Issue of the Week; Human Rights, Personal Growth, Disease, Population
Spotlight, Film Independent Spirit Awards, February 27, 2016
The seasonal equinox occurred today at 0154 UTC, with seasons changing from summer to fall in the Northern Hemisphere and from winter to spring in the Southern Hemisphere. The harvest moon is tomorrow in the north.
We had planned a continued installment of our reflections. However, that will wait.
There are also many issues of critical importance occurring right now, However, they too will wait. Numerous issues are at critical junctures that will play out further in unknown ways as we write.
We return today to a post from a year ago that resonates in a number of ways right now and is ripe for revisiting during its anniversary this month.
Yesterday, one of the writers, Lisa Blume, attended the memorial service for A.W. Richard Sipe in San Diego. Just over a year ago, when they talked at length in person, he was deeply empathetic and supportive of her in her personal journey and work. He has been admired by us for many years in his landmark work on child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.
He is probably best known to the general public today from the movie Spotlight, in which he is the voice in the speakerphone informing the Boston Globe reporters of his astonishing research. This device worked spectacularly well in the movie. It was an illustration of a substantial amount of interaction between Richard and the Spotlight team.
Mike Rezendes, a key member of the Spotlight team that broke the story of child sex abuse in the Catholic Church in Boston, has spoken of Richard’s importance often in various venues. He was one of a number of people Lisa saw and talked with yesterday at the service, who have worked on the issue since the Spotlight investigation, or before, or since. We first met Mike at the Film Independent Spirit Awards where Spotlight swept the awards the day before winning best picture at the Academy Awards. It is a statement of objective fact that his opening piece of the Spotlight series in The Boston Globe on January 6, 2002, Epiphany Sunday, was revolutionary in impact.
A year and a half ago, Richard Sipe observed, from the start, with precision, exactly what was occurring in the child sex abuse scandal related to the Mayor of Seattle that had just surfaced in an ongoing Seattle Times investigative work. This story, which played out until the mayor’s resignation a year ago September, was the subject of our post then.
It was a remarkable convergence of issues. Our observations occurred just before the Me Too movement started, the next cascade of the revelations on child sex abuse in the Catholic Church, USA gymnastics and many other institutions, including major aid organizations in the developing world and the UN itself, and the larger issue throughout society. And as always, the relationship of power in all its dimensions, denial and enabling to it all.
One of the great tragedies that occurred after the post below was the death by drug overdose of the initial accuser of the mayor of sexually abusing him as a child.
The post speaks for itself. There are no links from the initial post, which, as explained previously, was our practice for a purpose at the time, and sometimes still is. If you are interested in seeing and reading any or all source material, its easily searched:
Updated. 9.15.17:
Yesterday, the Belfast Telegraph reported “Amnesty International” is asking Northern Ireland “to examine police records to see if any allegations have been made here against a US politician at the centre of historic child sex abuse claims.”
“Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, who resigned yesterday after a fifth sex abuse allegation was made against him, worked with children in a peaceline project in Belfast at the height of the Troubles.”
Amnesty International. When has this happened? With a political leader half way across the world?
Further updates follow in the original post below.
9.12.17
A thunderstorm that started in Seattle five months ago hit its apex today with a final bolt of lightning ending it.
Well, ending it on one level.
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is resigning because of five or more allegations of child sexual abuse.
The Seattle Times headline “Murray Resigns” across the entire top of the paper (online tonight, in print tomorrow) was one of the largest and boldest seen in a long time.
Even those who had held back from demanding resignation or hedged in any way on the issue came down on Murray with full force.
On April 6, the day the US strikes on Syria in retaliation for using chemical weapons occurred, we noted that the second headline on NPR and elsewhere was the mayor of Seattle, Ed Murray, being accused of child sexual abuse. He was being sued by the victim.
In the normal universe, he would have been gone that day. It’s not a situation in which one politically stays, and obviously not functionally, even if it was that rare case of child sexual abuse being asserted that wasn’t accurate.
Murray stayed. And said he would run for re-election as planned. The primary campaign was already underway.
Two more accusers of child rape and molestation by him, one his former foster child.
Nothing changes.
A fourth.
