Case of Governor Neil Goldschmidt
Former Governor of Oregon
Former Secretary of Transportation - President
Jimmy Carter's Cabinet
Past President -
Nike
Past Mayor of Portland,
OR
Confessed to having a sexual relationship with a teenager
girl while he was mayor of Portland. The statute of limitations for any criminal
charge has long since run out, and Goldschmidt settled a lawsuit with the
teenager, now 42, paying her a reported $250,000 after legal costs. In
a public apology, Goldschmidt pleaded: "May a forgiving God mend my broken
heart and those I have broken."
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Table of
Contents:
2004
- Governor Neil Goldschmidt - Oregon Historical Society
- Biography of Oregon political
icon Neil Goldschmidt (05/06/2004)
-
Statement by Neil Goldschmidt
regarding sexual allegations (05/07/2004)
-
Goldschmidt
Revelation (05/07/2004)
-
Neil Goldschmidt Aftermath: Attorney
Jeffrey Foote of Jeffrey Foote & Associates, P.C., Calls upon Media to
Respect His Client's Privacy (05/07/2004)
The Goldschmidt Resignation: The ex-governor quits several posts amid sex-abuse allegations (05/07/2004)
- Years building political clout are
erased with one confession (05/08/2004)
-
Goldschmidt gets little
sympathy (05/08/2004)
-
Kulongoski's
view (05/08/2004)
-
Letters
(05/09/2004)
-
Goldschmidt's shame and his enemies
(05/09/2004)
-
Secret weighs on a public life
(05/09/2004)
2009
- Neil Goldschmidt Beats the Statute of Limitations, Still Remembered as Child Molester (05/26/2009)
2011
- Neil Goldschmidt's sex-abuse victim tells of the relationship that damaged her life
(01/31/2011)
Other cases associated with President Jimmy Carter
- Peter Yarrow (Peter, Paul and Mary)
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Governor Neil Goldschmidt
Oregon Historical Society
 |
Neil Golschmidt (1969)
|
Neil Goldschmidt served as governor of the State of Oregon from January 12, 1987 to January 14,1991.
Born in Eugene, Oregon on June 16, 1940, Neil Goldschmidt is the son of
Lester H. Goldschmidt and Annette Levin Goldschmidt. After graduating
from South Eugene High School, Goldschmidt was student body president at
the University of Oregon where he received his B.A. in political
science in 1963. He earned a law degree from the University of
California's Boalt School of Law in 1967 and was awarded an honorary
doctorate from the University of Portland in 1980. In 1964 he was an
intern in the Washington D.C. office of former U.S. Senator Maurine
Neuberger of Oregon. In Washington, he was recruited by Allard
Lowenstein for voter registration work in the Freedom Summer civil
rights campaign in Mississippi in 1964.
A legal aid attorney
in Portland from 1967 to 1969, Goldschmidt began his political career as
a city commissioner there from 1971 to 1973. A Democrat, he was the
youngest mayor of a major U.S. city after becoming mayor of Portland in
1973 at the age of 32. Goldschmidt served as mayor until 1979 when he
was named U.S. Secretary of Transportation by President Jimmy Carter. He
served in that capacity through January 1981. As secretary of
transportation, Goldschmidt authored "U.S. Automobile Industry, 1980," a
report to the president. At the end of the Carter Administration,
Goldschmidt returned to Oregon where he joined Nike, the running shoe
company based in Oregon. Working with Nike from 1981 through December
1985, he became head of its Canadian subsidiary, Nike Canada, in 1986.
In 1986 Goldschmidt entered the Oregon governor's race, which saw him
locked with Republican Norma Paulus in one of the state's closest
gubernatorial contests in modern times. The campaign was conducted
against the backdrop of the state's continuing economic distress and
high unemployment. Goldschmidt focused his campaign on a blueprint for
Oregon's future, and stressed his role as an innovator while mayor of
Portland in the 1970s. Goldschmidt was helped by his support from many
businessmen and by his own business experience. He won with 52 percent
of the vote. Analysts attributed his victory to his economic program and
to his record of cutting crime as mayor of Portland. In office,
Goldschmidt called for "an activist state role in the economy." He was
willing to place more emphasis on economic growth and a little less on
environmental protection, a reversal of state policies of a decade
earlier when many state residents feared growth. Goldschmidt supported
an end to school closings mandated by excessive property tax levies,
claiming that his efforts to promote the state as a good place to live
and do business were harmed by such closings. In the area of higher
education, he wanted to increase faculty salaries and to improve
relations between the academic and business communities.
Although a dynamic, charismatic politician, Goldschmidt chose not to
seek re-election to a second term as governor, citing marital
difficulties. Another reason for his surprising decision would later
come to light, however. In the spring of 2004, Goldschmidt publicly
admitted to sexually abusing a fourteen-year-old girl while serving as
the mayor of Portland in 1975. He acknowledged that he was worried that
his sexual abuse of a minor, a felony in Oregon, would be uncovered, and
that this was "certainly a factor" in his decision not to run for a
second term as governor.
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Biography of Oregon political icon Neil
Goldschmidt
KGW News - Thursday, May 6, 2004
Background biographical information on Neil Goldschmidt,
as provided by his office on Thursday:
Goldschmidt has served as U.S. Cabinet Secretary, Governor
of Oregon, Mayor of Portland and executive officer of a Fortune 500 corporation.
Currently he has a small law practice focused primarily
on strategic planning and problem solving for national and international
businesses. Goldschmidt serves a limited number of clients on a continuing
basis. In addition, he served on the boards of five private corporations,
chairs Drug Strategies, Inc. and the Oregon Children's Foundation. He is
also a member of the Board of Oregon Health Sciences University.
Oregon governor -- January 1987 until January 1991,
Goldschmidt led what has been called "The Oregon Comeback," the revival of
a state suffering from nearly eight years of recession. During his term,
the 56-year-old Democrat redesigned and reinvigorated the state's economic
development efforts; improved the business climate through a series of regulatory
reforms, including a major overhaul of the workers' compensation system;
and initiated an investment strategy to repair the state's deteriorating
infrastructure.
NIKE -- Prior to his 1986 gubernatorial campaign, Goldschmidt
was an executive of NIKE, Inc., serving as international Vice President from
1981 to 1985 and as President of NIKE Canada from 1986 to 1987.
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| Neil Goldschmidt with Jimmy Carter (1990) |
President Carter Cabinet member -- Goldschmidt served
as Secretary of Transportation for President Jimmy Carter from 1979 until
January 1981, and was known for his work to revive the ailing automobile
industry. He also spearheaded efforts to deregulate the airline, trucking
and railroad industries.
Mayor of Portland -- Elected in 1972 at the age of
32, he was the nation's youngest big-city mayor. During Goldschmidt's years
as Mayor, Portland became a national model for mass transit, building both
a light rail system and a downtown transit mall. His administration made
a strong commitment to preserving Portland neighborhoods, creating new downtown
housing and revitalizing an aging city business core.
University of Oregon graduate -- Goldschmidt is a graduate
of the University of Oregon, where he was president of the student body.
He earned a law degree from the University of California's Boalt Law School
in 1967 and was a legal aid lawyer in Portland from 1967 until his election
the Portland City Council in 1970
Personal information -- Goldschmidt was born June 16,
1940, in Eugene Oregon, where his parents still reside. He is married to
Diana Snowden. They have four children.
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Statement by Neil Goldschmidt regarding sexual
allegations
KATU 2 News - Portland, Oregon - May 7, 2004
Beginning in 1975, while I was mayor, I had an affair
with a high school student for nearly a year. In 1994, I funded a conservatorship
in her behalf, believing I was partly responsible for her difficulties coping
with her life.
For almost thirty years, I have lived with enormous
guilt and shame about this relationship. I have also been afraid that it
would be exposed to my family, friends and the public whose respect I have
sought to earn.
How can such behavior be erased when the damage to
others and to myself lives on? I have sat in my place of worship each year
at Yom Kippur, the day of atonement in my religious tradition, reading in
silence, searching for personal peace. And I have found that the answer to
that question is that it cannot be erased.
The pain and damage that I have caused have been with
me constantly. I have known all along that my private apologies and actions,
deep and true though they were, would never be enough. I apologize now, publicly
and completely.
I am truly sorry for allowing the relationship to happen
at all, with someone too young to be responsible or accountable for her actions;
for failing my first wife; and for betraying the trust of family, friends
and all those who put their trust in me.
This moment has arrived at a time when I am struggling
with my health. Finding some measure of personal peace, in addition to stepping
aside from my public service and business activities, is part of that struggle,
part of what I must do in order to heal.
In my life I have been blessed with a loving and supportive
family, wonderful children and grandchildren, and a wife who helped me confront
this issue.
