women when she joined in 1984.

Having a female police chief of a tiny Central Massachusetts town might not sound like a big deal in 2009; after all, the state has had a female governor, and a woman is making a convincing run for the US Senate.

But it is significant in Southborough, where the memories of the long-running Baldelli case remain fresh. It is a measure of how far the community has come.

“In the span of 20 years we’ve gone from this horrible sex harassment case . . . [and] look where we are now,’’ said Salvatore Giorlandino, chairman of the town’s Board of Selectmen. “It makes me optimistic about the future.’’

Moran insisted that Baldelli’s harassment was the work of an isolated group within the department. She also says that she escaped the worst of what Baldelli suffered, partly because as an officer, rather than a dispatcher, she was viewed as more of a peer. She also believes she was simply more skilled at dealing with the locker-room culture.

Baldelli eventually filed a complaint with the state’s Commission Against Discrimination. In 1995, she won what was then the highest award in the agency’s history, $250,000. The town fought the award for a decade, losing at every step.

In his decision, the agency’s chairman, Michael Duffy, noted that Baldelli had been called a “whore’’ and a “slut,’’ among other things. “Women have a right to work in a workplace free of vulgar hostile language and taunts,’’ Duffy wrote.

Moran’s principal role in the suit was to provide information about how Baldelli had been harassed, including how officers used crude comments and pictures of women’s body parts to demean her. “It was passed off as a joke, but I didn’t think it was funny at all,’’ Moran said.

While Baldelli was fighting the department and town and winning, the atmosphere became much chillier for her supporters in the department.

Moran began to find herself passed over for promotions and frozen out of meetings. She would eventually file her own complaint, alleging that she was the victim of retaliation. “I stuck my neck out and paid a price for a time, but it was the right thing to do,’’ she said.

And while her career stalled, she threw herself into activities. She became leader of a Boy Scout troop in Hopkinton. She started an Explorers club, introducing high school students to police work. Dozens of her students have become police officers in Massachusetts; one works for the Central Intelligence Agency.

“She’s a spy!’’ Moran says with a delighted laugh. “Those are the rewards I got from persevering.’’

And in the meantime, the atmosphere eventually improved. She became interim chief a year ago, having held virtually every other job in the department. She was appointed last week unanimously. The only public dissent was from a handful of local bloggers who complained, absurdly, that Moran’s role in a suit against the town should disqualify her.

“The truth sometimes is embarrassing and it was for the town,’’ she said. “It was always there and nobody wanted to talk about it. Now we can finally move on.’’

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.