Murray announced he would not run for re-election. But he would not heed increasing calls for resignation.
Then today, a fifth victim comes forward, Murray’s cousin. And the added allegation that he had abused another boy at a Catholic group home.
And today, Mayor Murray announced that he will resign tomorrow.
Murray continued to deny everything alleged by everyone.
But his behavior from the start had been out of the predator handbook in attacking the victims.
His lawyers acted like the worst cases in families, churches and every situation now known like breathing they are so familiar. We noted long ago and again recently how everyone knows this is the one thing you can’t do anymore–although the desperate still try in the hope they will scare the victims away.
It had the opposite effect.
Before continuing, we need to make some things clear.
Normally we don’t talk about who we personally support politically in the context of the constitutionally critical secret ballot and in the context of our work. We comment extensively on leaders and policy and have been highly critical or supportive based on policy and character in the context of public interest issues.
But we need to reveal more in this situation in the greater interest of the issues we address here. The principals of World Campaign personally supported Murray enthusiastically when he ran for Mayor four years ago.
We stood with him as Mayor-elect in support of Catholic high school students walking out of classes en-masse protesting the firing of a gay vice-principal for marrying his husband at the headquarters of the Catholic Archdiocese in Seattle.
Murray was not distinctively different than his predecessor in policy, but the very fact of his being the first openly gay mayor who had been a major political player in supporting the successful effort for marriage equality was a human rights plus that put him over the top for us.
His predecessor supported the same things and was even endorsed over Murray by some with these interests at the top of their priorities. However, as with all Seattle mayors for some time, the previous mayor was essentially an establishment mayor (even though he ran in the recent primary again as anti- establishment, unsuccessfully, as this turf was more persuasively occupied by others.) Being one of the most liberal cities in the US for decades, Seattle has been a leader in LGBTQ rights, and the human rights move forward represented by Murray as a gay mayor on the heels of the marriage equality victory had meaning as a distinction. He won, barely. Even though he soon proved to be more or less what all mayors have been for some time, the old refrain: “Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.”
That doesn’t mean that he and others haven’t done good things. We’ve worked with some doing some of these good things. But Seattle is in perhaps the worst inequality and housing crisis in the country, or is at least a perfect representation of the contradiction in an uber-liberal place between the calls for equality and the harsh reality of inequality.
But more on that later. Back to the point now. The ultimate expression of inequality and abuse of power is always in the abuse of children.
The Seattle Times did an outstanding job on this story.
It began with the focus on a lawsuit brought against Murray.
It should be noted right away that reporting beyond the Times on a critical aspect of this suit was often worse than abysmal– still today in the likes of CNN and The Washington Post. After Murray decided to withdraw from the race, the suit was withdrawn, with the stated intention of re-filing after the election. Standard fare for many reasons. Meanwhile, another suit was filed by the same plaintiff against the city for related reasons.
None of this was in reports that just said the suit was dropped. At a point that seems like eons ago now, before Murray was buried by the tsunami since, he tried to say he had been vindicated by the suit being dropped, also saying nothing about the reasons or intent to refile. Of course, it wouldn’t have vindicated him anyway.
He was savaged by anyone with a conscience for his attacks on the vulnerabilities of the victim.
Make that victims.
Two others from the start, including his foster son, who called him the “only parent” he ever had.
On day two, literally, Richard Sipe nailed it. One of the authors of this post had the privilege of talking in depth with him recently at a conference in Washington, D.C., on the importance of survivors telling their stories. If you don’t know who Sipe is, go read-up. He’s the voice in the speakerphone at the Boston Globe in last year’s best picture Oscar-winner, Spotlight. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading, look at it on demand, online, etc., then come back.
Here’s the Times on day two:
“It’s the pattern,” said Richard Sipe, a former priest who has written and testified extensively about sexual abuse in the Catholic church. “All the elements are there.”
The alleged victims — one the child of crack addicts, the other two living in a center for troubled youth where they said Murray worked — were vulnerable people, Sipe observed. And Murray is accused of developing a relationship with them by offering help.
In Catholic church abuse cases, Sipe said, priests often picked out kids who needed support or affection, sometimes moving in after a father died. “I’ll be your father now,” he said a priest might say.