With all sincerity, I pray that God will accept my
contrition and protect my family from the pain that a life led poorly in
part may bring to their homes. May a forgiving God mend my broken heart and
those I have broken. And may Oregonians accept this apology, even if they
cannot forgive my actions.
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Goldschmidt Revelation
By Yuno Kim
KVAL TV Channel 13 News - May 7, 2004
Portland - It's a stunning admission from one of Oregon's
most noted political figures.
Former Governor Neil Goldschmidt has stepped down from
the State Board of Higher Education, admitting he once had a relationship
with a 14 year old girl.
Goldschmidt says he had a three-year sexual relationship
with a 14-year old babysitter when he was Mayor of Portland in the 1970's.
He says he's lived with "enormous guilt and shame"
for 30 years. Goldschmidt said he decided to make a confession after being
told his long-past affair with the teenager was about to be made public and
because of his deteriorating health.
His disclosure came the same day he resigned as chairman
of the Oregon Board of Higher Education, and as chairman of the board of
the firm trying to acquire Portland General Electric.
Goldschmidt was the governor of oregon from 1987 to
1991. He also served as Transportation Secretary in the Carter Administration
and as Vice President of Nike. He now runs his own consulting firm.
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The Goldschmidt Resignation: The ex-governor quits several posts amid sex-abuse allegations
Willamette Week - May 7, 2004
Yesterday, just hours after Willamette Week posted a story
detailing its two-month investigation into a sexual relationship between
former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt and a 14-year-old girl during the 1970s,
Goldschmidt issued a statement to The Oregonian in which he described
the relationship as an "affair." The Oregonian also used the phrase
repeatedly in its morning edition, including in its headline.
But court documents obtained earlier this year by WW
paint a very different picture of the relationship. These documents
consistently describe Goldschmidt's behavior as "sexual abuse" and
"molestation" that caused detrimental effects long afterwards.
Since
Goldschmidt's confession and the appearance of The Oregonian's morning
headline, psychologists and representatives of advocacy groups have
questioned the use of the word "affair" to describe the abuse, which in
Oregon is considered rape.
"You can't say something that is
illegal is an 'affair,'" says University of Oregon child psychologist
Elizabeth Stormshak. "I can't think of a way that it would be anything
other than molestation."
Stormshak claims that the power
relationship between a man in his thirties and a 14-year-old girl would
make the possibility of informed consent minimal. There's a reason we
have decided on a so-called "age of consent," she says.
"We like
to think that the time when kids are able to consent comes naturally at
age 18," Stormshak says. "You don't need a psychologist to tell you that
this is illegal." — Taylor Clark
Thursday, May 6, 2004
Former
Gov. Neil Goldschmidt's decision to step down from the state's board of
higher education and the Oregon Electric Utility Co. earlier today
stunned political observers and friends alike.
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| Governor Goldschmidt with Diane Sawyer (1999) |
In a statement issued early this afternoon, Goldschmidt attributed his sudden move to a heart condition.
Goldschmidt did not return repeated calls made to his office this week. Willamette Week
understands the timing of the resignation is connected to this
newspaper's two-month probe into reports that between 1975 and 1978,
while Goldschmidt was mayor of Portland, he had sexual relations with a
girl who was 14 years old at the time the relations began.
WW
has interviewed more than a dozen people (some spoke on the record;
others signed statements but requested anonymity) who said they were
told about the relationship.
In Oregon, if an adult has sex with
someone under the age of 16, it is considered rape. (According to
law-enforcement officials, however, the statute of limitations for
prosecution has long since passed.)
Powerful public figures are often the subject of whispering campaigns, rumors and outright lies. But, during the course of WW's
investigation, clear evidence emerged of the alleged sexual
relationship, as well as a three-decade-long effort to cover it up.
In addition to the statements of the people interviewed, WW
has found two separate court records that refer to the relationship,
though neither names Goldschmidt. Those documents, along with the
interviews, suggest that later in life the woman was deeply troubled by
their earlier relationship and, for the past nine years, has been
receiving monthly payments from Goldschmidt.
In 1975, Neil Goldschmidt was 35 and three years into his first term as Portland's mayor.
Saying
he was mayor, however, is like saying Mozart wrote music. Goldschmidt
transformed a parochial backwater into a city of international renown.
Pioneer Square, Tom McCall Park and the bus mall-all are products of
Goldschmidt's tenure. He cajoled Nordstrom into building downtown and
scrapped a freeway through Southeast Portland to Mount Hood, using the
money to build light rail instead. "Goldschmidt made the region a
national model," says Oregon State University political-science
professor Bill Lunch.
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| Governor Goldschmidt with President Carter |
Goldschmidt was known for attracting smart,
dedicated staffers. One of his aides happened to live six doors from the
mayor's home in the Sabin neighborhood. The aide had a daughter. For
the purposes of this story, her name is Susan.
Friends say Susan was beautiful, bright and charismatic and had a warm, embracing laugh. She was 14.
According to three sources interviewed by WW,
Susan claimed that one evening in 1975, after a dinner party at Susan's
parents' home, Goldschmidt began a sexual relationship with the
teenager.
At the time, Goldschmidt was married and had two
children, ages 6 and 3, for whom Susan babysat. The relationship would
last for three years, according to the story she later told friends and
lawyers.
No one witnessed these sexual encounters, but over the
years Susan and her mother told numerous people about the relationship,
and more than a dozen of them retold the story to WW.
These
sources knew Susan in different ways at different times. They were
friends, boyfriends, work colleagues, roommates and even relatively
casual acquaintances. The story they recount is remarkably consistent.
"I
believed the story then, and I believe it today," says a former
boyfriend who dated Susan in the early '80s and says she often talked
openly about the relationship with Goldschmidt.
"She was
indiscreet," adds a female friend who knew Susan for more than 10 years.
"When she'd had a few drinks, she'd bring up Goldschmidt," says a woman
who waitressed with Susan in the mid-'80s.
Among a circle of
friends who hung out at downtown bars such as the Virginia Cafe and the
Dakota, the relationship was hardly a secret.
"[Susan] talked
about Neil Goldschmidt all the time. She'd get drunk and say when she
was 14 years old she'd screwed him in hotel rooms," says Sheilah Wilson,
who roomed with Susan in the mid '80s. "The story had been around for
years and everybody knew about it."
Friends say Susan had a keen
intellect, but she rarely worked and, despite intelligence, looks and
charm, spent much of the '80s in a downward spiral. "She had more
ability and less confidence than anybody I have ever known," says a
friend from that time.
In 1988, Susan left Portland for a new
start. Soon after the move, she was abducted outside of a clinic at
knifepoint and brutally raped. A suspect was soon arrested for the
crime. His attorney interviewed Susan, according to court records, and
discovered that she had been the victim of "prior sexual assault."
The
source for this information was a counseling record in which Susan had
talked about the sexual relationship she had from age 14 to 17.
The court record shows that the accused rapist's lawyer wanted to introduce Susan's counseling records into evidence.
Ultimately,
the judge in the case refused to allow most of the counseling records
into evidence. The rapist was eventually convicted. But some of the
information was discussed in court, including clues about the man who
sexually abused Susan. "The abuser was a family friend twenty-one years
older than [Susan]," the prosecuting attorney told the court. He was "a
family friend for many years; was the age of [Susan]'s father; certainly
no stranger, according to [Susan]'s mother."
Neil Goldschmidt is 20 years, 10 months and 26 days older than Susan.
In another passage from the court record, the man who abused Susan is a described as someone whom she had "known and trusted."
Immediately after the 1988 rape, Susan began counseling and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome.
Over the years, friends say, Susan periodically called Goldschmidt, sometimes in anger, sometimes in desperation.
However, it was not until nearly 20 years after Goldschmidt allegedly first had sex with her that Susan took formal action.
A
number of sources say part of the reason she finally stepped forward
was the coverage of the sexual-harassment claims against Oregon Sen. Bob
Packwood and the willingness of his accusers to tell their stories.
David
Slader, a Portland lawyer who has brought sex-abuse cases against the
Catholic Church, says that oftentimes it often takes women who have been
abused as minors two or three decades to come to terms with their
abuse. "In cases where girls have been abused, they often don't come
forward until their 30s or 40s," Slader says.
In October 1994,
Portland lawyer Doreen Margolin filed an application to be named Susan's
conservator in Washington County Circuit Court. (A conservator is
similar to a guardian.) Susan's parents were living in Rome then, and
according to the application, Susan was "unable to manage her property
effectively without assistance."
At the time, Susan possessed no
property of value. She had been unemployed for six years and received
only a disability stipend, which didn't come close to covering her
expenses. Her financial situation was about to change. "The appointment
of a conservator is necessary because [Susan] is filing a personal
injury lawsuit in relation to her claim for injuries sustained from
1975-1978," Margolin wrote.
