Exposing the Corruption of the "Family Values" Party
David Byrd is a Tennessee state representative. He has been re-elected since three women came forward and alleged he sexually assaulted them when they were on the high school basketball team while he was their coach. He admitted it on video, but refused calls from both Democrats and Republicans to resign.
Jon Landry was a Republican member of the Farmington Town Council. He met a girl online. He used the pseudonym Jason Davis and claimed he was seventeen. He really was a thirty-two-year-old politician with a wife and two children. The girl was twelve. They communicated for four years until she was sixteen when they met in person for the first time and began an affair. Sixteen was the age of consent and the affair was consensual, but there’s more.
Larry Weinstein was a Northampton Township Supervisor and the campaign manager for GOP Rep. Scott Petri. He and his girlfriend were charged with drugging a woman so they could film her naked, taking pictures of their body parts and of Weinstein with the woman. The police say there was also a second victim whose photos were on his iPad They pleaded guilty. He blamed a head injury reducing his impulse control, though the judge pointed out there was nothing impulsive about this crime. He also pleaded guilty to invasion of privacy for the photos of the second woman.
Mark Aderholt was a Southern Baptist leader who was charged with the sexual assault of a teenager more than a decade after she reported it to church authorities. They investigated and wrote her a letter confirming their investigation suggested the abuse occurred. They did not report it to authorities. Aderhold pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and placed on deferred adjudication, which is like probation, but will allow him to have his conviction erased.
Mike Krawitz was running for the township council of West Deptford, but dropped out after his messages to a reporter were made public by her. She reported that he had been sending messages to her for two years, including messages hoping she would be raped.
Dan Burton began his career as a state senator in Indiana before being elected to Congress. He was known for philandering and sexual harassment. “None of the [female] staff wanted to be caught in a hall with him,” recalls retired Indiana legislator Hurley Goodall, a Democrat who served with Burton until 1983, when Burton left for Washington.
Burton claimed to be a family values Republican and was vocally prudish in condemnation of Clinton and Bob Packwood, saying “No one, regardless of what party they serve, no one, regardless of what branch of government they serve, should be allowed to get away with these alleged sexual improprieties”.
However, he was accused of sexually assaulting a lobbyist for Planned Parenthood, putting his hands up her skirt. “I was there maybe thirty seconds and he had his hands up my skirt so fast I didn’t even know what was coming.” This came from The Flynt Report which had several other allegations as well, but the Flyn
Mathew Wollman represented the 8th district of South Dakota in the state legislature. He was confronted by reporters about having sexual relationships with two college-aged interns. They were adults and the relationships were legal, but they were decidedly unethical. The legislature formed a committee to determine how to punish him, but instead he resigned although he believed he did nothing wrong.
Ironically, a legislative committee voted down a proposal to prohibit relationships with interns and pages. His fiancée was a high school intern though Wollman said their relationship began a year after her high school internship ended.
Wollman now works as a police officer in Madison.
Walter S. Smith was a federal judge in Waco, Texas. He was appointed by Ronald Reagan and served 32 years before resigning to evade accountability. While he didn’t run into trouble until 2015, he sexually harassed and groped a woman in 1998 and it was her complaint that was featured, though there were several complaints. This is not unusual, in a study by CNN found less than 1% of complaints were referred to a special committee for investigation. In her case, a lawyer filed a complaint and raised a stink.
In 2017, U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Roberts created a committee to investigate sexual harassment in the federal judiciary. In 2015, Smith had been reprimanded for sexual harassment, ordered him to attended sexual harassment training, and told him he could not hear any new cases for a year. However, a federal judicial conduct committee told the 5th Circuit they need to investigate again because it was alleged this was a pattern of behavior. As soon as that happened, he resigned, which saved his pension and ended the investigation.
Robert Bentley was the governor of Alabama when a scandal broke about him having an affair with a married woman. While hypocritical and not nice, it is not necessarily predatory, since they were consenting adults. Except she worked for him so the relationship becomes problematic and not one of equals. In addition, he bullied his other staff who were privy to the affair as they carried on in his office. He also threatened his now ex-wife’s staff when he sent text messages to his lover that linked to his wife’s iPad to ensure she did not find out. Adding to his problems he illegally used public funds to carry on the affair and used campaign funds for personal use.
George H. W. Bush was the President of the United States from 1989 to 2003, between Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. In 2017, eight women accused him of groping them including one woman who said she was sixteen when he it happened.
His defenders point out that being in a wheelchair, his arm is at an awkward height for photos and he may just be putting his arm around someone as people do, but sitting, he’s too low and it’s perceived as groping. But one of the women said he groped her in 1992, the year he ran against Bill Clinton for president. In 2003, when he is said to have groped a sixteen-year-old, he was spinning around Kennebunkport on a Segway.
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