The foster son abuse would be virtual incest and today’s nail in the coffin was a family member. It’s a horrible convergence, incest, the single largest segment of child sexual abuse, and institutions like the Catholic Church. They feed each other.
Oh, and Murray is Catholic, who apparently went to seminary when the program in the Seattle archdiocese was run by an admitted child-molesting priest and listed last year as one of the 77 child sex abusers by the Seattle archdiocese. Which doesn’t mean anything happened in this regard directly or not. But it was and is a milieu from Archbishops to priests to the pews to the community of enabling and victimization. A documented and admitted reality from Seattle to Boston to virtually every diocese in the world.
Seattle is one of the least Catholic towns in the country, but still a significant slice of the population with over-sized political power (for another minute before the millennials complete the departure unless radical change happens asap). But the core of Catholics in Seattle are mainly liberal, like the city overall. So, a sexist homophobic church largely embraces those who it rejects in terms of equality. The trying to change it from the inside aspect of this culture—an increasingly unsupportable approach in terms of cognitive dissonance (which we understand well in working from Seattle to Rome—the chances were there but history passes by the untaken strategic imperatives) was an important base for Murray. But as with other allies, the denial (as always) was intense.
The political economic power structure was grotesquely quiet at first. Now they have all turned, again as is always the case, after too much reality slammed them in the face.
Regardless of what happens short-term politically and otherwise, which many factors will impact, history will not treat them well. With the possible exception of those who authentically make amends, admitting their nonsensical attempts to square circles and convincingly showing their hearts are crushed by their enabling. It generally eludes those who need to do so that it’s to their benefit as well to do this, without hedging, until reality and history force it.
As always, the survivors, who should never have to be, were and are at the forefront of requiring accountability. Only their courage makes this possible.
And to the great credit of the LGBTQ commission of the city itself, (with a number of members appointed by Murray), it eloquently called Murray, and everyone, to accountability.
Resign, they said, and stop this nonsensical, outrageous and dangerous rhetoric, dangerous to human rights and equality, and especially dangerous to children and survivors. With two city council members and most of the mayoral candidates agreeing. And supported by groups such as the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, which the principals of Word Campaign, as individuals, appeared with in support of the above before the city council.
We need to make a couple of obvious points that some people actually managed to obscure in 2017 for a minute.
Now, everybody says how unspeakable this has been and no one is above the law and on and on, in contradiction in some cases to previous positions.
Murray could never be charged criminally now because of statutes of limitations, which is why the need for SOL reform is so great and has been gaining momentum in the US.
But one would still hear the periodic innocent until proven guilty, etc., remark. Always an absurd one-liner reserved for the intellectually lazy or consciously misdirecting.
In a criminal context, guilty has a statutory meaning. One can be found “not-guilty” in this context and it is absolutely not a statement of or proof of innocence. Any more than not being charged means innocent in any sense. Prosecutorial discretion in practice often means what will be difficult or not, or politically palatable or not, or up against how much money and power or not. Prosecutors infamously fail to prosecute when they should in such cases.
And in this case, in a very different environment on this issue in the 80’s, in the one situation where a prosecutor was given evidence to consider, it was made clear by the prosecutor that the decision not to prosecute did not mean the victim was not believed.
The Seattle Times won a Pulitzer Prize for a story on the prosecutor’s office failing to charge when the evidence from the police sexual assault unit was overwhelming, for instance.
They and the reporters on this story, much maligned by Murray, deserve one again now. Especially for being relentless investigators and finding the “finding” from the Oregon Child Protective Services.
Murray was found to have sexually abused his foster son. This finding is by the entity legally responsible for determining whether an adult can be around children or can be a parent, guardian, or foster parent. Murray still cannot today be a foster parent in Oregon.
Anyone familiar with the history of CPS throughout the nation knows that the record on protecting children is often hideous and the tendency is toward not making a finding of sexual abuse when it should happen (for many reasons that require a separate book), even though there are many fine social workers and exceptions where excellent work is done.