According to the court file,
two other lawyers were involved in the claim Susan intended to file:
Jeffrey Foote, a prominent personal-injury lawyer, and Jana Toran, now
TriMet's legal director. Sources say Portland lawyer Ted Runstein
represented Goldschmidt.
By 1994, the injury for which Susan was
making a claim was nearly 20 years old. But despite the two decades that
had passed, Susan's threatened lawsuit brought remarkably fast
resolution.
Margolin made her first filing with the court on Oct.
25, 1994. By Dec. 5, her billing records show, she and Foote already
had a settlement offer in front of them-one that was good enough to
ensure that Susan's personal-injury lawsuit was never filed.
In
preparation for filing, Foote, however, did take statements from people
who knew Susan, including Wilson, to support the threatened lawsuit.
Because
the suit was never filed, the name of the person allegedly responsible
for Susan's injury was never stated in the Washington County records.
But her boyfriend at the time told WW that Susan often talked
about how she was going to get enough money from Goldschmidt to start a
bed-and-breakfast on the coast.
Margolin filed an inventory with
the court showing that Susan received a settlement of approximately
$250,000. After attorneys' fees, she received $30,000 in cash and an
annuity, which pays her $1,500 per month for 10 years, beginning in
March 1995.
The money came with one large string attached: Payment
of the annuity was "contingent on confidentiality agreement," according
to court records. That agreement binds Susan, her family and all of the
others involved in the settlement. "I heard she got some money and
agreed to shut up," a former boyfriend says.
Despite the gag
order, friends who saw Susan that summer at the westside apartment
complex where she lived say that she told them she'd gotten a
quarter-million-dollar settlement from Goldschmidt. "She told us that
she wasn't supposed to talk about it, but she talked anyway," says a
woman who knew Susan for 15 years.
Neither Margolin, Foote, Toran
nor Runstein would comment. When pressed, Foote would only say, "I would
suggest you forget about the whole thing."
Today, Susan lives in Nevada. She's married and has a couple of Dalmatians she adores.
Portland
Tribune columnist Phil Stanford, who was the first to advance this
story beyond unconfirmed rumor, says he talked to Susan in February
2004. Stanford says she told him she was receiving money in connection
with a settlement but couldn't talk about it.
In early April, however, when visited by WW
reporters, Susan said the sexual relationship with Goldschmidt did not
happen. She was abused, she says, but by somebody else. "It was not Neil
Goldschmidt," she says. "I have the highest regard for Neil
Goldschmidt. He never did a thing to hurt me."
Susan's mother, when contacted overseas by WW, also denied that Goldschmidt was the family friend who abused her daughter, but she would not say who it was.
For the past month, Goldschmidt knew WW
was investigating the story of his relationship with Susan. Earlier
this week, he did not respond to multiple phone requests for an
interview. On Wednesday, WW sent him a letter summarizing the story the paper had prepared and asked for comment.
On Thursday, he announced his resignations.
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Neil Goldschmidt Aftermath: Attorney Jeffrey
Foote of Jeffrey Foote & Associates, P.C., Calls upon Media to Respect
His Client's Privacy
Business Wire - May 07, 2004
PORTLAND, Ore.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 7, 2004--The following
is a statement from Portland attorney Jeffrey Foote, on behalf of his client,
who is seeking to maintain her privacy following news reports that former
Governor Neil Goldschmidt was involved with her 29 years ago, when she was
a 14 year-old girl:
"In the strongest possible terms, I call upon the news
media to respect the privacy of my client. My client wishes to keep her name
out of the news media. She is asking all of you to respect her strong desire
not to be interviewed or for any information about her personal life to be
divulged.
"It is now within the media's power to further injure
this woman or to rise up and act responsibly in reporting this story. My
client is not a public figure and wishes to remain out of the public realm.
"Even though these activities occurred decades ago,
the healing process is essentially life long.
Privacy is essential to her
continued healing.
"If you have questions, you may contact me. I will
confirm that in 1994, my client reached a confidential settlement with Mr.
Goldschmidt in order to provide the financial resources for her to start
a new life. I will confirm that she asks to have her name and details of
her life omitted from news coverage and her desire for privacy to be respected
and honored thoroughly."
Contacts: Jeffrey Foote
Jeffrey Foote & Associates, P.C.
Jeffrey Foote, 503-228-1133 ext. 121
cell: 503-228-1556
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Years building political clout are erased with one
confession
Some observers think that Neil
Goldschmidt could return to public life.
By William McCall
The Associated Press - May 8, 2004
PORTLAND — Just days before a weekly newspaper
was about to publish a detailed account of his affair with a 14-year-old
girl in the 1970s, former Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt abruptly withdrew
from public life, a sudden end to one of the most storied political careers
in state history.
Goldschmidt, 63, confessed to the relationship with
the teenager while he was mayor of Portland, and admitted that he had paid
her a financial settlement. In a public apology, Goldschmidt pleaded: "May
a forgiving God mend my broken heart and those I have broken."
It was a sudden, shocking end to the career of a man
known as a political rainmaker in Oregon, a top executive at Nike, and a
former member of President Jimmy Carter's Cabinet. Just last fall, Goldschmidt
stepped back in the state's political spotlight, taking on two major jobs:
higher education reform and buying back the largest utility in Oregon from
bankrupt Enron Corp.
Goldschmidt, a Democrat who was widely praised for
helping transform Oregon from a backwater into a national prototype for urban
planning, had spent his recent years on the political sidelines as a consultant,
privately working the clout accumulated mayor, governor and as transportation
secretary under Carter.
Everything changed when Willamette Week, a weekly newspaper
founded by a former aide, told Goldschmidt Wednesday it was about to publish
the story about the relationship with the 14-year-old that began in 1975
when he was mayor.
"There are those who will be forgiving of him, and
those who won't," said former Gov. Vic Atiyeh, a Republican who served two
terms just before Goldschmidt was elected to the office. "But it's a stain
that's not going to go away".
Goldschmidt had issued a statement Thursday saying
health problems had forced him to resign from his post as chairman of the
Oregon Board of Higher Education and as chairman of the board of a firm trying
to acquire Portland General Electric from Enron.
Goldschmidt, 63, said his doctor and Mayo Clinic physicians
had warned him he was at high risk of a heart attack from blocked arteries,
and he recently had suffered symptoms.
Brian Gard, his spokesman, said deteriorating health
had been a serious concern for months.
Soon after that release, though, Willamette Week posted
word of their investigation on its Web site. Goldschmidt met that day with
the editorial board of The Oregonian, the state's largest newspaper, and
confessed the affair, saying he needed to heal himself mentally and spiritually
after living in a "personal hell" for 30 years. He spoke of seeking peace
through his Jewish faith on Yom Kippur, a day of atonement.
Despite his public profile and role as political leader,
the former governor was acting according to his personal faith by confessing
and seeking to atone, said Rabbi Daniel Isaac of Congregation Neveh Shalom,
a Portland synagogue.
"From a Jewish point of view, when one commits a moral
wrongdoing, one has committed a sin to another human being that has to be
righted," Isaac said. "Whether there is a public punishment involved or not,
in point of fact, the wrong committed is between Neil Goldschmidt, the woman
involved and God."
The statute of limitations for any criminal charge
has long since run out, and Goldschmidt settled a lawsuit with the teenager,
now 42, paying her a reported $250,000 after legal costs.
The damage to his reputation will linger — a fact
that Goldschmidt has admitted himself.
Goldschmidt has been both a mentor and an important
ally to current Gov. Ted Kulongoski.
"I was greatly surprised, saddened and upset to learn
of the events that occurred while Governor Neil Goldschmidt was mayor of
Portland," Kulongoski said Friday. "There is no excusing his actions. My
heart goes out to the woman who has had to address this issue in her life
for the past thirty years."
Several high-level Democrats think that Goldschmidt
could return to public life at some point, but one of his most persistent
critics, former U.S. Rep. Jim Weaver, also a Democrat, said he doubted
Goldschmidt could recover.
"He's gone from Oregon politics," Weaver said.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Goldschmidt gets little
sympathy
By Steve Law
Statesman Journal - May 8, 2004
During an interview Thursday with The Oregonian, former
Oregon Gov. Neil Goldschmidt explains that he had a sexual relationship with
a 14-year-old girl in the 1970s, when he was mayor of Portland.
Sexual-assault experts condemn his relations with a
14-year-old.
Former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt admitted Thursday that
he had an "affair" with his 14-year-old baby sitter nearly three decades
ago.
Experts have a different description for it.
They allege that it was sexual assault. Or child abuse.
Or rape.
"To view this as an affair instead of as a crime would
be the first mistake," said Phyllis Barkhurst, executive director of the
state Attorney General's Sexual Assault Task Force.
A 14-year-old girl might have looked like a woman to
the then-35-year-old Portland mayor. But a girl that age is in no position
to have a healthy, consensual sexual relationship with someone so much older,
experts say.
