Seattle Mayor Denies Sex Abuse Allegations

April 8, 2017

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray is being sued by a 46-year-old man who alleges Murray “raped and molested” him when he was a crack-addicted teenager, The Seattle Times reported.

In the civil lawsuit filed last Thursday, the Kent, Washington, man alleges Murray sexually abused him on numerous occasions for payments of $10 to $20, beginning in 1986 when he was 15-year-old high school dropout.

“I have been dealing with this for over 30 years,” the man told the newspaper, saying he was coming forward as part of a “healing process” after years of “the shame, the embarrassment, the guilt, the humiliation that I put myself through and that he put me through.”

The civil lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

Murray, who is running for re-election this year, vehemently denied the allegations on Friday, the newspaper reported.

“Let me be clear, the allegations, dating back to a period of more than 30 years, are simply not true,” the 61-year-old mayor said. “Things have never come easy to me in life, but I have never backed down and I will not back down now.”

“To be on the receiving end of such untrue allegations is painful for me, it is painful for my husband, and for those who are close to us,” he added.

According to the Seattle Times, the man isn’t the first to accuse Murray of sexual abuse that occurred decades ago.

Two men, Jeff Simpson and Lloyd Anderson, said they knew Murray when they were growing up in a Portland center for troubled children, and later as teenagers. They accuse him of abusing them in the 1980s, the Seattle Times reported. No charges were filed.

“The two older accusations were promoted by extreme right-wing anti-gay activists in the midst of the marriage equality campaign, and were thoroughly investigated and dismissed by both law enforcement authorities and the media,” Murray’s spokesman Jeff Reading said in a statement, the newspaper said.

All three of Murray’s accusers have substantial criminal records, the newspaper reported.

In the lawsuit, the man says he wants Murray held accountable for treating him “like I was just nothing, like I was worthless” – and that he’s “disturbed that Mr. Murray maintains a position of trust and authority, and believes that the public has a right to full information when a trusted official exploits a child,” the Seattle Times reported.