Early Life and Education
Brown was born on September 12, 1959, in Kittery, Maine and grew up in Wakefield, Massachusetts. He often spent his summers in Newburyport, Massachusetts, where his father served as a city councilor for 18 years. Brown's father, Claude Bruce Brown, and mother, Judith Ann “Judi” (née Rugg), divorced when he was about a year old. Both his parents have since remarried three times. His father and his grandfather were Republicans. His father has said that young Scott became interested in running for political office in the mid-1960s while accompanying him on a campaign for state office. Scott Brown recalls holding campaign signs for his father.
Brown had a difficult childhood; after her divorce, his working mother received welfare benefits. Brown experienced sexual abuse from a camp counselor who threatened to kill the 10-year-old boy if he told anyone—which he did not disclose, even to his family, until his autobiography Against All Odds (2011)—and physical abuse from his stepfathers. During various periods of his childhood, Brown lived with his grandparents and his aunt. He shoplifted many times, and was arrested for stealing record albums and brought before Judge Samuel Zoll in Salem, Massachusetts at the age of 13 or 14. Zoll asked Brown if his siblings would like seeing him play basketball in jail and required Brown to write a 1,500-word essay on that question as his punishment. Brown later said, "that was the last time I ever stole."
He graduated from Wakefield High School in 1977. He received a Bachelors of Arts in History, cum laude from Tufts University in 1981 and a Juris Doctor from Boston College Law School in 1985. During his undergraduate career at Tufts, Brown was a member of the Kappa Chapter of Zeta Psi International Fraternity.
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