"In the eyes of the law, a 14-year-old can't give
consent," said Deborah Thompson, executive director of Sable House in
Dallas.
"The laws were designed to protect, in some cases,
kids from themselves," Barkhurst said.
And there's good reason, experts say.
Young adolescents having sex with adults can be scarred
forever, they say, even if both parties initially view it as consensual.
"The effects of sexual assault are lifelong," said
Thompson, whose program aids abused women and girls. "You can't erase it."
The long-term effects can be physical, mental and
emotional, said Rhonda Stovin, a Keizer counselor who treats sexual-assault
victims.
"There's no way it could be mutual because you can't
give true consent if you're not really a peer," she said.
Mary Huwe, 50, of Salem said her life changed forever
after she was raped in her early 30s.
"We still have feelings. We still have depression.
We still have signs to kill ourselves because of what this person did to
our bodies," she said.
Huwe turned to drugs and saw two sons follow her example.
Both wound up in prison.
"I feel like what I touched since then, I destroyed
it," Huwe said. "It makes you a very bitter person, a very angry
person."
Many times, a sexual-assault victim can repress the
memory for years, even decades. Later, it emerges as the root of many of
their problems.
"You're never healed exactly," said Virginia Henderson,
youth-services coordinator at Sable House. "You can't have a healthy relationship
and you don't know why. You might be promiscuous and you don't know why.
Then they realize the real bottom-line issue is the sexual abuse."
Victim suffered
The 14-year-old who had sex with then-35-year-old
Goldschmidt has led a troubled life, according to a story Willamette Week
had posted online Thursday. That's despite having friends who described her
as intelligent, attractive and charming.
The weekly Portland newspaper reported that the woman
had been given a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress syndrome after a rape
in 1988. She then was unemployed for six years and lived on a disability
stipend. Then, the paper reported, she filed a legal claim against Goldschmidt,
and he quickly agreed to pay her nearly $250,000, in exchange for a
confidentiality agreement.
Jeffrey Foote, a Portland attorney who represents the
woman, confirmed Friday that his client reached a confidential settlement
with Goldschmidt in 1994 "to provide the financial resources for her to start
a new life."
"Even though these activities occurred decades ago,"
Foote said, "the healing process is essentially lifelong. Privacy is essential
to her continued healing."
Goldschmidt gave his version of events Thursday to
The Oregonian newspaper but wouldn't grant any other interviews with news
media. However, he did issue a written apology.
"Beginning in 1975, while I was mayor, I had an affair
with a high school student for nearly a year," he stated. "In 1994, I funded
a conservatorship in her behalf, believing I was partly responsible for her
difficulties coping with her life."
The ex-governor also asked Oregonians for
forgiveness.
"May a forgiving God mend my broken heart and those
I have broken. And may Oregonians accept this apology, even if they cannot
forgive my actions."
State Sen. Vicki Walker, D-Eugene, who tangled with
fellow Democrat Goldschmidt over his $1 million lobbying earnings from
Salem-based SAIF Corp., said she couldn't sleep Thursday night after learning
of Goldschmidt's admissions.
It brought up mixed emotions. Walker said she was sexually
assaulted repeatedly by her father and two uncles, starting at age 5.
"As survivors, we always are on guard," Walker
said.
Still, she saw some justice from Goldschmidt finally
paying a price for his actions, though he escaped criminal charges.
"It is so important for women like me, whose abusers
have never been brought to justice," Walker said.
She also was offended by his portrayal of events.
"It's not an affair," she said. "This was a child who
couldn't make those decisions for herself. He had ultimate
control."
Blaming victims
Despite ample evidence of the destructive power of
sexual assault on victims, Americans often have mixed views about who is
at fault. Experts call it "blaming the victim."
In California, many voters reacted unsympathetically
last year to women who complained of being groped by actor-turned-governor
candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger. Many Americans are sympathetic to Lakers
basketball star Kobe Bryant, who faces rape charges in Colorado in a case
he describes as consensual sex.
Stovin, the Keizer counselor, said high-profile cases
like the one involving Goldschmidt are a reminder that sexual offenders can
come from any class of people, regardless of their wealth or status.
"When someone comes forward, you need to listen, no
matter who they're accusing," Thompson said. "There are statistics showing
that a victim will falsely accuse in a teeny-tiny percentage of the
time."
Other studies show that only one in five sexual assault
cases, or perhaps as few as one in 10, gets heard in the criminal justice
system.
Despite the lingering effects of sexual assault, experts
say counseling can provide relief.
"Emotionally you may be scarred forever," Henderson
said. "What you do in there is hopefully learn to live with what
happened."
Experts encourage women who never worked through their
sexual-assault experiences to contact local women's centers or other programs.
"It's never too late to get help," Henderson said.
Steve Law can be reached at (503)
399-6615.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Kulongoski's view
Statesman Journal - May 8, 2004
Gov. Ted Kulongoski, a longtime friend and ally of
Goldschmidt, released a statement Thursday urging the former governor to
rest and take care of his heart problems. But after Goldschmidt's admission
of having sex with a young teenager, the governor issued a statement Friday
with a different tone.
"I was greatly surprised, saddened and upset to
learn of the events that occurred while Gov. Neil Goldschmidt was mayor of
Portland," Kulongoski stated. "There is no excusing his actions. My heart
goes out to the woman who has had to address this issue in her life for the
past 30 years."
____________________________________________________________________________________
Letters:
NEIL GOLDSCHMIDT
Oregonian - Sunday, May 09, 2004
Acts were criminal
The Oregonian erred in running the front-page headline
stating that former Portland Mayor Neil Goldschmidt had an affair with a
14-year-old girl (May 7).
While mayor of Portland, Goldschmidt committed a felony,
third-degree statutory rape, then punishable by up to five years in prison.
Criminal acts are clearly defined by our laws to protect
the rights of the victims and to send a strong message that certain behaviors
are unacceptable and will be consistently punished by society.
When you marginalize Goldschmidt's crime against this
girl by terming it an "affair" or a "relationship" rather than a criminal
act, you send the wrong message to everyone, but most of all you take away
the system's perceived authority to rightfully punish perpetrators and to
protect victims of crimes.
MICHELLE WINNINGHAM Southeast Portland
-------------------
Nature of relationship distorted
An "affair"? A grown man begins to have sex with a
14-year-old girl and the media describe it as an "affair"? This would connote
the girl as being "the other woman." If we found out that our current mayor
was having sex with a 14-year-old child, well, wouldn't that be against the
law? So how come Neil Goldschmidt's sexual abuse of a minor is being construed
as an "affair"? I think this is a terrible distortion of the nature of the
relationship Goldschmidt formed with this girl.
I appreciate that Goldschmidt is making a public statement
and owning up to his destructive behavior. However, I take great issue with
the media, both print and television, who are reporting this as an "affair."
PAM HOGEWEIDE North Portland
-------------------
No limits on potential suffering
Shame on The Oregonian! Wiser editorial eyes should
have caught the highly distasteful error in this headline: "Goldschmidt confesses
'70s affair with girl, 14" (May 7).
Sexual encounters with 14-year-old children are not
and never have been "affairs." Rape, yes (even if "only" statutory). Sexual
abuse, yes. Horrifying breach of trust when a powerful adult forever ruins
a young girl's life -- yes indeed.
We needn't let our sadness for the "mighty fallen"
obscure our understanding of the enormity of this crime. There are no statutes
of limitations for the suffering felt by victims of sexual abuse.
LINDA GOERTZ Southeast Portland
-------------------
No sympathy for Goldschmidt
Thirty-five year old men do not have "affairs" with
14-year old girls. It's called statutory rape. I also question the word "sad"
in your editorial (May 7). This is not a "sad" situation, it's a disgusting
situation.
Neil Goldschmidt, a la Bill Clinton, was given many
gifts, charisma and brilliance. But his lack of character and decency proved
fatal to his career. He was indeed one of Oregon's best and brightest, but
he lost his moral compass and hurt his family and friends.
I feel no sympathy for Goldschmidt, only for the poor
child whose life he destroyed.
JANE ANDERSON Southwest Portland
____________________________________________________________________________________
Goldschmidt's shame and his enemies
Sunday, May 9, 2004
By David Reinhard
First came a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach,
and then almost a chill. I swallowed as a prelude, I guess, to saying something,
but was just speechless for a few moments.
That's how it was when I learned Thursday morning that
Neil Goldschmidt had had an affair with a 14-year-old high school student
while serving as Portland mayor.
He confessed that publicly Thursday and announced his
resignation as chairman of the state Board of Higher Education and his withdrawal
from the Texas Pacific Group's effort to buy PGE.
No, the news of Goldschmidt's relationship with a
high-school girl wasn't what was so sickening, awful as that is. Truth to
tell, it wasn't even that surprising. What's truly sickening is that some
sewer dwellers would dredge up and publish this "news."
