Another "Heterosexual" Homophobic GOPervert Outed- Page 3

[Plum]

Posted: 5/6/05 at 6:43pm

That's a good point, actually. Actually, you could say it's punishment all around- the self-loathing queer has his gay tendencies exposed to the world, his homophobic constituents get the shock of their lives, and gays get an awful example of one of them in the media. Everybody loses, in a way.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/6/05 at 6:52pm

National attention? Probably none. Even Barney Frank and Gerry Studds were forced to come out in scandals.

But local attention? Yes, dozens, if not hundreds! All over the country! More and more each year.

There are out gay and lesbian politicians in New York, California, Massachusetts. Even in Arizona, there are five: Congressman Jim Kolbe, Arizona Representatives Steve May, Ed Poelstra and Ken Cheuvront and Tempe Mayor Neil Giuliano.

The argument over whether outing should be used as a punishment is an old one. But that is not the question. The question is should "heterosexual" politicians who are actively fighting against gay civil liberties be allowed to enjoy a gay social life and still fight against the community? Why should that answer be yes?

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/9/05 at 1:21pm

More gay-sex allegations about Mister Heterosexual Republican Mayor... But these involve children and two suicides. Meanwhile, West used his position in the State Legislature to block gay-rights laws, while he trolled the Internet for underage boys.

===
Monday, May 9, 2005 A SPOKESMAN-REVIEW INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

West faces new allegations

The controversy swirling around Spokane Mayor Jim West grew substantially Friday when two men, now living in Seattle, came forward with new allegations about his conduct in 1980 and as recently as 2001.

West faces allegations of sexual abuse of children dating to the 1970s and more recent allegations of abuse of public power.

Brad Crelia, of Seattle, said he was a 15-year-old Lewis and Clark High School student in 2001 when West, then Senate minority leader, asked him out.

The other man said he was sexually abused in 1980 by David Hahn when Hahn and West – his good friend and fellow Spokane County sheriff’s deputy – took a group of Boy Scouts on a 50-mile hike around Mount Rainier. The man said he was 12 at the time.

“I reported the abuse the next day to Jim West and asked to be moved to another tent, and he did nothing about it. He told me to ‘forget it,’ ” said the man, a professional who said he has no criminal record.

To “avoid impacts on my family,” he asked that only his first name, Scott, be used in this story. He did, however, provide The Spokesman-Review his full name and work and home telephone numbers for verification. He also provided the newspaper a picture of himself as a boy, as well as the names of his parents, who are now retired and living in Spokane. The man’s parents fully corroborated details of his allegations in an interview Friday at their North Side home but asked to remain anonymous.

The man’s story is in sharp contrast to West’s claims that he had no knowledge Hahn might be sexually abusing boys at his apartment or on Scout overnight camping trips during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

“I didn’t know Dave Hahn was abusing kids until many, many years later,” West told The Spokesman-Review on Wednesday.

West did not return a message seeking comment Friday night. Earlier in the day, he resigned from the board of directors for Morning Star Boys’ Ranch, a position he’d held for 12 years.

As media interest in the West story broadened, the man named Scott came forward for the first time with allegations that he was abused in 1980 by Hahn.

Scott said the abuse occurred while he and other Boy Scouts from Spokane were on a 50-mile hike around Mount Rainier in the Cascades. The group drove to the base of the mountain in Western Washington and spent a week hiking around the mountain, spending nights sleeping in two-man tents.

“I believe it might have been the first or second night,” Scott said. “I was sexually molested by David Hahn.

“I didn’t say anything” during the molestation. “I was quiet and pretended I was asleep.”

Soon thereafter, Scott said, “I told Jim West what had happened and asked if I could move to another tent. I think I was pretty clear about what I told him, and I remember him just dismissing me.

“I knew from talking to him I should just keep quiet,” Scott said.

Later, in front of other boys, Scott said West embarrassed him by referring to him as “fag boy.”

“It took me so long to even mention it to my parents,” he said.

Scott’s father is a 73-year-old professional and his mother is 67 and a retired city of Spokane employee.

The couple, who have three other older sons, said they didn’t learn Scott was molested by Hahn until years later, but saw a marked change in his personality and behavior immediately after he returned from the hike.

“He was hard to talk to, for one thing,” recalled Scott’s mother.

She described Scott as “more rebellious and harder to understand” after he returned from what the parents thought would be a positive experience. Instead, he wanted nothing to do with the Boy Scouts and quit Troop 345, which met at Hamblen Elementary School, where Hahn and West were appointed scoutmasters.

