Barber Chris Prunier said he didn’t intend for his action to result in the harassment of women from his town. He says she didn’t want to display a Pride flag because he didn’t want the controversy. Photo/Pat Grossmith
GOFFSTOWN, NH – It’s been more than three weeks since Lisa Harbus had a dust-up with a Main Street barber shop owner over her asking him to display a Pride flag or sticker in support of Pride Month this June.
In that time, she has been subjected to hateful Facebook messages and people yelling out their car windows after stopping outside her home.
She says the harassment began shortly after Chris Prunier, owner of Alphas Barbershop on Main Street, posted on the Goffstown Real Deal Facebook page his account of what happened on April 19 inside his shop. He told Harbus he did not want to display a flag or put a sticker in his window because he didn’t want the controversy.
“That should have been the end of it,” said Prunier, a U.S. Army veteran, who displays the American, U.S. Marine and POW/MIA flags outside his shop. Harbus, he said, continued to push the issue and ultimately another barber, seeing Prunier becoming upset, stepped in to put an end to the conversation.
“You people with your guns and your weapons and your ideals are the problem,” Jimmy, one of the other barbers, said is what Harbus called back as she left the shop.
“Just so you know, Jimmy leans very far left,” Prunier said. Prunier, although a former military man, said he does not own a gun.
Harbus denies making that comment. She said when she asked Prunier if he would display a Pride flag, he told her no because he did not want to cause a controversy. He said everyone was welcomed in his shop, that he had family members and customers who are gay and that nobody wanted to put up a Pride flag.
Harbus told him she understood but expressed her disappointment. She said, in hindsight, she should have left the shop then but she continued to question him a “little bit.” She said she regularly has conversations with people who don’t see eye to eye with her.
She said she told him people don’t feel comfortable showing public support for the LGBQT community and “that is why I don’t feel safe walking down Main Street holding my wife’s hand.” And then, she said, he got really “kind of riled up. He said he didn’t know what I was talking about and said everybody’s tolerant here. He was basically just saying I was very off base. He was getting very agitated.”
Harbus said after the incident in the barber shop and Prunier’s post to social media, her spouse put up cameras around their home that recorded the harassing motorists. Police were notified as well and said they were adding extra patrols in their area.
“There’s been a fair amount of harassment,” she said. “Three weeks and it’s still happening.”
Harbus grew up outside of New York City and has lived in various parts of the country including White River Junction, the San Francisco Bay area and Philadelphia.
“I have never felt this unsafe as a woman and as a gay person,” she said.
The day of the incident Prunier anonymously posted his account of what happened on the private Goffstown The Real Deal Facebook page. He then posted “No Trespassing” orders he sent to five women banning them from his shop. They included Harbus, Select board member Kelly Boyer, her wife Pam Boyer, Jillian Bernat, admin of the Goffstown The Real Real Deal Facebook page, and Jillian Pelletier. The women’s addresses were listed.
The Boyers said that after Prunier’s posting about a half-dozen vehicles stopped outside their residence and people inside were yelling something out the windows. Kelly Boyer said she does not know if that had anything to do with the incident or is related to her being an elected official. Nothing like that had happened prior to the incident, they said.
All of the women are members and/or supporters of the Goffstown Area LGBTQ+ & Allies (GALA) Facebook page.
Harbus doesn’t have access to The Real Deal Facebook page but others who did told her about what was posted. “I was completely dumbstruck,” she said of the vitriol and bigotry expressed in the comments.
The Boyers, Bernat and Pelletier all say they had nothing to do with the incident.
Kelly Boyer said she has never been in his shop and has never met Prunier. After the media postings, Boyer said she reached out to Prunier but he never got back to her.
“It’s strange to be called out on something like this that I have had no connection to,” she said. Boyer said she read the article in the NH Journal and Prunier apparently believes “I am in cahoots with people I don’t know.”
The women believe he sent the “No Trespassing” orders to them because they all support the LGBTQ community.
“People saw what he was posting and people were asking me what happened and I said, ‘I don’t know,’” Pam Boyer said. “He thinks there’s this big conspiracy. I couldn’t care less about him and his shop until he posted my name and address and had me get involved in something I wasn’t involved in. If it’s not because of the LGBTQ community, then what is it?”
Prunier, Harbus said, felt he was targeted and that she went into his shop with an agenda.
“I didn’t know what I was walking into and I certainly didn’t go in there to provoke him. I chose to have what I thought was a respectful exchange of ideas concerning the visibility and support of the LBGT community in our town of Goffstown,” Harbus said.
What Harbus said she did not know was that two years ago, there was an incident with Prunier concerning a Pride flag. Like this year, a volunteer went to his shop to ask him if he would display a flag outside his shop. He declined.
However, a business next door agreed to display the flag. He said the flag was large and when the wind blew, it blocked his entrance. Prunier took down the flag, rolled it up and put it in rear hallway of that business. He then replaced the flag with a Town of Goffstown flag which was originally on display.
The business owner talked with Prunier about the flag and then reported the flag stolen, Prunier said. Police interviewed him, he told them what he had done and that was the end of it. The business owner then took the Pride flag and displayed it in their front window.
Two years ago there was a dispute between Chris Prunier and a neighboring business over display of this Pride flag on Main Street in Goffstown. Courtesy Photo
Harbus said she was unaware of any of that prior to stopping by his shop on April 17, 2024.