What twisted notion of the public interest would prompt
anyone to reach back a quarter century and muck around in the past of two
private citizens? Have our politics here become so cankered that some slug
or group of slugs needs to unearth an individual's long-ago shame and shatter
his life and the lives of others -- his family and the woman involved --
in the process?
Yes, what Neil Goldschmidt did almost 30 years ago
was wrong. Probably nobody knows that better than Goldschmidt himself. He
had to live with the regret and shame year after year, decade after decade.
He also had to live with the fear it might come to
light. It probably ended a brilliant political career years ago, and dogged
his private life.
Yes, what Neil Goldschmidt did almost 30 years ago
was wrong, awful, sickening. You name it. And it would, indeed, be newsworthy
if it were happening today. It would also have been newsworthy when he was
mayor of Portland or U.S. secretary of transportation or governor of Oregon.
But 25 years after he left the mayor's office? Or 13 years after he left
the governor's office? Is there no statute of limitations on someone's private
long-ago shame?
Not, it seems, for Oregon's political and journalistic
grave robbers.
Ah, but Goldschmidt's still a public figure. The public
has a right to know!
Goldschmidt is a public figure. True, he's not on any
public payroll. He's not an elected official. The Texas Pacific Group and
Goldschmidt's consulting firm are private companies. The higher-ed board
chairmanship is a nonpaying volunteer position.
Still, it's impossible to argue he's not a public figure
with huge influence across Oregon. But does the public have a need, much
less a right, to know what a now citizen-volunteer and private businessman
did 30 years ago?
Maybe, though the burden of proof should be on those
who are bent on exposing the deep past. Why is this information important
to get out to the public? What's the point?
What's the direct public-policy connection?
Is the fact that the information happens to be true
a defense? I don't think so. There are many truths out in the world. Shouldn't
relevance and humanity count for something? What has come out of scooping
up this bit of untold history?
None I can discern -- not when set against the loss
of Goldschmidt's special talents to the state.
Not when set against the destruction of a man's life
and public reputation.
Not when set against the pain this will cause Goldschmidt's
family and the woman who'll have to relive this episode.
Neil Goldschmidt's politics aren't my politics. Some
Goldschmidt passions -- light rail -- are my boondoggles. But you didn't
need to be here long before you understood the man was a big-leaguer -- probably
a hall of famer. It was more than the Neil charisma. He was brimming with
his own ideas and respected those of others. He was a full-on force of nature
and, increasingly as the years passed, a more joyful and compassionate soul.
Until last week. I saw him last Monday and was struck
by how drawn and depleted he was, even when discussing one of his favorite
topics, higher education. Thursday morning I understood why.
What I don't
understand -- what, thank God, I will never understand -- is why people felt
a need to make this sludge public now.
We're now hearing a lot about the many ways Neil
Goldschmidt changed the face of Portland and Oregon for the better. The only
thing he didn't clean up, it seems, were our sewers.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Secret weighs on a public life
Former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt's sex relationship with
an underage girl sets his periodic retreats from a high-profile path in a
different light
By Gail Kinsey Hill and Harry Esteve
Oregonian - Sunday, May 09, 2004
One night in February 1990, his personal life crumbling,
then-Gov. Neil Goldschmidt gathered his closest friends to help him resolve
his political future.
Everyone in the room knew his marriage to Margie
Goldschmidt was failing, but many thought he could -- and would -- run for
re-election. He was a dynamic, charismatic and seemingly unstoppable politician
whose first four years in office helped ignite what would become one of the
strongest economic surges in Oregon history.
But Goldschmidt harbored a secret that went far beyond
marital problems. When he was 35 and mayor of Portland, he had committed
illegal and shameful acts. He'd had sex with a 14-year-old girl, an illicit
relationship that went on for at least nine months.
The next day, Goldschmidt stunned his advisers and
the state by announcing he would not seek a second term, with the explanation
that his marriage was in tatters and he lacked the strength to lead the state
and go through a divorce at the same time.
Even those closest to him took him at his word. But
in an interview last week with The Oregonian, Goldschmidt acknowledged that
was only part of the reason. His past sexual relationship with the teenager
"certainly was a factor," he said. "I knew that there would be a day coming."
The disclosure helps explain what many found inexplicable
-- that a man of his potential would retreat from public life.
Now that his three-decade secret is out, many of his
political associates are reassessing the often peculiar twists and turns
of the Democrat's political path.
He was the nation's youngest big city mayor in the
1970s, serving two terms. He is credited with spurring some of Portland's
most progressive transformations. He was U.S. transportation secretary under
President Carter. He was governor of Oregon. He never went further, however,
not only passing on a second term as governor but also several chances to
run for the U.S. Senate.
"How could it not affect the decisions he made in his
public career? It's bound to have done so," said Bill Scott, who was
Goldschmidt's mayoral chief of staff and longtime friend.
The meeting to discuss Goldschmidt's possible re-election
bid was held at the Portland home of Scott, who said he never heard of the
sexual abuse of the teenager. He said no one expressed any qualms about
Goldschmidt running for office or about his personal life.
Scott and other associates believe Goldschmidt based
his political decisions on many factors, some personal, some tactical and
some simply unknowable to anyone but Goldschmidt.
"I have no idea how (the relationship) influenced his
decisions," said Lee Weinstein, a family friend and deputy press secretary
while Goldschmidt was governor. Weinstein, too, said he was stunned to learn
of Goldschmidt's secret. "Obviously, this is something that has troubled
him forever."
Secret raises more questions
Goldschmidt resigned Thursday as president of the State
Board of Higher Education, as well as stepping away from a leadership position
in the proposed purchase of Portland General Electric.
Citing a heart ailment and other health problems, he
also said he was taking a leave of absence from his consulting firm, Goldschmidt
Imeson Carter.
According to Oregon laws in 1975, sexual intercourse
with a girl younger than age 16 constituted third-degree rape, a felony
punishable by up to five years in prison. The statute of limitations at that
time was three years from the commission of the crime.
Goldschmidt also revealed that he has been making payments
to the victim since 1994 as part of a confidential legal settlement worth
about $250,000.
The news swept through political circles and raised
immediate questions about how such a high-profile figure could have kept
the sexual relationship quiet for so long.
Goldschmidt said he began having sex with the girl,
who lived nearby, in 1975, two years into his first term as mayor. He said
it continued for about nine months. The woman's lawyer says it lasted closer
to three years.
At the time, Goldschmidt was building a national reputation
as an urban champion, helping revitalize Portland's downtown, which associates
attribute to his youthful idealism, vision and strong personality. He was
pushy, he was moody, he was passionately devoted to the city, they say.
Doug Capps, Goldschmidt's chief of staff following
Scott's departure, says he heard rumors about possible sexual philandering
by his boss, but heard nothing about an underage girl.
"I was trying to think: When would that have ever
happened?" Capps said. "There was no physical presence of any individual.
It's like Neil was with people on his staff virtually constantly."
His next public assignment took him into even headier
territory. Based on his Portland innovations, including the first designs
for light rail, President Carter tapped him to be his U.S. transportation
secretary.
As part of the vetting process, he was questioned about
his background. Asked if he lied about having sexual contact with a teenager,
Goldschmidt said, "I wasn't asked. . . . There was never a moment of anxiety"
that the matter would come up.
Sexual rumors deflected
When Carter lost his re-election bid, Goldschmidt was
out of a job. To the surprise of many, he didn't look to Congress for
opportunities. He went home.
"He was always senatorial material," said Lloyd Anderson,
who was on the Portland City Council with Goldschmidt and went on to head
the Port of Portland. "It was always a puzzle to me why he didn't run."
Nike hired Goldschmidt first as international vice
president, then as head of Canada operations. It appeared for a time that
he had abandoned public life for a lucrative private career.
But that lasted only six years. Early in 1985, Earl
Blumenauer, now a U.S. congressman, set up a meeting at the home of Ginny
Burdick to explore a Goldschmidt candidacy for governor. Burdick, who later
served as the campaign spokeswoman, said the central topic was money.
Goldschmidt worried he wouldn't be able to raise enough
to run a competitive race, she said, but nothing was said by anybody about
the sexual relationship -- "not even a hint of anything like this," said
Burdick, now a state senator.
Goldschmidt jumped into the race later that year, knowing
the secret could still come to light. In fact, a rumor about the relationship
surfaced during the campaign, he said, but he was able to deflect it.
He beat former Secretary of State Norma Paulus and
in 1987 moved into the governor's office at the state Capitol. At that time,
he said, the girl he had victimized began making contact with him.
Settlement kept confidential
Almost immediately, rumors about extramarital affairs
began to swirl around Salem. Goldschmidt's press aides became adept at laughing
off the embarrassed queries from reporters. When Gary Hart left the Democratic
presidential race in 1987 after he was accused of adultery, Goldschmidt stayed
out of public sight while reporters trolled the Capitol looking for local
comment.
