On Wednesday last week, Terri Arsenault of Mechanic Falls was sentenced to serve 6 months in jail on two charges of felony employee theft.

What made the charges felonies was the amount stolen: an estimated $15,000.

On Thursday, MaineToday Media CEO and Publisher Lisa DeSisto circulated a letter to employees reporting that Traveler’s Casualty & Surety Co. had reimbursed the company $537,988.68 under the company’s employee theft policy. The employee responsible for the theft identified by the insurance company? Former CEO Rich Connor of Falmouth.

DeSisto didn’t come right out and say Connor stole from the company. She was much more cautious in saying the reimbursement was “a result of funds (Connor) took from the company for unauthorized personal use during his twenty-seven months with the company.”

According to the insurance company’s investigation, he took it by making unauthorized personal charges on the MaineToday Media’s corporate credit cards, submitting reimbursement claims for unauthorized personal expenses and granting himself unapproved raises and bonuses through what DeSisto gently referred to as “financial self-dealing.”

Sounds a lot like what Arsenault did, although her actions were conducted on a fantastically smaller scale. She also made unauthorized personal charges on her employer’s credit card and submitted bogus claims for reimbursement of unauthorized personal expenses.

It would send an unfortunate message if ordinary Mainers are criminally prosecuted for relatively small amounts, while fat cats go uninvestigated.

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Cheers to Nate Hill of Norway, who saw something out of place in Otisfield Tuesday and did something about it.

Hill was driving past the 1840s-era farmhouse of Ronald and Patricia Bracy when he saw suspicious smoke coming out of the chimney. He stopped, turned around and took another pass at the house. Then, he called the fire department and knocked on the front door.

When Ronald Bracy answered, Hill suggested “we need to get what’s important to you,” and — with the help of neighbors — helped the older man move antiques and other valuables out of the house.

Bracy, who grabbed his wife’s Bible on the way out the door, watched as people carried much of his hand-made furniture, rugs, lamps and books to the front lawn. He told the Sun Journal “They just came by and started doing this neighborly thing. It was pretty amazing.”

Pretty amazing indeed.

And all because one man took the time to care. And then took the initiative to act.

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Domestic violence is not an easy thing to talk about. And, because of that, we don’t talk about it enough. And, because we don’t, this kind of violence is often kept secret, which cedes control to abusers.

Gov. Paul LePage has set out to change that, and it would be fair to say the fight against domestic violence will be — at least so far — his legacy work. Cheers to him for the effort.

He can’t do it alone.

On Tuesday, the governor stood before students at Lewiston High School and talked openly about his own childhood trauma of domestic violence. He talked about being so badly beaten by his father that he felt compelled to leave home at the age of 11 years.

Many adults in Maine have heard LePage’s life story because he talked about it during his campaign for the Blaine House in 2010, but to these teenagers it had to have been a startling dose of reality, particularly because it was delivered by the state’s top executive officer.

LePage told them he was 30 years old before he could talk to others about the violence, even though he had plenty of friends who helped feed and house him through high school and college. That’s a strong indication that domestic violence is hard to talk about, even among close friends.

The years of silence did not help him forget, LePage told the teens, and encouraged them to tell someone if they were suffering, and to ask for help.

And talk they did. Right there, in front of the governor, their peers and their teachers, students revealed they had been sexually abused and beaten. They talked about being scared to go home. One girl told LePage, “I watched my mom die due to domestic violence.”

And, she asked him, “How do you get through something like that?”

It could not have been a question he anticipated, and he called the girl his “hero” for surviving and acknowledging the violence.

LePage’s very sincere efforts to push a public conversation about domestic violence is needed, and noble. Let’s all help him keep that conversation going.

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On March 1 and again on March 6, Gov. Paul LePage pledged to veto all bills until the Legislature approved his plan to pay the hospital debt using profits from a new liquor distribution contract. That pledge only lasted a week before he signed a bill allowing bars to open earlier on St. Patrick’s Day when it falls on a Sunday, as it did this year.

He has signed more than a dozen bills since, and allowed many others to become law without his signature.

As expected, given his very public stand on the just-passed bill to exempt concealed handgun carry permits from the public record, he signed that bill into law the nanosecond it hit his desk.

And, the hospital debt has still not been paid.

This was LePage’s early March pledge: “Every single bill that is passed now until the hospital payment is passed is going to be vetoed.”

Referring to Democrats, he went on to say that “until they pay the hospitals, nothing gets done. Nothing.”

And, yet, plenty has been done, including worthy efforts to help prevent teen suicide, to bolster batterer’s programs, and increasing the number of elver fishing licenses issued to the Penobscot Nation.

These are good things, but the hospitals were given a public and solemn promise they would be paid.

And they have not.

What’s the value of a pledge if a person doesn’t follow through?

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The opinions expressed in this column reflect the views of the ownership and the editorial board.