← Autodidact Archive · Original Dissent · Faust
Thread ID: 13754 | Posts: 2 | Started: 2004-05-17
2004-05-17 10:22 | User Profile
Don't mince words -- this 'affair' was rape
By SUSAN PAYNTER SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER COLUMNIST
Despite what you've read in the papers or seen on TV, former Portland mayor and eventual Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt did not have an affair with a 14-year-old girl.
**Yes, he took the girl into the basement rec room of her parents' home repeatedly for sex. Yes, he came over to her house -- conveniently situated in his own neighborhood -- when he knew her parents would be away. And it was pretty easy for him to know that since her mother worked at city hall.
And, yes, over a period of three years, this powerful man and family friend who would become Oregon's premier politician also sexually abused his children's baby sitter at a downtown hotel and even in the office of the mayor.
But, no, this was definitely not an "affair."**
I know that's the word used over and over again in headlines and stories last week after Goldschmidt confessed. He said that nearly 30 years of guilt and shame and increasingly failing health motivated him to unburden himself in print.
In truth, his unburdening came only after Willamette Week newspaper confronted Goldschmidt with the exhaustive investigation it had done on the abuse. And Goldschmidt asked the paper to shelve the story, calling it a private matter.
He said he would resign from all of the lofty positions he held on public boards and commissions and would publicly confess to what was not only a shame but a crime. As a lawyer, Goldschmidt surely knew that a 35-year-old who had sex with a minor under the age of 16 was committing third-degree felony rape, although the statute of limitations has run out long ago.
But, when Goldschmidt's initial statement of resignation hit daylight earlier this month it referred only to his heart condition, making no mention of sexual abuse.
That's when Willamette Week went ahead and posted the story on its Web site and Goldschmidt took his story to more sympathetic ears at The Oregonian. There he confessed that, yes, it was true, he had "an affair" with "a high school girl."
The Oregonian headline, "Goldschmidt confesses '70s affair with girl, 14" was soon echoed in tone by other papers around the Northwest, including this one.
He was coming clean but in very cleaned-up terms.
When I first saw the headlines I erupted like Mount St. Helens. And so did a torrent of Oregonian readers.
Why? Because words matter and those of us who traffic in words should care about their color, impact, weight and ability to influence.
"Affair" implies something mutual, even romantic. It evokes the timeless tear-jerker, "An Affair To Remember." It speaks to an "affair" of the heart. A liaison.
Take the brief story in yesterday's paper about a former FBI agent charged with allowing classified documents to get into the hands of his "lover," a suspected Chinese double agent. "Ex-agent pleads guilty to lying about affair," the headline aptly read.
But, even though the original Goldschmidt story in the Oregonian referred to the sexual abuse of this girl as an "affair" no fewer than 10 times and called it a "sexual relationship" in other references, it's important that we view our terms with a hard eye.
Repeated sex between a 14-year-old girl and an influential man 21 years her senior -- a man who indirectly is her mother's boss -- is not Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant aboard an ocean liner. And the money he later paid her to keep silent is not a benevolent "fund" meant to help the woman whose life hit a sharp downward spiral.
As Portland Tribune columnist Phil Stanford rightly wrote this week, "Slice it any way you want ... it still comes out hush money and statutory rape."
Or, as one Oregonian reader who counsels the victims of sexual abuse wrote, "Affair sends the message that sex between an adult and a child is not wrong or criminal."
Remember the "love affair" headlines and book titles that softened the reality of teacher Mary K. Letourneau's conviction for rape of a 13-year-old boy?
Like him, the woman who was Goldschmidt's victim surely will be smudged, even "outed" now. She dropped out of school in her sophomore year, worked as a sometime waitress, and got arrested for drugs and hit-and-run driving. And, after she was raped in Seattle in 1988, court papers show that she confused some details of that attack with memories of childhood sexual abuse by a "family friend."
Even as Goldschmidt's fortunes soared, sending him to an appointment as Transportation Secretary under President Jimmy Carter, this woman's life unquestionably hit the skids.
But, when we write about her, let's not forget the fresh-faced and promising student she reportedly was before friends saw her change, abruptly overnight. And let's not forget to call what happened to her by the right word. It has four letters and it's rape. Susan Paynter's column appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Call her at 206-448-8392 or send e-mail to [email]susanpaynter@seattlepi.com[/email].
[url]http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/paynter/173228_paynter14.html[/url]
2004-05-17 17:39 | User Profile
i dont care if the man is a jew--this is feminist garbage, and should be treated as such