When Hahn was told to resign in August 1981 or face a possible criminal investigation for alleged pedophilia, he went to his South Hill apartment and committed suicide, allegedly after abusing one of his young victims one last time. Hahn was 36.

Scott’s father said that after Hahn’s suicide, he asked his son if something had occurred during the 50-mile hike. “Scott told me Hahn had molested one of the kids and the kid was crying.” But Scott didn’t say that he was the victim.

Scott said he sought counseling when the childhood abuse caused him emotional and mental problems in the early 1990s while attending Western Washington University. He didn’t fully discuss what happened with his parents until August 2003 when he and his wife traveled to see them for a week’s vacation on the Pend Oreille River.

“Scott and I were going to get groceries in August 2003 and he told me that he’d been molested by Hahn and had been getting therapy for some time,” the mother said. “I was so shocked, to tell you the truth.”

She said she clipped a June 8, 2003, Spokesman-Review story identifying three men who said they were abused as boys by Hahn. Scott was not among those identified.

Robert J. Galliher, one of Hahn’s alleged victims who is now suing Spokane County, told The Spokesman-Review that he was molested and had a gun pointed at his head moments before Hahn killed himself.

Senior sheriff’s officials “wouldn’t tell me why he killed himself,” West said Wednesday when asked what he knew about Hahn.

Instead of his photo, West recently posted a picture of Mount Rainier on one of two personality profiles he used at the Web site Gay.com, which he has acknowledged using to find young gay men to date.

West used City Hall computer equipment to offer an internship in the mayor’s office to one of those young men, a fictional 18-year-old Ferris High School student named “Moto-Brock” who was created last year by a computer consultant hired by The Spokesman-Review.

West admitted the gay chat room conduct, but said allegations from Galliher and Michael G. Grant Jr. that he sexually abused them as boys are “flat lies.”

Scott’s father said he had “an uneasy feeling about Hahn and West” in 1981, a year after the camping trip and before Hahn killed himself.

“Just the close association of the two always made me wonder,” the father said.

When Scott’s parents talked with him about this week’s revelations about West, they said their son told them he had reported the abuse to West during the campout. Scott offered the same version of events during a telephone interview Friday.

“When Scott told me this, I was furious because I was the one who sent him on this hike,” his father said.

It was Hahn who approached the family, the father said, and encouraged them to send their son, who was reluctant to go on the Mount Rainier hike.

“Hahn said, ‘We want him to go. He can sleep in my tent.’ He told us both that he’d take good care of him,” said the father.

Their older son had been on a Little League football team called the Cowboys, coached by West and Hahn, according to the father.

“David Hahn was a very gregarious, persuasive person,” the father said. “Jim West was a little more serene and reserved.”

“They were both nice-looking young men,” he continued. “They were both sheriff’s deputies, both war heroes or ex-military. Those were different times. I had no reason to distrust either man.”

“This is beyond a ‘gay’ issue,” he said. “These people like Hahn are predators. They are looking for victims at ages when they are ill-prepared to take care of themselves.”

Crelia, an openly gay 19-year-old now living on Seattle’s Capitol Hill, contacted the newspaper after the stories on West were published Thursday. He was an LC freshman in the 2000-2001 school year, when the high school was temporarily relocated to the Holley-Mason Building downtown.

West, then a state senator, had an office on the sixth floor of the building adjacent to the Local Planet, a weekly newspaper run by Crelia’s parents, Connye Miller and Matt Spaur.

That year, Crelia recalled, he’d just told his mother for the first time that he was gay. He also started a club, Spectrum, a gay-straight alliance at LC. He was honored as a Chase Youth Award nominee in 2001 for his efforts.

Crelia said he’d run into West a couple of times while visiting his parents’ office.

“The first time was a ‘Hi, how are you’ kind of thing,” Crelia said.

The second time, toward the end of his freshman year, West emerged from his office and asked the teenager out, Crelia recalled.

“He asked if I’d like to go out and get coffee … just go out and talk … and I said no thank you,” Crelia recalled.

“He then asked, would you want to do anything else, and that’s what kind of weirded me out. It was definitely an awkward feeling, because I knew who he was. I don’t know what his intentions were, but I definitely felt they were sexual,” Crelia said.

“I’d heard things from other people that he’d done that before,” Crelia said.

Matt Spaur, Crelia’s father and the former Local Planet publisher, said the teenager told his mother, Connye Miller, shortly afterward that he’d been approached by an older man.

