In 2010, controversy arose about Perry's time in the early 1990s as a Wareham police sergeant, when on two separate occasions, Scott Flanagan, a subordinate police officer, conducted illegal strip searches of two teenage girls, aged 14 and 16. Perry supported Flanagan up until Flanagan entered a guilty plea. Perry said he had assumed Flanagan was innocent. Flanagan pleaded guilty in 1993 to indecent assault and civil rights violations, and subsequently was sentenced to four years in prison. Perry was named in two federal civil rights lawsuits brought against the town. The town lost one of the cases and settled the other. Perry said that although he was named as a defendant, he was never questioned and never appeared in court. Perry stated in May 2010 that, if given the chance, he would not have done anything differently: ""I did what I think is good police work."" Perry resigned seventeen days after Flanagan was indicted, for what Perry said were reasons unrelated to the controversy. One of the victims, Lisa Allen, who was 14 years old at the time she was assaulted by Flanagan in 1991, has made a public statement against Perry and his role in the incident:  He [Perry] had to hear me screaming and crying. Instead of helping me, Jeff Perry denied anything happened .. Perry did not care about protecting teenaged girls in Wareham from police officer Flanagan. Jeff Perry cared only about protecting police officer Flanagan. ... It upsets me that Jeff Perry can run for Congress after what he did to me when I was 14 years old.' Allen's father said in 2010 that he was surprised and angry that Perry is running for Congress. ""There's nowhere he should run except out of town"", he said. The father of Heather Adams, the victim in the 1992 incident, however, stated in 2010 that he believed Perry was simply doing his job and that the 1992 incident should have no impact on Perry's political career. ""Jeff Perry was young and handled it the best way he could ... He was worrying about his men. You have to look at everything, not just heat of the moment. Time heals all wounds. I don't have anything bad to say about him"", Adams' father added. WBZ-TV reported on the facts of the two cases in a September 2010 report: When Perry was a police sergeant in Wareham in the 1990s, an officer under his command, Scott Flanagan strip searched teenage girls. In one case, Perry was on the scene in a cranberry bog in 1991 when an officer stuck his hand in a 14-year-old girl's underwear.