"I remember a lot of speculation," said Chuck Bennett,
an education lobbyist who was around during the Goldschmidt administration.
"It was just a lot of people talking."
Bennett said the talk was about rumored adult affairs.
He said he heard nothing about Goldschmidt's involvement with an underage
girl. When Goldschmidt announced he would not run for re-election, everyone
accepted the explanation that the divorce provoked the decision, he said.
Now, he said, "You certainly wonder about the explanation
that was given at the time. People are probably rethinking what they heard
and what was said at the time."
After leaving office, Goldschmidt started a consulting
business with longtime associate Tom Imeson. He quickly became a highly
sought-after and well-paid adviser, lobbyist and speaker.
Reporters stopped asking questions about his private
life.
Around that time, he met and fell in love with his
current wife, Diana Snowden Goldschmidt, who was a senior vice president
at PacifiCorp. He shared his deepest secrets with her. Before their engagement,
he told her about the girl.
"It was terrible," Diana Goldschmidt said. "We both
cried. I understood for the first time the true pain he was in. . . . I didn't
understand it in the context of the man I loved, it was so far out of character."
Soon after they were married, Neil Goldschmidt agreed
to a confidential financial settlement with the woman he victimized. The
agreement came after he was contacted by the woman's lawyer in 1994, nearly
two decades after Goldschmidt said he stopped what he termed "an affair"
with the girl. His wife helped pay for the settlement.
It took a personal visit by Gov. Ted Kulongoski to
thrust Goldschmidt back into the public sphere. Kulongoski drove to Goldschmidt's
home in Portland and, over glasses of wine, persuaded him to become head
of the State Board of Higher Education.
Kulongoski said he never would have chosen Goldschmidt
if he had known about the sexual relationship.
"The allegations that have come out, I didn't know
anything about, I had never heard of them," Kulongoski said Saturday, after
riding in a parade in North Portland.
At least for now, Goldschmidt has withdrawn completely
from public service, planning to spend more time at his winery, the Dusky
Goose near Dundee. But some who have watched Goldschmidt leave, and then
return to public life believe that he could once again play an influential
role in Oregon.
Portland Mayor Vera Katz, another longtime associate,
said, "I predict he will be back."
____________________________________________________________________________________
Neil Goldschmidt Beats the Statute of Limitations, Still Remembered as Child
By JJ Duncan
Zimbio - May 26, 2009
 |
| Governer Neil Goldschmidt - Convicted sex offender |
On May 7, 2004, Portland newspaper the Oregonian, ran a
shocking letter written by former Oregon Governor Neil Goldschmidt in
which he admitted to repeatedly having sex with a 14-year-old girl.
The
sexual abuse went on for 9-months, according to Goldshmidt, in 1975,
when he was mayor of Portland. Though the sexual relationship was
consensual, sex with a child younger than 16 constitutes 3rd-degree rape
in the state of Oregon, and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison.
Unfortunately, justice would not be served. Despite Goldschmidt's public
admission of guilt, the statute of limitations for the case had run
out.
"The pain and damage that I have caused have been with me
constantly," he wrote in his letter. "I have known all along that my
private apologies and actions, deep and true though they were, would
never be enough. I apologize now, publicly and completely."
Goldschmidt's
political career ended that day. He resigned from several organizations
and he moved all the way to France to avoid living the rest of his life
in a state where he had instantly become an infamous villain.
The
revelations brought back speculation over Goldschmidt's decision in
1990 not to run for a second term as governor following his divorce from
Margie Goldschmidt, who he had been married to since 1965. Many at the
time thought skeletons in Goldschmidt's closet might have kept him from
running.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Neil Goldschmidt's sex-abuse victim tells of the relationship that damaged her life
By Margie Boule
The Oregonian - Jan. 1, 2011
She was emaciated and looked far older than her 42 years. Her hair was
thin, her eyes sunken. Her hands shook; occasionally, her whole body
shook.
But she appeared intelligent, well-spoken and quick-witted. She seemed kind.
I
was at my desk at The Oregonian, where I was working as a columnist in
2004, when the call came that would lead me to Neil Goldschmidt's
victim.
A woman I'd written about a few years earlier was on the
line. She had another story for me, she said. Her best friend since
childhood was Goldschmidt's victim, and she wanted to tell her story.
I
met her for the first time at her friend's house, in Northeast
Portland. After several visits she decided she trusted me. She wanted to
go public, she said, because the former governor had lied and misled
the public about what had happened.
No one but the two of them can know exactly what occurred between Neil Goldschmidt and the woman I interviewed.
At the time I spoke with her, over the course of many visits in Portland
and in Las Vegas, where she was living for a time, she clearly was an
ill woman, abusing alcohol and taking powerful medications for mental
illness.
We conducted our interviews in the mornings, when she was sober and clearheaded. We stopped when she felt she needed a drink.
She
was precise, definite and consistent about many parts of her story. But
sometimes she was unsure of dates, and a few times she gave different
versions of events in her life.
She was choosing to tell her
story in detail for the first time, knowing painful facts would be
published and that a good many people might not believe her. In fact,
some of what she said could not be independently verified and years of
alcohol and drugs clearly had taken a toll on her.
But in many conversations over many months, she did not waver on the central details of her story.
She
knew people had made up their minds about her, and about the kind of
man Neil Goldschmidt had been and was. She knew her story was far
different from the story the former governor had told the world.
In
a statement released Monday, Goldschmidt said, "Although I am unaware
of the exact nature of the article The Oregonian plans to publish, I was
presented with a list of accusations that vary substantially from the
truth. Sadly, it appears that much of her account is fabricated and I
can only speculate as to her reasons."
She knew some people
would believe him , not her. They'd believe she was a "mature 14," that
it lasted "nine months," that it was an "affair."
She was asking people to consider another possibility. "He can deny all he wants to," she said. "But I know the truth."
She
wavered at times about whether to allow her name to be used in the
story. My editors and I also questioned whether renewed publicity was in
her best interest, given her fragility and her history of suicide
attempts. Ultimately, she decided she did not want her name to be
published and the paper decided not to print the story.
Some
people will be angry that her story finally has been made public today.
They will say it's old news, that Goldschmidt was punished enough by the
publicity his crimes received seven years ago. But those people should
remember: Neil Goldschmidt told his version of this story in 2004.
Her
story was different. And from the day I met her, to the day I last
spoke with her before she died, she wanted the world to know her side of
the story.
Here it is.
In her earliest memory of her abuser,
she remembered standing beside him in an elevator. She must have been
very young, because she had to reach up to hold his hand.
They
were in a hotel, or some other big building. In just a moment he would
lead her into a room and a crowd of people would cheer. She couldn't
remember why she was by his side on this exciting night -- was it an
election night?
But she remembered this: As the elevator
descended, the man squeezed her hand. She might have been 7 years old,
perhaps 8. But she was old enough to understand she was special. Of all
the little girls in the world, she believed, Neil Goldschmidt had chosen
her.
In May 2004, Neil Goldschmidt, legendary former mayor of
Portland, former U.S. secretary of transportation, former Democratic
governor of Oregon, head of the state Board of Higher Education,
confessed: He'd had, he told a small group of reporters and editors from
The Oregonian, a nine-month "affair" with a teenage girl in the late
1970s. He was trying to get ahead of Willamette Week, which was about to publish information about the abuse that reporter Nigel Jaquiss had uncovered.
Goldschmidt
said he felt "guilt and shame," but he talked more that day about his
doctors' concerns about his cardiovascular system.
Publications
and broadcasts across the state ran stories, often devoting more space
or time to Goldschmidt's successes than to his crimes (for they were
crimes, felony crimes under laws that existed at the time they were
committed, prosecutors said, even though the statute of limitations had
expired by the time he admitted what he'd done).
In her home in
Las Vegas, his victim read the stories, which friends and relatives had
sent from Oregon. There, in print, were all the failures and
humiliations of her 40-plus years. There were no descriptions of her
talent as a photographer, her extensive vocabulary, her generosity to
friends, her love of animals.
The stories made her sound like a
throwaway person, she said, a teen who'd been asking for trouble, an
ex-con who might have had a hard life even if she hadn't been abused as a
child by the most powerful, charismatic man in Oregon.
Years
after the headlines stunned Oregonians of every political persuasion, a
lot of people may think the revelation is old news. But only half the
story has been told. News organizations called it "Neil Goldschmidt's
secret." For 30 years, it had been her secret, too.
She'd grown
tired of keeping her secret. She wanted to tell the world how her life
changed the day Neil Goldschmidt first molested her, and she thought it
was love.
She told me she was 13 years old when it began, not 14, not 15.
