Local officials say they followed the rules. A federal lawsuit says their silence let a previously accused business owner keep hiring teenage girls anyway.
The town at the center of that dispute is Hopkinton, Massachusetts. The plaintiff is a young woman who says she was 16 when her boss at Hillers Pizza assaulted her in a basement storage area. Court records identify the owner as Petros “Peter” Sismanis, a Greek national with a past sex offense record, and they place him in federal immigration custody after a 2025 conviction related to the incident. The question now before a judge is how much responsibility, if any, sits with the town that licensed his shop to operate.
The Criminal Case Against Petros Sismanis
According to state court documents cited by Fox News Digital, Sismanis was convicted in June 2025 for indecent assault, battery and witness intimidation. The charges stem from a 2023 incident while the plaintiff was working at Hillers Pizza in Hopkinton.
The civil complaint, as described in that reporting, alleges that during a work shift in 2023, Sismanis lured the 16-year-old into the restaurant basement. There, he allegedly kissed and hugged her against her will. The filing states that she was “terrified, frozen in fear and did not know what to do.” After she contacted her mother, the lawsuit says, Sismanis begged them not to call police and allegedly blocked the mother’s car from leaving the parking lot.
A Massachusetts jury later convicted him. He was sentenced to six months in jail and ordered to register again as a sex offender, according to the same court records summarized in the Fox News report.
Federal immigration officials then took custody. In a statement to Fox News Digital, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin described Sismanis as “a criminal illegal alien from Greece with convictions for lewd acts with a minor, sexual assault, and witness intimidation.” She said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in Boston arrested him in October 2025 after his release from state custody and that he “will remain in ICE custody pending further immigration proceedings.”
A Prior Sex Offense And A Pizza Shop Job
The 2023 assault was not the first time authorities accused Sismanis of sex crimes involving employees, according to earlier court records and local reporting.
The civil complaint notes that in 1997 and 1998, Sismanis faced charges including rape and indecent assault and battery. Those cases involved female minors and an earlier business he operated in Hopkinton. NBC Boston reported that he sexually assaulted two employees while running a donut shop in the town.
Court records show that he ultimately pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent assault and battery, which required him to register as a Level 2 sex offender, according to coverage summarized in both the Fox News article and Boston.com. Level 2 in Massachusetts is reserved for individuals classified as presenting a moderate risk of reoffense, with information available to the public upon request.
Public access to that history, however, was not straightforward. Boston.com reported that the online database of the state Sex Offender Registry Board only includes offenders classified after July 2013. For earlier classifications, members of the public must ask local police directly for information.
What The Lawsuit Claims The Town Missed
The plaintiff, now 19, filed suit against the town of Hopkinton, its police chief and the ownership of Hillers Pizza. The case was transferred to federal court in early January 2026, according to the Fox News report that first outlined the filing.
Her central claim is that town officials negligently allowed a known sex offender to keep operating a business where he employed teenage girls. The complaint alleges that when Hopkinton renewed Hillers Pizza’s business license in 2016, officials either knew or should have known about Sismanis’s prior sex offense history and his status on the registry.
Business license renewals in Hopkinton are reviewed by multiple town departments, including the police, according to the lawsuit description. In that context, the plaintiff argues, town leaders and police had specific duties to review applicants’ backgrounds and to factor known risks into their decisions.
Court documents quoted by Fox News Digital state, “There is no record of Hopkinton police or Chief Bennett ever raising questions about Sismanis’ ability to operate the pizza shop, even though he was a registered sex offender.” The suit claims that the absence of concern from law enforcement and licensing officials, despite his prior record, effectively “endanger[ed] the female minors Sismanis often hired.”
The complaint also alleges a broader pattern of warning signs. Before the 2023 incident, Hopkinton police had reportedly received multiple complaints from female employees about Sismanis’s conduct at Hillers Pizza, according to the lawsuit as summarized in the Fox News story. The filing argues that these prior reports should have prompted closer scrutiny or intervention.
The plaintiff is seeking 1 million dollars in damages, according to Boston.com.
How Hopkinton Officials Explain Their Role
Town leaders and police dispute that they acted negligently. In public comments through their attorney, they have framed the licensing decision and subsequent response as appropriate based on what they knew at the time.
Attorney Douglas Louison, who represents Hopkinton officials, told Boston.com that the town stands by its process. “While town and police officials are sympathetic to the circumstances of what happened to the plaintiff, the town and police acted appropriately and constitutionally under the circumstances presented and known to them at the time,” he said.
The town has not, in the reporting to date, publicly detailed what checks were performed during the 2016 license renewal or how information about older sex offender registrations was shared internally. There is also no public record, in the accounts from Fox News and NBC Boston, of Hopkinton officials addressing the specific allegation that earlier complaints from female staff about Sismanis’s conduct reached police before the 2023 assault.
That gap will likely be a focus of discovery in the federal case. The lawsuit attempts to chart who in town government had access to what information, and when. Town officials, for their part, appear prepared to argue that they complied with the law and that responsibility for the criminal conduct rests with the offender who has already been convicted in state court.
Immigration Custody And A Short Sentence
One detail in the case has drawn attention from federal officials as well as local residents. After his 2025 conviction, Sismanis received a six-month jail sentence. That term is now a matter of record in state court. For a teenager who described being “terrified” and “frozen in fear,” the length of the sentence is likely to be part of the civil damages argument, although the lawsuit itself focuses on the town’s alleged failures.
Immediately after his release, ICE arrested Sismanis and placed him in immigration detention as a “criminal illegal alien,” the description used by DHS Assistant Secretary McLaughlin in her statement to Fox News Digital. He is now being held at a federal facility in California while removal proceedings continue.
Immigration status does not directly answer the questions raised in the civil suit. It does, however, underline that multiple systems criminal courts, local licensing, sex offender registration, and federal immigration enforcement all intersected with the same individual over more than two decades.
Registry Access, Local Oversight And Unanswered Questions
One structural issue sits beneath the personal allegations. How visible was Sismanis’s prior record to people in Hopkinton in 2016 and 2023, including those responsible for approving his business license and investigating complaints about his conduct?
As noted in the Boston.com reporting, the state Sex Offender Registry Board’s online list only includes individuals classified after July 2013. Sismanis’s earlier offenses and Level 2 status predate that cutoff. For members of the public and, in some instances, for town officials, accessing those older records requires contacting the local police department directly.
The lawsuit argues that this is exactly the kind of background information Hopkinton police should have had at their fingertips. The quoted line that there is “no record” of the chief or department questioning his suitability to run a youth-staffed pizza shop speaks to what the plaintiff calls a breakdown of that oversight responsibility.
Town counsel, in response, has focused on what was “presented and known” to officials at the time. That wording suggests that one key factual dispute in federal court will be the flow of information inside Hopkinton government. If complaints were made by female staff before 2023, as alleged, who heard them, how were they documented, and did anyone connect those concerns to a past sex offense record that was not easily searchable online?
The plaintiff, identified in court papers as Isabelle, alleges that the town’s inaction left her vulnerable in a workplace that had already generated warnings. Hopkinton officials maintain that they met their legal duties when they processed his license and responded to what they knew.
Until the federal suit proceeds further and more internal records become public, the central issue will remain open. Was this a tragic crime carried out by one man despite reasonable safeguards, or the foreseeable result of missed information about a registered offender who was allowed to keep hiring teenagers in the same small town where he had offended before?