[One of the most recent confirmations of the ongoing disastrous condition of child protection systems was reported on by AP two weeks ago, “Audit finds many Michigan child protection agency failures”. As one example, a mother continued to enable her child to be sexually abused by her boyfriend during an investigation, while the child welfare investigator “didn’t refer the case to a prosecutor or file a court petition, assessed far too low of a risk of future harm to the child and closed the investigation with no monitoring of the family afterward.” The “scathing report” found CPS “failed to launch and complete investigations within required timeframes” and among other things failed to “complete face-to-face interactions with alleged child victims in a timely manner; not referring investigations to prosecutors; and not accurately assessing a child’s risk of harm.” This in a “system that has been under court oversight for a decade.” Again, there are many excellent social workers who would not abide this. But the systems that are supposed to protect, often instead enable and commit the same abuses they are supposed to protect against–in the end because they are part of a society, worldwide, that has not been fully willing to look at the problems, provide resources for and demand protection and nurturing for all children.]
To have a finding of sexual abuse by the agency legally responsible for protection of children is exactly that. It has no relationship to what may or may not happen criminally. It stands alone.
That this would need to be explained to any adult is itself a horrid commentary on the world of danger our children have been in and are in.
Most child sexual abuse cases of course are legally addressed in civil actions as the one avenue potentially accessible to all, with monetary settlements or awards with adults (no amount provides sufficient justice, but that is how the civil system works) and custody decisions and settlements among other things with children. Adult survivors are hamstrung by statutes of limitations and the well-known dynamic of it generally taking many years for survivors to come forward, which most don’t at all, because of the trauma involved.
It is rare for children to come forward—they generally can’t for many obvious reasons, unless separated from the abusers and given a safe and supporting environment. Even then, especially in the past, but still today, the system will fail them. In the past, even the most credible child interviews by prosecutors and expert findings from forensic experts for the FBI might not overcome considerations of abuse of power by political and governmental systems–but today would result in findings of protection and prosecutions readily. Progress is sometimes shamefully slow, but happens. However, most children still can never speak out, or stand their ground over time, against the family system or institutional system abuse.
The Catholic Church became the metaphor for protecting predators rather than children by sending priests who offended to “treatment”, then back into parishes without anyone knowing, who then invariably raped and molested more children. The church has generally at least rhetorically recognized the insanity of this position now, with the refrain “we didn’t know” that treatment didn’t work an ongoing echo from the stand in court.
[We must interject briefly here that several months after Murray resigned, retired former Seattle Archbishop Raymond Hunthausen died at age 96. He was a practiced practitioner of these dark arts as archbishop, extensively documented. Countless children were raped and molested in the Seattle archdiocese when he led it. He’d been virtually invisible and in disgrace as the spotlight increasingly exposed the church everywhere, particularly after he took the stand in 2009. The relationship to this post from last year is that Murray described him as a major influence, and the remnant of his primary associates and devotees were a major part of the support that enabled Murray’s tactics of cover-up and denial.
Many years before, Hunthausen supported our work and we supported most of his views, which like many of his generation came around to the change the younger generation had created. We were close and helped make him well-known at the height of his career through our documentary on nuclear war aired on PBS stations. But once the child sex abuse enabling was clear, so was the ultimate betrayal—and we were done with him. Those who continued to support him, for power, money and ideological reasons, dwindled. But for some he was like an old drug they couldn’t kick. Like all the enablers of right, left or buddydom. Hunthausen’s funeral coverage in August on the cover of the Seattle Times was a surrealistic homage occurring exactly as every other paper in the world was lambasting similar bishops as never before in history (the only reference to sex abuse was that survivors criticized him and it broke his heart). In Seattle, no one cared—or even knew who he was anymore—except the few in the old guard who funded or enabled attempts to keep his name on church events or property and create revisionist history on his role in child sex abuse, so they could at least fill a cathedral for the service (the vigil was surprisingly thin). Guess how many references in the homilies at vigil or funeral to the child sex abuse crisis under him, or since, or as it was globally exploding at the moment? Zero tolerance for that subject. After such a great stand-up investigation on Murray, the bizarre hallucinogenic kickback to another era for the funeral cover story in the Seattle Times will eventually bite as more than a stark contrast at the worst possible moment.
