Former Fairfax Staffer Trashes: ‘Lost Moral Legitimacy to Hold Office’
Peter D'Abrosca
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A former staffer of Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) trashed her old boss at a Take Back the Night event Thursday in Arlington, Virginia.
“I first began to have my doubts about the side I was standing on when I first heard from Dr. Vanessa Tyson,” said Adele McClure, Fairfax’s former policy director. “Her story began to sound too familiar to me and I became ill at the attempts to discredit her, to attack her, to threaten her with defamation suits and criminal prosecution.”
McClure added that Fairfax has “lost the moral legitimacy to hold public office.” She resigned in February after Big League Politics reported that Fairfax had been accused of sexually assaulting a woman at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. He was later accused of rape by a second woman. He took to the Senate dais to proclaim his innocence, and compared himself to a lynching victim.
Take Back the Night is a nonprofit that raises awareness about sexual violence.
McClure also revealed that at one point, she had been sexually abused. She said:
“I wondered if my abuser were ever elected to public office … and I decided to speak out, how would I be treated? Would people attempt to label me as crazy, as a partisan pawn? Perhaps as an opportunist? Would I be threatened with lawsuits and legal action and would my abuser use the power of their office sitting on top of the dais to condemn me as a modern-day lynch mob that’s tantamount to those who murdered Emmett Till?”
She also questioned the “Believe All Woman” narrative, wondering if it only applied “when it’s politically inconvenient and not when it’s challenging power of someone we like.”
Fairfax has refused to resign, despite calls from local, state, and federally elected officials.
Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, also a Democrat, remains in office despite the fact Big League Politics exposed his racism in February.
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