Miller died in June 2003 of complications of hereditary coproporphyria, a painful disease that Crelia also has. He said he takes a battery of medicines, including pills for nausea and depression.

It wasn’t until the 2003 mayoral campaign that his son confided in him that the man who asked him out was West, Spaur recalled.

“The story around town was that Brad wasn’t the only one,” Spaur said. He said he considered having the Local Planet investigate West, but lacked the resources.

The incident with his son “indicates that West was willing to look at much younger men and approach them,” Spaur said. “He might not have known Brad’s age. But I’m 42, and I’d feel very awkward approaching someone that young,” Spaur added.

Crelia said he used to visit Gay.com in high school, lying about his age because the Web site requires participants in online chats to be 18. He met men as old as 30 on that site and had sex with some of them, Crelia said.

In the chat room on that Web site, he heard online rumors about West liking men, Crelia said. But he never met West online.

It’s a “creepy feeling” to think that Spokane’s one-time senator and current mayor is online trying to pick up younger men, Crelia said.
West faces new allegations

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/9/05 at 1:24pm

And he's a note to the readers from the editor of the Spokesman-Review:

===

Monday, May 9, 2005

A SPOKESMAN-REVIEW INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

Stories result of 3-year investigation

Note to our readers

Steven A. Smith / Editor

May 5, 2005

© The Spokesman-Review 2005

Today’s Spokesman-Review contains a disturbing package of stories that include serious allegations of sexual misconduct by Mayor Jim West.

The stories, by staff reporters Bill Morlin and Karen Dorn Steele, are the result of an investigation that began in 2002. At that time, the newspaper was investigating the sex abuse scandal in the Catholic Church. Allegations surfaced that Jim West sexually molested young boys in the late 1970s when he was a Boy Scout leader and a Spokane County sheriff’s deputy.

In a June 2003 story, Morlin reported that West, then a state legislator and candidate for Spokane mayor, had been close friends in the late ’70s with sheriff’s Deputy David Hahn and Scout leader George E. Robey, who killed themselves amid accusations of child molestation.

While the 2003 stories did not include specific abuse allegations against West, they did generate tips from additional sources that the newspaper has spent the past two years investigating.

Today’s stories are the result.

Through the use of public records, court documents, first-person accounts and a forensic computer expert, the newspaper has uncovered evidence that West has led a secret life for more than 25 years. Beyond the serious allegations of sexual abuse, West had been using his position in the Legislature to block gay-rights legislation. And he has been trolling the Internet for young lovers while while serving as mayor of Spokane, offering gifts and favors.

In a lengthy interview Wednesday evening, Mayor West denied the most serious allegations while acknowledging his Internet activity.

Today’s stories speak for themselves. But I know many readers will have questions. Those questions deserve answers.

Is the mayor’s sexual orientation or sex life a story?

This is not a story about sexual orientation. This is a story about alleged sexual abuse of children and misuse of power and authority. Using the trappings of office to lure and groom young sex partners, barely of legal age, is the public’s business whether those potential partners are men or women. West is the city’s second strong mayor, a powerful political force, the face of our city whose secret life could open him to blackmail or extortion attempts and compromise his ability to do his job.

Who are the sources for these stories?

As much as possible, sources for today’s stories are fully identified, including two men who accuse West of abusing them when they were children. We have granted anonymity to two other young men who say they met West through the Web site Gay.com, because they don’t want family and friends to know they are gay. Numerous politicians and foes and contemporaries of West have been interviewed on the record. Furthermore, the newspaper hired a forensic computer expert to anonymously engage West in online chats on Gay.com and pose as a young man. The expert, a former U.S. Customs Service agent who has helped law enforcement agencies identify pedophiles online, was hired to confirm that West was the man behind several online identities and to confirm the accounts of the real men. Under ordinary circumstances, the newspaper would not use a fictional scenario in pursuit of a news story. But the seriousness of the allegations and the need for specific computer forensic skills overrode our general reluctance.

Why publish the stories now and not when West was running for mayor in 2003 or years before when he was in the state Legislature?

Rumors of inappropriate behavior have followed West for years, but newspapers are not in the business of reporting rumors. Stories of this significance – with the potential of ruining a public servant’s public life – must be based on provable facts and documentation. Our investigation matured at its own pace, and the stories are being published now because we are fully confident that they are fair and accurate.

Are the men accusing West of child sexual abuse credible?

