Spokane mayor revealed to date teenagers

homosexual, on left, in debate

West's public policy conflicts with private life

Karen Dorn Steele / Staff writer

May 5, 2005

© The Spokesman-Review 2005

In an Internet chat room last New Year’s Eve where he discussed his recent date with an 18-year-old man, Spokane Mayor Jim West criticized the “sex Nazis” who try to regulate private sexual behavior.

For years, that’s exactly what West tried to do in Olympia.

Over two decades, West rose to power in the Washington Legislature with a carefully cultivated image as a fiscally conservative Republican opposed to gay rights, abortion rights and teenage sex.

His abrasive style and temper were legendary in Olympia. But even his opponents speak highly of his legislative and budgetary skills, which have made him one of the state’s most powerful politicians.

Because of his clout as the former Senate majority leader and his reputation for attacking his enemies, no one has publicly confronted West about any discrepancy between his private sexual behavior and his political stances, people in politics and in Spokane’s gay community have said.

While members of Spokane’s gay community said it’s widely rumored that West is a closeted gay man, they also said his sexual orientation is only an issue when his behavior intrudes on the legislative process and public policy.

Although West was married for five years in the 1990s and was seen with women during his legislative campaigns, it was whispered in Olympia that West dated and mentored young men.

“It’s the worst-kept secret in Washington politics,” said Christian Sinderman, a top Democratic political consultant.
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“The Republicans represent two camps,” Benson said. “One camp is about individual liberty and the economy. For them, whether you’re gay or not doesn’t make a difference. But for the conservative wing, adultery and homosexuality plays bad. They want to look at their leaders and say, these are people we can admire,” Benson said.

Jon Wyss, state committeeman for the GOP from Spokane County, says news of West’s private life comes as a complete shock. “You’re catching me off-guard,” Wyss said Wednesday night. “He’s very talented in what he’s done for the city, the Legislature and the party.”

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During a 1990 hearing on AIDS education, West proposed that teen sex be criminalized.
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West’s bill was “stupid,” said James Duree, a former Pacific County prosecutor and Democrat who recently retired from private practice. Duree said he wrote to West in 1990, suggesting facetiously that the Legislature pass a law making it a crime for legislators to have sex with one another. “I thought they should stop doing sex in Olympia,” Duree said.

Politicians who take extreme positions on sex are not always what they seem, said Duree, 87.

“I saw people like West when I was a prosecuting attorney,” said Duree. “These people who were so goosy towards sex.….. They’re the ones you’ve got to watch,” he added.

During the Gay.com chat on New Year’s Eve, when West had been Spokane’s mayor for a year, the 18-year-old man who’d had a sexual encounter with West on a date in June 2004 said “you wouldn’t be in the position you are in today if the right-winged supporters knew you like to mess around with guys.”

West replied: “Two consenting adults must have the ability to protect their privacy or else the damn sex Nazis will be telling everyone what to do.”
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“When you think life is short, you do what you want to do,” he said in an August 2003 Spokesman-Review profile. He also said he had little private life because he’d dedicated his life to public service.

“My private life? It’s public. I don’t have much of a private life,” West said.

After the November 2003 election, West had another round of cancer surgery. But he has continued to work hard as Spokane’s mayor.

West also has harbored ambitions to be Washington’s governor.

In March 1991, he opposed a term limits bill for legislators that would limit them to 12 years in office. He said the bill wouldn’t affect him. “Twelve years from now, I’ll be halfway through my first term as governor,” West said.

While that prediction didn’t pan out, West was still talking recently about being governor.

In an April 9 Internet chat, West sent his photo to “Moto-Brock,” the person he believed was an 18-year-old Spokane high school senior. Instead, Moto-Brock was a forensic computer consultant hired by the newspaper to verify the mayor’s identity and presence on Gay.com.

According to the Internet dialogue with the consultant, West repeated his earlier offer of an internship at City Hall for Moto-Brock.

West told Moto-Brock he had to be extremely careful about not revealing “a part of my life I don’t share at all,” the transcripts show.

“Someday I may run for governor and this would be bad if you know what I mean.”

Oh, but it gets better, he's not just a closet queen and hypocrite, but his state for gay sex ran to the young side.