The final word on this for now goes to Barbara Blaine, the late president of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (who died tragically at 61 a year ago tomorrow). Here’s her statement on Hunthausen during the 2009 trial: “It’s sad to see a retired bishop using the same lame excuses that current bishops do: that somehow, they just didn’t know child sexual assault was a crime and just didn’t think to call the police. The cover up of hundreds of horrific child sex crimes wasn’t a ‘breach’ or ‘mistake’ or ‘oversight.’ It was, and is, an on-going, calculated, day-in and day-out practice of recklessly deceiving Catholic families because most bishops care more about their reputation than their flock.”]
[Update, 11.14.18: An article in The Seattle Times by one of the same reporters who carried out the Murray investigation just reported the following in Seattle Archdiocese pays nearly $7 million to settle men’s claims that six priests abused them as boys: Regarding two of the worst (known) predator priests in the Seattle archdiocese, McGreal and Conn, “Hunthausen sent McGreal to a Maryland psychiatrist, who later warned the archbishop that the priest needed to be kept away from children…Hunthausen continued to place him in churches with families and children…McGreal was paired with Conn, another priest who the archdiocese knew had molested children.”]
Besides not reading the facts, the science or consulting common sense, some still try to say that the facts don’t support concern about sexual predators repeating except on a low percentage basis–which would still mean countless ongoing victims. Often not making the distinction between adult and child victims, using the limited criminal definition of offenders and only those who get caught again by the system, ad nauseam. At the same time, in contradiction, the same voices will often say that the predatory behavior is compulsive and can’t be helped. Impulse and choice aren’t the same thing. What can be helped and treated will always change with knowledge over time. In the meantime, as a number of survivors and experts have put it, we know only one thing for sure that all child sex abusers have in common. They abuse children. And we know our responsibility: First, do no harm to the children. Rights of adults are necessarily limited all the time by competing values and interests. The right of the child is primary by definition of being a civilized adult.
It’s tragic that the Catholic Church could have led on this issue if it truly lived up to its own zero tolerance policy (and eliminated its other inequalities). As could other institutions using the same term and not living up to it. As could, and must, society, the collective responsibility of each individual choice.
As noted at the outset of updating this post, Amnesty International in Northern Ireland has now taken the Murray case international. NPR in Seattle reports today (9.14):
“Amnesty International has asked Northern Ireland’s police force to investigate whether former Mayor Ed Murray abused children when he lived there in the mid-1970s, the Belfast Telegraph reports. Murray spent a year in Belfast after graduating from high school.
The Telegraph reports that during that time, Murray “brought a group of 30 Catholic and Protestant children” on a two-week holiday to Wales.
Patrick Corrigan, who oversees the Northern Ireland branch of Amnesty International, called on the Police Service Northern Ireland to comb through old police reports.
Unlike the United States, the United Kingdom does not have a statute of limitations for sexual abuse cases.”
The concern here is clear. Murray’s reported, and founded in the Oregon case, behavior, fits the pattern of continued predatory sexual abuse of children over a period of many years starting at least as a young adult. It seems unlikely there was an actual police report even if he did abuse children in Northern Ireland or Wales, for all the usual reasons. But being asked by Amnesty International to investigate is extraordinary, shows the concern based on experience about the pattern, and would represent everything wrong with the US statute system if action were ever brought in the UK because there were no statutes of limitations on child sexual abuse.
NPR in Seattle also had a program today (9.14) titled “When we don’t talk about sexual abuse, it continues.”
The lead-in to the program continues: “There is a crisis that many of us would rather not face — childhood sexual abuse. According to Janice Palm, who works with adult survivors of sexual abuse at Shepard’s Counseling Service, one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18.”
A fact, according the Centers for Disease Control. There are millions of us who are survivors in the US alone. And millions being abused as we write. As we’ve pointed out at length before, globally hundreds of millions of children are being abused, and therefore, even more survivors.
When Nicole Brodeur wrote an excellent article in The Seattle Times quoting the above about the trauma being caused to survivors by Murray remaining Mayor at the time, even after the Oregon finding was released, she was attacked by a small minority in the commentary section (the netherworld of the internet), a couple of whom were self-described survivors (if so, a reminder that being a victim and being in recovery are not the same thing). The usual defenses of Murray at the time as described here already were used. Now, thankfully, abandoned by everyone in sight.