After Prunier put up his postings, articles followed in the NH Journal and Granite Grok. Those stories also were posted on social media resulting in more comments. Prunier then appeared on Drew Cline’s radio program on WFEA to talk about the incident.
Harbus said no one from the NH Journal, Granite Gook or Cline’s radio program reached out to her for her side of the story.
Harbus, after the social postings, said she received hateful Facebook messages including one from someone named Jen Smolen.
“What gives you the right to throw a temper tantrum in a business secondary to their refusal to be bullied by your delusions and unhinged behavior? Act your age, not your shoe size. You are an embarrassment not only to women but the human race. Do better. And stay in your own damn lane. People have freedom and the right to do what they want without being bullied and chastised by people like you. Go read a book. Educate Yourself. That’s a good place to start. Hypocrisy and ignorance will not be tolerated. People with intellect and intelligence are fighting back and fighting for the God given freedom we are afforded in our great country. If you don’t like it, MOVE. I can guarantee that you will NOT be missed.”
On April 20, 2024, while she was in Philadelphia visiting friends, about a half-dozen vehicles slowed down outside her house. Her spouse was in the yard when she heard people shouting from the vehicles. She couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Three weeks after the initial conversation with Prunier, yet another vehicle stopped outside her home, which is in a rural part of town with no sidewalks or street lights, and someone inside the vehicle, using a bull horn or loudspeaker, yelled out, “I know who you are.”
For his part, Prunier said he was “ignorant” when he posted the letters with the women’s addresses on them. He said within 30 minutes of posting them, he took them down and redacted the addresses and then reposted them. Social media being what it is, however, the original posts made it to other Facebook pages.
“It was my fault,” he said of the posted addresses. He pointed out, however, that the women’s addresses are public and can be found online.
He also said he did not intend for his action to result in the women being harassed.
“I did not mean for this,” he said. “It was unintended. I don’t mean any ill will for these people. At the same time, some of these people are public officials and addresses are public information.”
Jillian Pelletier, however, said in Prunier’s post about the incident in his shop, he said he felt embarrassed by it. In the comments, she said, many people asked who this woman was and one man even wrote that he wanted to know who she is so he “can publicly bash her.”
Prunier, she said, went on to post Harbus’ name in the comments along with multiple pictures of her and the name of her business.
Pelletier said Prunier encouraged people to “send their best wishes to her for the outstanding job she’s doing spreading peace, love and acceptance in the community.” Pelletier said that was “clearly sarcasm and she subsequently received hateful messages.”
His comments were later deleted, she said.
Prunier told Manchester Ink Link that he sent the “no trespassing” notices to the “G Group,” meaning the Goffstown Group. He said he’s had issues with Bernat, who has “attacked” his viewpoint online. He believes Pam Boyer is working behind the scenes and that her wife Kelly is “in cahoots with her because she knows what she is doing.”
Pelletier said she believes she landed on the “No Trespassing” list because of her response to a comment Prunier made in another Facebook group. In it she said Prunier stated he is an ally of the lGBTQ+ community.
In her response to that comment, Pelletier cited the police report of the investigation into the Pride flag’s removal in which Prunier said “he took it down because he was uncomfortable with it being near his shop because he didn’t want people to think it belonged to him.”
On Facebook, Pelletier said, Prunier said he took it down because it was blocking his door, to which Pelletier responded with those excerpts from the police report and a picture of both storefronts and the flag very clearly not blocking his door. I also said to him ‘that isn’t how an ally reacts to a Pride flag.’ This is what landed two of us on a no-trespass order. At some point after that, he deleted his comment thread which contained that whole exchange,” she wrote in an email.
The following day, Pelletier said, Prunier posted the no-trespass orders on the Goffstown Real Deal Facebook page, from which she and the group are banned.
Bernat said she’s lived in Goffstown for 10 years and has never encountered anything like this before. She and her husband have known Prunier for years prior to living in Goffstown.
“I don’t know what’s behind it,” she said. “He says he has no ill will but the things he’s doing is kind of the opposite of that.”
Pam Boyer believes there is some political motivation behind the ongoing social media postings.
She said in August 2023, about 30 people appeared before the Goffstown School Board wanting a LBGQT poster with pronouns on it removed from a bulletin board at the Mountain View Middle School. It had been there for two years but it was removed after the superintendent said it was time for a change, she said.
Then, she said, the same group requested books to be banned from the school library. “Pretty much all stayed,” she said. But, she said, State Rep. Lisa Masur, who was part of the group, ran for and was elected to the Board of Trustees for the Library. Boyer said she filed a Right-to-Know request which showed Masur didn’t actually have a library card.
She said the bottom line is Prunier decided to attack her and her wife. She said she does try to dispel misinformation.
“I know there’s a campaign to have my wife removed from office and us move from town,” said Boyer who has lived in Goffstown for 10 years. “Luckily, we’re not easily swayed. We really found community here and still have community here. It’s just really sad to see all the fighting on social media that has been happening.”
Prunier said he made the postings because he was “fed up.” He said if you don’t agree with everything the G Group wants, “then they just keep coming. You either take their view or it’s the highway.”
Prunier said he is part of the “silent majority in town. I am not alone.”