Ultimately, citizens will have to weigh the evidence and decide for themselves. One accuser has completed a sworn deposition. The accounts of both men are consistent with known facts about David Hahn and George Robey. And experts in this field will tell you that sexual predators often seek out and groom at-risk children, who develop into troubled adults.

The Spokesman-Review understands fully the political ramifications of today’s investigative report. We know we’ll hear from readers. Some will want to criticize the mayor. Some will want to criticize us. Some will have additional tips they believe the newspaper should pursue. We have provided a number of ways for readers to reach us. Comments intended for my immediate attention should be directed to [e-mail].
Stories result of 3-year investigation

[stonewall2]

Posted: 5/9/05 at 3:26pm

I'm with you, DG!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/10/05 at 8:12am

He's resigned and it's hit the Washington Post.

====

washingtonpost.com
Wash. Mayor Taking Leave Amid Allegations

By JOHN K. WILEY
The Associated Press
Tuesday, May 10, 2005; 4:52 AM

SPOKANE, Wash. -- Citing what he called persecution and hysteria, Republican Mayor Jim West says he's taking a few weeks off to defend himself against allegations of child molestation and new claims that he offered city jobs to men he met online.

Shortly after West announced Monday that he would take a leave of absence, The Spokesman-Review posted a new story on its Web page alleging the mayor offered city jobs to two young men he met through a gay Internet chat room _ and that one of them briefly accepted a city appointment.

The newspaper last week launched a series of articles about West after hiring a computer forensics expert who posed as an 18-year-old male high school student in Internet chats with West on Gay.com. West offered the "teen" a City Hall internship, tickets to professional sporting events and other gifts, the newspaper reported.

In Monday's account, Ryan Oelrich, an openly gay 24-year-old, told the paper he accepted West's appointment to the city's Human Rights Commission in April 2004 after meeting West online at Gay.com.

Oelrich said he resigned from the commission in January after West "hounded me for months, telling me I was cute and asking me out on dates." Oelrich said he refused the mayor's advances, the newspaper reported. Oelrich told the newspaper he knows of "five or six other young gay men that Jim West has met online and offered City Hall jobs."

An Associated Press call to Oelrich's Spokane home was not immediately returned Monday evening.

The newspaper said another man, who is 25 and spoke on condition of anonymity, said West, who is divorced, offered him a job as the city's human resources director and then a post as the city's aquatics director. The man rejected both offers.

Calls placed late Monday to the mayor's office and City Attorney Mike Connelly seeking comment on the latest allegations were not immediately returned. City officials had earlier seized West's City Hall computer for an investigation into whether he used it improperly.

"The current news media hysteria is distracting to the business of the city and is occupying a great deal of my time," West told the City Council on Monday afternoon.

He said he would take his first vacation since taking office in January 2004 to prepare a response to the newspaper's allegations. He told the council that Deputy Mayor Jack Lynch would lead the city in his absence.

"I hope that you and the people will reserve judgment on me until the newspaper is done persecuting me and allow me to have the fair opportunity to respond to each of the allegations in due time," West said at the beginning of the council meeting.

West, a 54-year-old former state Senate leader and staunch opponent of gay rights, last week denied the decades-old molestation allegations, but subsequently acknowledged that he had visited the gay online chat room and had relations with adult men.

In the series it began publishing last Thursday, The Spokesman-Review reported allegations that West had abused two boys while he was a sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout leader in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

The statute of limitations has expired on those old allegations and no criminal investigations were under way in connection with them, local law enforcement agencies said.

The Spokesman-Review and The Seattle Times have called for West to step down, as did the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in Washington, D.C. a national gay advocacy organization.

Also on Monday, a Spokane woman filed paperwork to recall the mayor. If the petition's wording is approved by a judge, recall supporters would have to gather more than 12,500 signatures to place the issue on the ballot.

City Council President Dennis Hession said the city's legislative body is committed to moving ahead. "Our conviction is that we will regroup and make sure we do not allow this to further distract us," Hession said.
© 2005 The Associated Press
Wash. Mayor Taking Leave Amid Allegations

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/11/05 at 5:52pm

Today's installment: "Straight" GOPervert Mayor West, who campaigned against gay rights, offered Ryan M. Oelrich, 24, "$300 cash if I'd swim naked with him in my swimming pool."

Another young man, unidentified becuase he's not out to his family, was offered a job as an "aquatics director," overseeing operations at the city's swimming pools.

First Jeff Gannon, now Mayor West...are ALL GOPerverts into watersports? (Not that there's anything WRONG...)

