I’ve never had lunch with a pedophile. Not that I know of.
But when two children freeze to death in the back of a van for no good reason, I’d even pay for a molester’s meal if it meant getting to the bottom of things.
And so there I sat in an unremarkable diner on Detroit’s east side as Alan Rosetto rolled up in a wheelchair. He had come dressed for the occasion: dark ball cap, a double pointed devil’s goatee, and a T-shirt that read “YOUR FEELINGS” with a stick figure copulating on top of the letter Y.
Straight from central casting, I thought.
Rosetto is the chairman of a committee within a sprawling bureaucratic blob that dispenses hundreds of millions of federal dollars to Detroit for housing and homelessness. Among other things, Rosetto’s committee is supposed to oversee the emergency hotline that the mother of four had called multiple times only to be turned away.
A rusting van became the family’s mobile home. Until the van became the children’s death scene.
After news of the children broke, I outed Rosetto in a column.
Now, inexplicably, he wanted to break bread.
“You gonna eat?” I asked him.
“My budget’s a little low right now,” Rosetto said in a pinched, nasal tone. “I got about six dollars for the next week.”
I noticed he was already perusing the menu.
“I’ll get you some lunch,” I said.
He ordered eggs. I did the same.
Why would a guy who did nearly three years in the state penitentiary for raping his 13-year-old stepdaughter be placed in charge of a committee that monitors vulnerable children? Rosetto must be some kind of genius or something, I figured.
I figured wrong.
A high school dropout, Rosetto described his working life as a little of this, a little of that. “I did some unsavory things,” he said. “I was a drug dealer and a gambler.”
High school dropout? Drug dealer?
Maybe the guy’s a mathematical savant.
“What’s 6 times 9?” I asked.
He couldn’t say.
Now, there is no shame in not knowing basic multiplication. No shame at all, unless you’re handling other people’s money.
“With all due respect,” I said, “you’re not an accountant or a business exec. You’ve got no high school degree.” It seemed to me that they put a guy like this in charge because he wouldn’t notice if the bookkeeping was off.
Rosetto said he doesn’t handle the money. He said he’s an idea man. An idea man who knows things about the inner workings of Detroit’s homeless industrial complex. “I heard about a grand jury,” he said. “The feds are looking at these dollars.”
The eggs arrived. Three each. Management had not passed the “eggflation” onto the customer, the waitress informed me. It was an even deal. The eggs were cold. Rosetto put ketchup near his, like kids do.
Rosetto came to be chairman by simple endurance: He attended general board meetings of the Detroit Continuum of Care agency—the blob of federal, state, local, and nonprofit bureaucracies that distributes federal homeless money. Once Rosetto got noticed, he nominated himself for election to the board and won. No one asked if he had a criminal history.
He was recently elevated to chairman of the oversight committee. By that time, everybody knew he was a convicted pedo, he said.
Rosetto survives by dining from the fruit bowl of government handouts. Food stamps. Monthly Social Security checks. And housing vouchers intended for the chronically homeless that are distributed by the blob Rosetto helps oversee.
He says he rents a tidy two-bedroom duplex on the east side of Detroit with the vouchers. It is indeed a nice place if it is the same house listed on sex-offender registration. A perfect place, in fact, for a mother and four children.
“Those vouchers are where the majority of the money is going,” Rosetto said. “Follow that money trail.”
As for the emergency hotline he oversees, it’s woefully underfunded: closed after business hours, on weekends, and federal holidays. The long wait lines and lack of follow-up is due to Mayor Mike Duggan’s new prioritization system, Rosetto claimed.
“The city is the puppet master, really,” he said. “It’s so bureaucratic, it’s a prescription for death. I mean whatever happened to need shelter, get shelter? Not three days from now.”
After his third cup of coffee, the wizened little man in the pornographic T-shirt licked his fingertips and asked me for a favor.
“I just need you to treat me fairly in these stories cause I’m really trying to do some good here,” he said. “I’ll help you if you help me.”
I thought for a moment. “I’ll get back to you,” I said.
And with that, lunch was over.
Charlie LeDuff is a reporter educated in public schools. Follow him on X @Charlieleduff.