In his statement Monday, Goldschmidt said, "As I read the obituary last
week that gave her date of birth, I now know she was 15 when the first
sexual encounter happened. It occurred after the November 1976 elections
and ended some months later into the following year."
But she said she was quite sure when the first incident occurred, "because it was my mother's birthday."
There
was a party that afternoon at her home in Northeast Portland. It wasn't
unusual to see the mayor of Portland in her kitchen. Her parents were
active supporters of Neil Goldschmidt's political career. Their home was
just blocks from the Goldschmidts' house; campaign involvement had
evolved into friendship.
After she entered eighth grade, she
said, Neil Goldschmidt, then in his mid-30s, began to recommend books to
her and engage her in private conversations. She had shed her baby fat.
Her long, dark hair was thick. Photographs of her at 13 show a
beautiful adolescent.
Then came January of her eighth-grade
year, and her mother's birthday party. There was a crowd of adults,
including Goldschmidt, at the house. "He asked if I wanted to play
pingpong," she said. "We went down (to the basement) and then he said,
'Oh, do you want to come give me a hug?' "
It turned into much
more than a hug. It turned into oral sex. She was afraid. She was a
virgin, she says. "I'd never even kissed a boy. Far from it."
That
day, in those secretive, terrifying, confusing moments in her own
basement, a door opened in her childhood. Her awful future rushed in,
and the woman she might have become left forever.
To her 13-year-old self, it was terrible and wonderful, confusing and thrilling.
They
had sex frequently, she told me. Sometimes the mayor would call the
eighth-grader after she got home from school, when her parents were at
work. Other times, she said, they'd use secret signals to arrange their
meetings.
She would watch from an upstairs window for when his
car went by. "Because if the lights blinked," she said, "it meant he was
coming in. If they didn't, he was just going home."
She
remembered feeling torn. "The attention was flattering. ... Among our
social group, he was idolized. He was a golden boy who could do no
wrong. ... And he was incredibly charming. He was also very earthy and
sweet and cruel. He was lots of different things."
In some ways,
he was becoming a mentor. He gave her a book: "Cry, the Beloved
Country." He gave her reading lists. He explained city policy issues to
her. But the mentoring went further.
He told her how to dress,
she said. "He didn't like the way I looked." She began to diet. She
loved Neil Goldschmidt, she thought. She wanted to please him.
"But
there was always a malevolent underlying current, it seemed," she said.
What they did together in private felt secret and dirty. "I'd get these
feelings in the pit of my stomach."
She was a child, with a
childlike desire for attention. She didn't like the sex very much, she
says. But she liked the closeness to this man everyone admired.
And,
in a childlike way, she believed him. He told her, she said, that
someday he'd divorce his then-wife, Margie, and marry her.
"I
was so totally naive ... so stupid," she said. "I may have been a little
intellectually precocious, but relationship-wise I was as naive as you
get."
She began her freshman year of high school at St. Mary's Academy in downtown Portland.
It was clear she didn't fit in with the other 14-year-olds. But then, she wasn't at school much.
"He'd pick me up by the fountain," a block from the school, "in the black car," she said. "He always had a driver."
After
her freshman year, she dropped out of high school. It's painful for her
to think what her life might have been like, had she not dropped out.
"I had so much potential,"she said. "I was so bright. I loved to read, I
loved to learn."
Her adolescence should have been an unfolding. Instead she was afraid. She was lonely. And she was getting angry.
"I
started feeling like I was being used," she said. She already was using
alcohol and drugs. At 15, she said, she attempted suicide.
She took Valium and drank from a bottle of Grand Marnier, but it didn't work. "I woke up. I was really groggy."
Nobody
found out, she said. She eventually passed her high school equivalency
test and enrolled at the University of Oregon Honors College when she
was 18.
"I did it to a certain extent to get away from him," she
said. "But his parents lived in Eugene, and he came to visit me." They
were always surprise visits. One time she returned to her room and he
was there, she said.
Of course, by then she was no longer a
minor. By then Neil Goldschmidt would not have been committing a crime
every time he was intimate with the 18-year-old.
"It was
consensual, he would say," she said. But it didn't feel like she had a
choice, she said: "I felt I was under his control."
When she
moved to New York City in the early 1980s to take summer acting classes,
she remembered, he showed up in her apartment, unannounced. "He always
seemed to know where I was," she said.
Neil Goldschmidt has told
reporters the relationship lasted varying periods of time. At first, in
his interview with The Oregonian, he said nine months. Later, in the
same interview, he said "two calendar years." Other news organizations
reported it ended after three years.
She said, though, the sex
with Neil Goldschmidt continued throughout his tenure as mayor, his
years in Washington, D.C., as U.S. secretary of transportation, the
years he worked at Nike and even into his term as Oregon's governor.
"It lasted until I was 27," she told me.
The
Oregonian has no independent reporting that substantiates this, but it
is consistent with what she told friends and family members through the
years. Goldschmidt said it ended "some months later" in the year after
the abuse began.
By the time she was in her mid-20s, she was scrambling
-- for rent money, for a good job, for love, for escape from the pain.
She used drugs and alcohol more heavily. It was when people thought
cocaine was cool, she said. "Before people started dying. We didn't
think it was addictive."
Her life was on a downward spiral. She had sexual relationships with rock stars, married men, cocaine-snorting attorneys.
And
she started sharing the secret. She told her lovers that Neil
Goldschmidt had seduced her when she was 13. Or she'd sit at a bar in
the Dakota Cafe or the Virginia Cafe and tell strangers.
"I was a blabbermouth," she said,"because I had started to feel he owed me something."
The
contrast between the life of the respected statesman and the life of
the sometimes-unemployed cocktail waitress was stark and painful to her,
a former straight-A student who, as a little girl, had once dreamed of
becoming a Supreme Court justice.
She attempted suicide several
times. She spent time in psychiatric wards in local hospitals, under
suicide watch. When she got out, she'd return to work in bars, and to
drink in bars. And she'd tell her story to more people.
Word got back to Neil Goldschmidt that she was talking. "A friend of
mine had a call from a friend of his and said she was in a public
establishment, and I would presume not entirely in great shape, telling
the world that she had had a relationship with me," Goldschmidt told The
Oregonian in May 2004.
Suddenly there appeared in her life
people she called Neil's "handlers." Neil wanted to help, she said they
told her. He wanted to help her get her life on track.
In May
2004, when Neil Goldschmidt told The Oregonian his sexual relationship
had ended when his victim was a teen, he was vague when asked how many
times he'd seen her since. "It wasn't really '75 to '94," when the
settlement agreement was reached, he said. "It was really '90 to '91. It
was the time after I was elected governor and -- I don't remember, but I
mean it was more than twice and -- it wasn't 10 times, it wasn't eight
times, it was -- several."
On Monday, he said, "In the ensuing
years, I met with her intermittently at her request always with a third
party present and tried to help her with counseling, bills, debts,
rehab, and finding a job."
In those meetings, she said, "first
they were going to get me a job in Portland or Salem. Then they must
have decided they should get me the hell out of town."
When she
was 27, she said, Neil helped get her a job at a Seattle law firm. "I
was very happy in Seattle," she said. "It was like a new start. I had a
beautiful apartment with a view of Elliott Bay."
But just three
months after she began her job at the law firm, a man named Jeffrey L.
Jacobsen kidnapped and brutally raped her. He was convicted and is now
in prison.
She returned to Portland severely traumatized.
Sometimes, in her mind, she'd confuse what Neil Goldschmidt had done to
her as a child, and what her attacker had done to her in Seattle. Her
fear of the man who was now governor of Oregon was tied, in her brain,
to her fear of the man who'd raped her.
Word of the rape
eventually reached Goldschmidt. "I subsequently learned she was just
brutally assaulted," Neil Goldschmidt told The Oregonian in May 2004,
"and bad things happened up there for which she's probably blameless, in
the sense that she didn't invite it -- I mean literally ask for it. But
she was always putting herself in circumstances like that."
After
the rape, she was unable to hold down any job. She was diagnosed with
post-traumatic stress disorder, she said. She said she saw Neil
Goldschmidt only once after the rape. "I was so afraid of him all I
could do was cry." It was their last intimate visit, she said. For the
first time since she was 13 years old, she could no longer be in the
same room as Neil Goldschmidt.
"After that, I would not answer
his phone calls." In fact, she said, "I actually would vomit every time I
heard the phone ring."
Her drug and alcohol use became even
more extreme. She was arrested for trying to buy what turned out to be
fake cocaine from a federal agent. After a plea bargain, she was
convicted of attempting to possess cocaine. She violated probation by
drinking alcohol and ended up in federal prison in Pleasanton, Calif.
Neil
Goldschmidt was making deals in a wood-paneled office in Oregon's state
Capitol. His victim was hiding in the fetal position beneath a bunk bed
in a California prison cell, howling.
