XPost: hawaii.education, monterey.general, sbay.general   
   XPost: alt.politics.obama   
   From: amused@glaad.org   
      
   Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a nationally famous champion of gay   
   rights and progressive causes, has been accused by three men of   
   having sex with them as children.   
      
   An unnamed man filed a child sex abuse lawsuit against the mayor   
   on Thursday, alleging Murray “repeatedly criminally raped and   
   molested” him when he was a homeless 15-year-old in the 1980s.   
      
   The unnamed plaintiff and two other men gave interviews to the   
   Seattle Times — all telling similar stories about a politico in   
   his late 20s and 30s, who befriended street kids, paid them and   
   had his way with them.   
      
   “I don't necessarily think that he destroyed my life,” Jeff   
   Simpson told the newspaper after describing years of molestation   
   from age 13 on. “But I believe a lot of the problems I have   
   stemmed from this.”   
      
   Murray, a gay rights pioneer-turned-leading opponent of   
   President Trump's immigration policies, canceled a planned event   
   after news of the lawsuit broke Thursday and held a brief news   
   conference the next day.   
      
   The mayor, 61, took no questions, but dismissed the suit as   
   accusations from a “troubled” man.   
      
   “These allegations, dating back to a period of more than 30   
   years, are simply not true,” he said, noting that he still plans   
   to run for reelection later this year.   
      
   Raised in Seattle, Murray was a campaign manager for   
   Washington's first openly gay state senator in the 1980s,   
   according to the Associated Press.   
      
   Toward the end of the decade, according to the lawsuit, he met a   
   homeless, drug-addicted 15-year-old on a bus.   
      
   “Young and curious, D.H. encountered Ed Murray upon the bus and   
   developed a friendly interaction,” reads the lawsuit.   
      
   This quickly turned into a regular negotiation, it reads, with   
   the teen “willing to do whatever Mr. Murray asked for as little   
   as $10 to $20.”   
      
   The plaintiff, now 46, was named only by initials in the   
   lawsuit. But he gave an interview to the Times, recalling: “He'd   
   be doing certain things, and I'd tell him to stop, and he   
   wouldn't stop.”   
      
   The lawsuit — filed because the statute of limitations precludes   
   criminal charges after so many years — goes into explicit detail   
   about the alleged sexual encounters between the two.   
      
   It describes the apartment's floor plan. It also describes   
   intimate physical descriptions of Murray that match the account   
   of another accuser who did not sue: Lloyd Anderson.   
      
   Anderson told the Times that he met the future mayor as a teen   
   in the early 1980s — when he and Simpson were both living in a   
   group home in Portland.   
      
   Murray invited Anderson home and gave him $30 and some marijuana   
   in return for oral sex, he told the newspaper.   
      
   Simpson told the Times he lived off-and-on with Murray for   
   years, having sex regularly, and reported the molestation to his   
   group home manager after an argument in 1984 — though nothing   
   came of it.   
      
   Authorities pursued a sodomy investigation against Murray that   
   same year, according to the Associated Press, but dropped it.   
      
   Anderson and Simpson took their accusations to the media and   
   Washington lawmakers in 2008, the Times reported — when Murray   
   was a state senator known for championing same-sex marriage and   
   other gay rights causes.   
      
   [Some balk as Seattle seeks to spend more money on homeless]   
      
   The Times explained why it didn't print the accusations until   
   last week, when claims in the public lawsuit echoed their   
   accounts:   
      
   “Murray denied the accusations to reporters and hired an   
   attorney, who worked to discredit the men largely based on their   
   criminal pasts,” the paper reported. “Neither the Seattle Times   
   nor other media publicly reported the allegations, and Murray’s   
   political career continued to rise.”   
      
   He won the Seattle mayor's office in 2012, wooing liberal voters   
   with a promise to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour.   
      
   [How Washington state became the epicenter of resistance to   
   Trump’s agenda]   
      
   This year, Murray became a leading voice in the West Coast   
   resistance to Trump's agenda — particularly the president's   
   promise to target undocumented immigrants.   
      
   His office did not immediately reply to The Washington Post,   
   though Murray's personal spokesman called the lawsuit “a   
   shakedown effort within weeks of the campaign filing deadline,”   
   according to the Associated Press.   
      
   The plaintiff, however, said he never asked Murray for money,   
   and decided to sue in an effort to heal after breaking a long   
   drug addiction.   
      
   “You don't do no dirt to nobody and think you're going to get   
   away with it, you know,” he told the Times.   
      
   A previous version of this article incorrectly said the Seattle   
   Times interviewed Murray's accusers after the lawsuit was filed.   
   A Times reporter told The Post that all three men gave   
   interviews before the filing.   
      
   https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/08/he-   
   lobbied-for-gay-rights-and-opposed-trump-now-seattles-mayor-is-   
   accused-of-sexually-assaulting-minors/?utm_term=.39536454fbe2   
              
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)