Jeffrey Bombard, a sergeant with the Mansfield Police Department, resigned last year while awaiting a disciplinary decision from the police chief. The investigation sustained more than a dozen allegations against him.

The teenagers were participants in the department's "career pathways" program — a law enforcement recruitment initiative designed to give high schoolers a window into policing.

Instead, according to the report, they got Bombard.

In one incident last April, Bombard took a 17-year-old female intern on an evening ride-along that had not been authorized by the department. During the outing, he walked the teenager through the woods to the secluded Happy Hollows cemetery.

"She mentioned that while walking, she could feel him looking at her as he was behind her, almost as if he was staring at her buttocks," the report stated. Investigators noted the teen became emotional several times during her interview.

Bombard later texted the same intern that she was a "dime piece" — slang for extremely attractive.

He was far from subtle with the others. Multiple female interns told investigators the sergeant contacted them on his personal cell phone and sent sexually suggestive messages through Instagram and Snapchat direct messages. The teens handed over the chats to investigators, though their names and specific messages were redacted before the documents were released.

It wasn't just the interns. A young front desk employee told investigators Bombard loitered in her workspace for hours at a time, making her feel trapped and uncomfortable. A young female officer said when Bombard asked her out for drinks, she felt she couldn't say no — he was her superior and she was still on probation.

"I'm not off probation," the officer told investigators. "It's just an awkward position."

That fear ran through the entire investigation. Several people told investigators they were reluctant to report Bombard because they worried about retaliation or jeopardizing a future career in law enforcement — the very career the program was supposed to help them pursue.

Alex del Carmen, a criminologist and law enforcement training expert with more than 30 years of experience, reviewed the internal affairs report for NBC10 Boston.

"What we have seen is a pattern where people begin in small ways," del Carmen said. "The gravity of the circumstance gets worse and worse. As he gets away with the behavior, nobody reports him, then he starts pushing the envelope a bit more."

Bombard declined to be interviewed for the internal affairs investigation. In an email to NBC10 Boston, he called the report "an initial determination based solely on evidence weighted most favorably to sustaining the allegations, and is not a complete representation of the events alleged to have transpired."

The Mansfield police chief and deputy chief declined interview requests. The town's labor counsel responded with a written statement: "We take all allegations of this nature with the utmost seriousness and handle them in accordance with established policies and procedures. While we understand the public interest in such matters, the Town does not comment on personnel issues."