What a horrid irony, predictable as rain used to be in Seattle (welcome to climate change), that the unspeakable behavior of Murray and his enablers in the anti-Trump city have created the refrain from Donald Trump Jr, “It took five”?
It took five because of all the things already addressed. To the disgrace of our city.
And for another reason.
There is an additional deeply odious aspect of this situation in Seattle which is part of what is tearing American society and indeed global society apart in many ways.
Racism.
It was addressed without hedging on NPR in Seattle today (9.15.17) by Gyasi Ross. He is a member of the Blackfeet Nation. His family also comes from the Suquamish Nation. He is a storyteller and an attorney. He is the former editor-at-large of Indian Country Today Media Network.
Here’s his piece, “Did it take a white accuser to bring down Seattle Mayor Murray?”:
“Let’s be clear. The mess that culminated in the resignation of Seattle’s ex-Mayor Ed Murray should not be celebrated as vindication that “the process works.”
The process does not work.
The perception of white innocence and white supremacy, which creates an unreasonably high standard of proof for brown- skinned victims of sexual violence, had fingerprints all over that process.
There is no vindication for Ed Murray’s victims because, according to the allegations, most of the men he preyed upon are men of color. There is no vindication for sexual abuse victims generally.
The process works about as well as Equifax’s Customer Service line: horribly, with only a few being able to get through.
The process reminded us that, just like so many other things within American society, not everyone’s voice is counted equally, not everyone is taken as seriously, and only certain types of pain matter.
I will explain. But first, a story.
A few years ago, the erstwhile owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, Donald Sterling, was ousted after he was caught saying some horrible things about black people. Truth is that many people of color accused Sterling for decades of being a racist— the former general manager of the Clippers, Elgin Baylor, said that Sterling had a “vision of a Southern plantation-type structure” for his team.
Baylor accused Sterling, as did many, many of Sterling’s Latino/a and black tenants, of systemic racism in the way he conducts business. This time though, he was caught on tape saying those horrible things. Because he was caught on tape, Lebron James courageously said that the NBA players would simply not play if Sterling were still owner of the Clippers when the season began.
Months later, after activism by NBA players and common folk, Sterling was forced out of his ownership of said Clippers. And all was right in the world.
Except it wasn’t. And still isn’t.
As with Donald Sterling, with Murray several men of color accused a powerful white man of wrongdoing for decades. And as with the Donald Sterling case, those claims against Murray were ignored, dismissed and excused for decades until irrefutable proof came along. Those men of color were ignored, they were tried in the court of public opinion and shamed by some of Seattle’s largest news organizations.
These were more than allegations, by the way: Oregon Child Protective Services made a finding that Ed Murray did, in fact, sexually abuse his foster son.
This was not just “he said, he said.”
At that point, every single person with a conscience should have screamed from mountaintops that Ed Murray had to resign. Either that, or he would be physically removed from office. Yet, the abuse that those men of color experienced was dismissed from the highest levels of government on down, and ostensibly told, “If that’s true, that’s old stuff. Those are old rapes.” Heck, one of the mayoral candidates kept supporting him even after the finding of sexual abuse and kept his endorsement on her campaign website until very recently!
It was business as usual—Ed Murray was going to serve out the rest of his term and folks would keep standing behind him at podiums as if all was good and he had not destroyed young men’s lives.
And that is precisely why the process simply does not work: because, for people of color, the court of public opinion requires such an incredibly high standard that it almost ensures that no one can ever reach it.
These are survivors of sexual abuse—it takes incredible courage to even make this information public. Yet, in exchange for their courage and willingness to hold powerful people accountable, they are met with institutional forces that protect this predator. Publications. Politicians. Why would any person of color, especially in a city as demographically white as Seattle, ever feel safe bringing forth such a claim again?
In the Donald Sterling case, the smoking gun was in the form of an audio tape that could not be ignored. In the Ed Murray case, the smoking gun—the irrefutable proof—came in the form of a white accuser.
Murray’s own kin, his cousin, told on him; someone with competency and credibility had accused him. A white person.