===
Wednesday, May 11, 2005

A SPOKESMAN-REVIEW INVESTIGATIVE REPORT

Two accuse West of offering jobs

High-salaried City Hall jobs and a position on a city policy-making board were offered to two young men after they met Mayor Jim West in an Internet chat room, both men told The Spokesman-Review on Monday.

Ryan M. Oelrich, a 24-year-old openly gay man, said he was appointed by West to the city Human Rights Commission in April 2004, but didn't know at the time that West was the same man he'd met earlier in Gay.com using the screen aliases "Cobra82nd" and "RightBi-Guy."

Sometime after the appointment, Oelrich said he realized the mayor was the same person he'd been talking to online beginning in 2003. While on the commission, Oelrich said he rebuffed a series of sexually explicit online advances from West.

After appointing Oelrich to the policy-making Human Rights Commission, West "offered me $300 cash if I'd swim naked with him in my swimming pool," Oelrich said.

He declined West's offer as "being totally inappropriate,' said the 2004 graduate of Gonzaga University.

Another man, who is 24 and has a business degree, provided his name to the newspaper but asked that he not be publicly identified because his family doesn't know he is gay.

The unidentified man said West offered him a job as the city's human resources, or personnel, director.

"When I told him I wasn't qualified for that job, he told me I would be qualified if I was a friend of the mayor's,' the young man said on condition of anonymity.

When he rejected the job offer, he said West offered him a job as "aquatics director," overseeing operations at the city's swimming pools.

The man, who doesn't currently live in Spokane, and his friend, Oelrich, both said they met "Cobra82nd" on the Gay.com Web site before changing to AOL 'instant messaging" with the man who later identified himself as the mayor of Spokane.

A computer program allowed the young men to save some of the "instant messages" with West, who used the screen name "JMSElton." West's middle name is Elton.

Oelrich and his friend said their online conversations with West substantially paralleled conversations West had between February and April with "Moto-Brock,' a fictional Ferris High School student created by a forensic computer expert hired by the newspaper. The two men said they read the "Moto-Brock" transcripts in the newspaper.

The expert was hired by the newspaper late last year in an attempt to confirm the claims of an anonymous 18-year-old man who said he met West online. The 18-year-old told the newspaper West was using the screen names "Cobra82nd" and "RightBi-Guy." The 18-year-old said he and West had consensual sex last June.

West on Wednesday acknowledged that he visited Gay.com and developed relationships with various men including the 18-year-old who talked to the newspaper.

West was interviewed the day before The Spokesman-Review published a series of stories stating he has abused positions of public trust _ as a sheriff's deputy, Boy Scout leader and politician _ to develop sexual relationship with boys and young men.

Oelrich said he quietly resigned from the city's Human Rights Commission in January after West "hounded me for months, telling me I was cute and asking me out on dates."

"I refused all his advances,' Oelrich said. "He was totally inappropriate."

Oelrich said he wasn't going to come forward publicly after news reports of West's conduct were first reported last Thursday in the newspaper.

"I was actually hoping that the mayor would resign, and because he still hasn't I felt it was important that this information did come out,' Oelrich said.

He turned to the media, he said, after talking with his friends and not being able to find a governmental agency where he could file a complaint about West's conduct.

Oelrich was interviewed just a few hours before West told the City Council that he is taking a vacation and said he was being "persecuted" by The Spokesman-Review.

His announcement came the same day that a Spokane woman said she is organizing a petition drive to recall the mayor.

Two accuse West of offering jobs

[Marquise]

Posted: 5/11/05 at 5:57pm

Damn why can't I meet a powerful, influential public official...have a hot sexual affair with him, pen a best-seller, see it become a major motion picture or a 16 hour mini-series, be thrust into the spotlight and get my own talk show out of it?

Life is so friggin' unfair.

[midtowngym]

Posted: 5/11/05 at 6:01pm

Because you spend too much time on theater websites, talking to neurotic, whiny, emotionally needy theater queens (present company included.)

Updated On: 5/11/05 at 06:01 PM

[Marquise]

Posted: 5/11/05 at 6:08pm

but i haven't been on here in DAYS!

[PalJoey]

Posted: 5/11/05 at 7:01pm

Oh 'Quise--I'm not a powerful, influential public official--or a hypocritical GOPervert--but why not have a hot sexual affair with ME, pen a best-seller, and MAYBE see it become a major motion picture or a 16 hour mini-series. You never know...

I'd love to thrust you into the spotlight...and see you get your own talk show out of it.