West tied to sex abuse in '70s, using office to lure young men

May 5, 2005

© The Spokesman-Review 2005

For a quarter century, the man who is now Spokane's mayor has used positions of public trust – as a sheriff's deputy, Boy Scout leader and powerful politician – to develop sexual relationships with boys and young men.

One man, Robert J. Galliher, claims in a court deposition that Jim West molested him in the mid-1970s when he was a boy and West was a Spokane County sheriff's deputy and Boy Scout leader.

A second man, Michael G. Grant Jr., also accuses West of sexual abuse during the same era, including an incident at Camp Cowles, a Boy Scout camp on Diamond Lake.

In addition, an investigation by The Spokesman-Review has revealed that 17 months after leaving the state Legislature, West has used the trappings of the mayor's office to entice and influence young men he met on a gay Web site.

On one recent occasion, West offered a man he believed to be an 18-year-old – whom he met online at Gay.com – gifts, favors and a City Hall internship, Internet dialogues retained by the newspaper reveal. The 18-year-old was actually a forensic computer expert working for the newspaper. (See related story.)

Last June, West went on a dinner date with another 18-year-old he met in the same gay chat room. The young man, initially unaware of his date's identity, paid for dinner, and then was allowed to drive West's blue Lexus convertible. The evening ended with consensual sex, the 18-year-old told the newspaper.

West, interviewed Wednesday evening at the newspaper, called the allegations leveled at him by Galliher and Grant "flat lies," but he admitted having private online relationships in the past year through Gay.com.

Asked if he had ever abused a child, he responded: "Never. Never. Absolutely not."

Asked about the claims of Galliher and Grant, West said, "I didn't abuse them. I don't know these people. I didn't abuse anybody, and I didn't have sex with anybody under 18 – ever – woman or man."

"My private life is my private life, and always has been," the mayor told two Spokesman-Review reporters and a photographer.

"There's been a strong wall between my public life and my private life," West said Wednesday.

He admitted offering an internship in his office, sports memorabilia he's collected, help with college admissions, and trips to sports events and Washington, D.C., to a man he believed was an 18-year-old he met online at Gay.com. But he emphatically said he didn't view those offers as "enticements to teenagers" or an abuse of his public office.

"Any kid in this town who walked into my office and filled out an application and could come to work, dressed properly and clean, could be an intern in my office," the mayor said.

Later, asked about his private life, he said: "I wouldn't characterize me as 'gay,' but he didn't distance himself from the term "bisexual."

"The Gay.com thing has only been, I can't recall, but it hasn't been very long," West later said when told the newspaper had learned about his online aliases "Cobra82nd" and "RightBi-Guy."
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In the lawsuit against the county, Galliher, his older brother Brett and two other men claim former Spokane County sheriff's Deputy David Hahn sexually molested them during the mid-'70s and early 1980s.

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While Galliher and Grant struggled with drug addiction and incarceration as adults, West moved on to become one of the most influential Republicans in the state – even talking privately to aides and fellow politicians about running for governor one day.

Galliher said he's "not really sure" why he hasn't publicly talked about West until now. In a June 2003 story in The Spokesman-Review, Galliher accused Hahn of molesting him at least 40 times, sometimes in the deputy's patrol car. Since that 2003 interview, Galliher joined the suit against the county.

"I was still afraid of him, West, for one," Galliher said last month near Seattle where he is living. "I mean, he held a pretty high job. Someone in my position really didn't want anything to do with him."

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Hahn used his service revolver to kill himself in his South Hill apartment on Aug. 28, 1981, after being confronted by sheriff's officials with accusations of pedophilia. He was 36.
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"I see a cop, and I run," he said. "I see cops, they're no good. To me, that's the way I've thought my whole life because if one cop will do that to you, who says the next one won't?"

"Now I'm big enough to stand up for my own self and there ain't nobody going to touch me like that again," he said. "Ain't nobody gonna touch my kids, ain't nobody going to touch none of them."

This, is of course, a shame. But the hypocrisy thing shines through like a diamond here. On one hand, a man who dates 18 year old boys and sleeps with them can, with a straight face, call themselves bisexual. Did no one notice he didn't have a wife? I mean, you have to have a wife to run for office, or so I thought. And that he always had a bunch of boys around him.

Come on.

But these stories will grow more and more common as the conflict between private and public lives become fodder for news.

posted by Steve @ 8:07:00 AM