City Council members tried to dress it up as an aggregate effect: “The accumulation of these accusations and now coming from a family member just made it essential that he resign,” said Councilmember Tim Burgess.
But many people of color know what was going on—a white person confirmed what brown people could only accuse. Hours after Murray’s smoking gun became public, he announced he would resign.
And that’s obviously a huge problem. I mean, I’m glad a white person co-signed what so many people of color already said. God bless Murray’s cousin as a survivor and as a witness.
But it sends a very wrong message to the survivors of sexual abuse of color: 1) Either make sure you get it on tape, or 2) make sure you bring a white person with you to make the accusation.
We see this played out over and over when people of color interact with law enforcement. We saw it with Donald Sterling. Now, we see it in Seattle and how Seattle addresses victims of sexual abuse.
That simply cannot be the standard if we want all people to report sexual abuse and wrongdoing equally.”
We conclude with the letter from the City of Seattle LGBTQ Commission on July 24 calling for Murray to resign:
“City of Seattle
Edward B. Murray, Mayor Seattle LGBTQ Commission
TO: Edward B. Murray, Mayor
FROM: City of Seattle LGBTQ Commission DATE: July 24, 2017
SUBJECT: Request for Resignation COMMISSIONERS
Julia Riccardi CO-CHAIR
Manuel Venegas CO-CHAIR
Ray Corona CO-CHAIR
Anders McConachie Hannah Johnson Katrina Sanford Joseph Suttner Ann Luetzow
Nikki Hurley
Dear Mayor Murray,
We are writing to request your immediate resignation as Mayor
of Seattle.
Due to allegations and mounting evidence that you have repeatedly engaged in sexual abuse of minors, we believe that you should no longer serve as the leader of the City of Seattle. Lloyd Anderson, Jeff Simpson, Maurice Levon Jones, and Delvonn Heckard have all come forward with their personal experiences of abuse and evidence has recently emerged illustrating that you did abuse Simpson.
We acknowledge that you have dismissed these allegations of sexual assault as “right-wing, anti-gay” activity. It is true that homophobic acts remain highly prevalent and destructive within the LGBTQ community. It is also true that within our LGBTQ community, many axes of power, including class, race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, and disability aim to suppress our power by dividing us. We perceive your attempt to dismiss these claims as a “politically motivated” monolithic issue of homophobia to be a maneuver that is divisive and damaging to our community. Claiming homophobic intent to shield yourself from accountability and erase the experiences of survivors of sexual abuse is silencing, manipulative, and morally repugnant.
In addition to the evidence regarding deeply grave sexual abuse, we believe your response has been harmful and inappropriate, particularly to LGBTQ individuals, survivors of sexual abuse, and individuals with criminal history. You have responded to the allegations by invoking the accusers’ criminal records as proof of their unreliability. We affirm that survivors of sexual assault must be believed and honored, no matter their identity or social standing.
To serve in the honorable role of Mayor of Seattle, one should be an exemplar of leadership, accountability, and honesty. Based on what we know at this time, we do not believe that you can embody these ideals, and public trust in your leadership has eroded.
We stand in solidarity with survivors of sexual assault, and all those disproportionately impacted by abuses of power. As a Commission, we aim to uplift, not silence, the perspectives and experiences of the most marginalized members of our community.
Noting both that you are the first openly gay Mayor of Seattle, and that many individuals on the Seattle LGBTQ Commission were appointed by you, we do not take our decision to call for your resignation lightly. While some may say that you should be given the opportunity to serve out the remainder of your term, we feel that would be inadequate. With both moral and pragmatic motivations, we feel we must call for your resignation.
Continuing in your position as Mayor sends a clear, devastating message to current and past survivors of sexual assault (including young people who may currently be experiencing abusive situations), that their pain and experiences are less important than maintaining the status quo; staying in office distracts Seattle from critical matters that require our full energy now — such as addressing the homelessness crisis; remaining in office erodes our civil institutions and our commitment to justice.
It is for these reasons that the Seattle LGBTQ Commission is requesting you resign from your position.
Respectfully,
Julia Ricciardi
on behalf of the City of Seattle LGBTQ Commission”.
It took 50 days and one more brave survivor coming forward before the resignation happened.