They put her on
medication. They sent her for counseling. And, for the first time, she
began to understand the enormity of the crimes that had been committed
against her.
After 17 years of guilt and shame, she said, "It
became clear to me that as a 13-year-old you aren't capable of making a
decision to have an affair."
It was the counselor, she said, who
explained that Neil had broken the law when he had sex with an underage
girl. "It wasn't until I went to prison," she said, "that I realized
he'd taken away my childhood."
She was released after six
months, determined to seek reparation for the damage she believed Neil
Goldschmidt had done. One by one, attorneys refused her case. Finally,
someone recommended she see Jeff Foote.
Foote, a Portland
lawyer, believed her and decided to help her when no one else would. "To
this day, he's never taken a dime in legal fees for everything he's
done for me."
Foote explained that the statute of limitations
had long run out, so there could be no criminal charges filed. But she
could still file a civil suit and collect damages. Foote contacted Neil
Goldschmidt's attorney. In the end, "We came to a settlement agreement,"
she said. "Jeff thought that was the best thing to do, because I was
still emotionally very fragile."
With regular payments coming in every month from Goldschmidt, her future finally seemed more secure.
She
met a big bear of a man in Portland, a man who loved Harley-Davidsons
and good food and her, and she married him. They moved to Las Vegas. She
started a new life. She tried to forget.
But the nightmares
she'd had since she was a teenager continued. She drank too much. She
had trouble sleeping. She couldn't keep jobs. And then, in the late
1990s, the reporters from Oregon started calling.
At first the contacts were sporadic. Reporters would call, fishing for information she had promised never to reveal.
She'd
accepted payments. She'd signed documents. So she lied to the
reporters: Neil Goldschmidt was a great statesman, she said, a close
family friend who had not molested her or threatened her or tried to buy
her silence with money or jobs or tried to control her.
But the
reporters trusted their instincts more than her protestations. The day
the story broke, May 6, 2004, Foote called from Portland and recommended
she leave her home to protect herself from a media frenzy.
"I
was a total basket case. I didn't sleep for three days." She packed a
bag and moved into a Las Vegas hotel, the first of many in the area
she'd live in for the next few months.
Reporters sent e-mails
and letters and phoned requesting interviews, demanding interviews.
Media vans parked in front of her house. But they couldn't find her as
she moved from hotel to hotel.
The news brought old feelings to
the surface again. "It's all being rehashed, and I feel the old shame,
the guilt, the fear. ... Those are feelings I should not be having" --
in therapy she had learned she was the victim, not the criminal -- "but I
have them nonetheless. I'm also lonely. I'm very isolated."
She
worried about money. She couldn't always afford to pay for the
psychiatric medications she needed. The monthly payments from
Goldschmidt had ended, she said, and the confidentiality agreement was
moot.
"He's the one who broke the silence, I didn't," she said.
"My attorney says once he spoke out, I was free to talk as well." In May
2004, Neil Goldschmidt told The Oregonian that the promise of
confidentiality was necessary because "we couldn't figure out any way
that she could start her life over without doing it."
Now, she
wanted to tell her story. She wanted people to understand the true
nature of Goldschmidt's crime. In her opinion it was not a "mistake"
that never should have been made public, as his supporters had written.
Instead of living in the governor's mansion, she believed, he should
have been in a prison cell.
"He should have been punished. He
shouldn't have been able to have this magnificent political career and
hide this huge secret," she said. "He says (it) worried him for 30
years. I don't know how much of that I believe."
As happens to
so many victims of child sex abuse, "sexually I had to grow up fast,"
she said. "Unfortunately, it made me feel that's all I was good for. I
felt I was less than everyone else. I was just someone's sexual toy."
She
felt he came forward with his confession and his public apology, his
front-page expression of regret, only because he was about to be exposed
for what he'd done to her as a child. The only time she ever saw an
indication that Neil Goldschmidt took responsibility, she said, was when
she was handed a brief statement when the settlement was signed.
"I'm
not sure exactly what it said because we had to burn it, or shred it,
right after I saw it. I only got to look at it a little while." She did
not remember an apology in the statement. "But I do know he said, 'It
was not your fault.' It was just one sentence. But he had to say that.
... it was part of the agreement."
She knew there were people in
Oregon who felt sorry for Neil Goldschmidt, because the abuse had been
made public, because his reputation had been tarnished. Someone sent her
a newspaper article saying his ex-wife, Margie Goldschmidt, had thrown a
party for Neil, apparently so his old friends could show their support.
"Don't these people have children?" she wondered. "How would they feel if he'd done this to their daughters?"
One
of the reasons Goldschmidt's victim decided she wanted to speak out is
she hoped parents might read her story and become more aware of the need
to protect their children from even the most trusted family friends.
"They
need to be vigilant, notice behavior changes, the appearance of people.
Give your kid a cell phone. Instruct them about the dangers. Talk with
them, have family dinners, make sure you know what's going on in their
lives."
She hoped her family would understand why she wanted to
speak out. She hoped they would understand she was tired of being
portrayed only as "Goldschmidt's victim, the throwaway person ... this
little nothing person nobody ever thought was worth paying attention to
or protecting."
She hoped they would understand her need to
finally tell the truth, "to stop keeping the secrets." She'd felt
stronger, she told me, since she decided to speak out. She still had
nightmares. But when awake, "I'm not scared anymore. Well, sometimes I
get scared," she said. "But I just can't let this destroy my life any
longer."
In our many visits, Goldschmidt's victim occasionally spoke of recovery,
of finishing her college degree, of becoming a writer or some other
kind of professional. But I think we both knew she was so sick, so
broken, the odds were against her. She and her husband divorced and she
returned to Portland. For the last five years, she was supported in
every way possible by her parents.
She told me she grew close
to them in ways she hadn't experienced since before the abuse began. But
the mental illness, the addiction to alcohol, and the memories were
more powerful than her wisps of dreams for a better future.
Over
the last five years, she called me every few months to check in. She
would ask about my life, and share her own struggles. She was honest
about her alcoholism and mental illness. She tried and failed to keep
jobs.
She began to write and joined a writers' group. She called
me about a year ago and asked me to help her write her autobiography.
But then she became too ill to do the work.
She died of
undisclosed causes Jan. 16 in a local hospice. Her death was not a
surprise to me. Even in 2004, when we first met, there had been so
little life left in her.
"She was a beautiful, brilliant
person," her mother told The Oregonian. "She was a good person who
suffered a great deal in her life."
She was a very good person.
She deserved far more than years of abuse and a shattered adult life. At
least now her story has been told.
Goldschmidt's response - January 31, 2011
Last
week the woman with whom I had an illegal sexual relationship 35 years
ago died. I was shocked and saddened to learn of her death.
I
wish to express publicly my enormous personal guilt and remorse for the
damage I contributed to her young life experiences. The fact that these
actions have haunted me since is no punishment for what I did.
To her family and friends, I am truly sorry for your loss of her at such a young age. I know she was well loved by all of you.
Although
I am unaware of the exact nature of the article The Oregonian plans to
publish, I was presented with a list of accusations that vary
substantially from the truth. Sadly, it appears that much of her account
is fabricated and I can only speculate as to her reasons. As I read the
obituary last week that gave her date of birth, I now know she was 15
when the first sexual encounter happened. It occurred after the November
1976 elections and ended some months later into the following year. The
reality is that it does not matter because she simply was not old
enough to consent to sex and it was my moral and legal obligation to be
the responsible adult.
In the ensuing years, I met with her
intermittently at her request always with a third party present and
tried to help her with counseling, bills, debts, rehab, and finding a
job. I learned through those meetings that she had a complicated and
tragic personal history before, during, and after I was in her life and
she suffered from it as badly as anyone might. I have come to terms that
this guilt will continue for the rest of my life. I am not trying to
defend myself because there is no defense for what I did. This is simply
a restatement of my apology and sorrow for all of those concerned.
From
the moment I publicly confirmed my shameful conduct, the press has
speculated about who knew or who assisted in covering up my actions. The
reality is simple: I was far too ashamed to talk with anyone about it.
With very few exceptions, I left my children, my best friends and my
colleagues in the dark. None of them asked or presumably knew of my
terrible secret. Many of them have suffered greatly from my actions and
the resulting speculation and misinformation by others that has been
widely publicized in the press.
I have tried to focus on paying
off a debt of my own creation one that a lifetime of penance will not
erase and to do so by the way I live. In the 35 years since I failed
this young woman, her family, and my family, the pain has never eased.
There are days when I believe it would be better if I were lifted from
this earth and removed as a cause of pain for others and to find quiet
for myself. Until this occurs, I will do my best to remember the person I
damaged by doing right by the lives that surround me.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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The
traditional Jewish view of abortion does not fit conveniently into any
of the major "camps" in the current debate over abortion.
