May 8, 2005
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Two men come forward with allegations about Spokane mayor
SPOKANE, Wash. (AP) — Two Seattle men have come forward with allegations against Spokane Mayor Jim West, a Republican opponent of gay rights who was accused in a newspaper article last week of child sex abuse and misusing his office to meet young men in a gay Internet chatroom.<ONEUP>
Brad Crelia told The Spokesman-Review he was a 15-year-old student at Spokane’s Lewis and Clark High School in 2001 when he was approached by West. West, then state Senate minority leader, 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.
First, West asked Crelia out for coffee. The boy declined.
“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 told the newspaper for an article published Saturday.
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A SPOKESMAN-REVIEW INVESTIGATIVE REPORT
Sex abusers often target most vulnerable, experts say
Pain of childhood molestation can haunt victims throughout their livesVirginia de Leon / Staff writer
But long before their problems with the law began, Grant and Galliher were just children. They describe themselves as being impressionable, troubled boys looking for role models, craving the attention they never got in their broken, dysfunctional homes.
Vulnerable kids, like Grant and Galliher assert they were, are often the ones targeted by pedophiles and child molesters, experts say. And once they become victims of abuse, many of these children grow up to become troubled adults and struggle all their lives to recover.
“It’s like they have a radar,” Spokane psychologist Mary Dietzen said, describing how offenders gain access to children. They buy them gifts, she said, or take them on trips or to sports events. “They go for the kids whose parents aren’t involved in their lives. They ingratiate themselves into the family and show they care about the child.”
If what Grant and Galliher say is true and they were sexually abused – not only by West, but also by his friend, Spokane County sheriff’s Deputy David Hahn, who committed suicide in 1981 after he was accused of pedophilia – their experiences mirror those of other people who have been molested as children.
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