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      She Was Raped: The Enduring Trauma

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      More from our inbox:The Republican Attack on Our DemocracyThe Power of Physical Books  Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “I Am Breaking My Silence About the Baseball Player Who Raped Me,” by Kat O’Brien (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, June 20):Ms. O’Brien’s essay broke my heart. Why should she have to suffer for 18 years because a professional athlete raped her and she (probably completely accurately) believed that she had no recourse?How many more stories like this must we read before managers, executives, owners and players take seriously the fact that they create the culture that allows such behavior to happen? Were their wives, sisters or daughters working in professional sports, would they want them to be vulnerable to such a traumatizing experience?Professional sports, like the military, needs to take a hard look at what their indifference and even encouragement (showing porn films in the clubhouse!) are doing to women, maybe even the women they love.Edie LyckeSan Luis Obispo, Calif.To the Editor:Because Kat O’Brien opened up about her rape and the many ways it has constricted her life over the years, I feel finally able to include myself in the statistic that one in five women experience rape or attempted rape.I was lucky enough to escape the rape because of the intervention of another person. It was terrifying at the time, and I quit my summer job because I no longer felt safe coming home alone from work late at night. I lost weeks of income because of it. But, because I escaped with just a punch, a kick and broken glasses, I never thought of myself in terms of the rape statistics.I am sure that all women at various times in their lives fear for their physical safety when out in public or working at their job. What do we women have to do to get men, who seldom fear for their physical safety, to empathize with what it is like to live with that constant fear?Hazel LutzMinneapolisTo the Editor:Kat O’Brien’s piece on her rape and how it affected her entire life was incredibly powerful and brought me to tears. As a woman who came up in the advertising and publishing world in the ’80s and ’90s, I have my own stories and #MeToo moments that happened over and over again, and I applaud her for finally speaking her truth.I hope that coming out publicly about this horrible, life-changing experience will allow her to continue down the path of recovery.Lauren MichaelsVero Beach, Fla.To the Editor:Kat O’Brien’s disturbing account of being raped by a professional baseball player reminded me of an attempted rape when I was 15. I was tricked into being separated from the group at an after-dark beach party, and once out of sight, a schoolmate began to forcibly remove my clothes. I assured him that if he was trying to prove he was bigger and stronger than me, there was no contest, but he should keep in mind that my dad was the best shot in our county and “he knows where you live.”That jerk couldn’t wait to get back to the group, and I learned that the human brain responds faster to fear than anything else. I hope that other women will learn from my experience and conjure up an uncle in the police force or any other story that would instill fear in their attacker.Margaret CurtisAtlantaTo the Editor:Kat O’Brien describes an all-too-familiar story of violence against women followed by self-blame, shame and symptoms of PTSD. Oftentimes it is hard to seek psychological treatment, fearing that talking about what happened will only exacerbate the emotional pain. I hope that Ms. O’Brien’s courage in making public her victimization will help others reach out to friends and family and, if necessary, to seek psychological support.Larry S. SandbergNew YorkThe writer is a psychoanalyst.To the Editor:How many stories of rape or sexual harassment and their lifelong effects on the victims do we need to hear before we all say “it’s not your fault”? I don’t care if you were friendly. If you smiled. I don’t care if you had a few drinks. I don’t care if you looked sexy. If you wore a skirt that day. It’s not your fault.Joan SolotarNew YorkThe Republican Attack on Our DemocracyTo the Editor:The Republicans’ voter suppression, gerrymandering, reduction of voting places in urban minority areas, and baseless audits and challenges to the 2020 election results in Republican-led states are the greatest threat to our democracy since our country’s founding. And not a word of objection from most Republican leaders.I am reminded of a brief conversation recently with an immigrant repairman from Ukraine who has lived in the United States for many years and has his family here and relatives still in Ukraine. When asked if he fears for Ukraine these days, his response was swift: “No, I fear more for this country.”Ken GoldmanBeverly Hills, Calif.The Power of Physical BooksThe new location will offer new services, including food and drinks from a coffee bar.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “How ‘Hamilton’ Brought a Bookstore Back to Life” (Arts pages, June 7):The laudable actions of Lin-Manuel Miranda, the director Thomas Kail, the producer Jeffrey Seller and the theater owner James Nederlander in saving the Drama Book Shop in Manhattan for future generations of theater lovers, professional and amateur, serves as an affirmation of the immutable fact that being in a room surrounded by physical books is a powerful experience that sometimes magically leads to creative inspiration.So long as humans remain a material species and not a digital one, no number of downloaded texts invisibly stored in a hard drive can ever do the same.M.C. LangChevy Chase, Md. More

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      Hungary Adopts Child Sex Abuse Law That Also Targets LGBT Community

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      Legislation increasing sentences for pedophiles was changed to include restrictions on portrayals of homosexuality and transgender people that young people might see.BUDAPEST — Hungary’s Parliament voted on Tuesday to adopt legislation that would increase sentences for sex crimes against children, but critics say the law is being used to target the country’s L.G.B.T. community ahead of crunch elections for Prime Minister Viktor Orban next year.Last-minute changes to the bill, which was prompted by public outrage after a series of sex scandals involving governing party and government officials, included restrictions against showing or “popularizing” homosexuality and content that promotes a gender that diverges from the one assigned at birth.Mr. Orban’s critics say the changes were made to target the country’s L.G.B.T. community in an effort to rally support from his conservative base and shift the focus away from the failures of his administration ahead of elections in 2022.The new rules, unexpectedly added to the bill by government-aligned lawmakers last week, require the labeling of all content that might fall into that category of “not recommended for those under 18 years of age.” Such content would be restricted for media like television to the hours between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. The restrictions extend to advertisements and even sexual education, which the law would restrict to teachers and organizations approved by the government. The bill would also create a public database of sex offenders.Mr. Orban has increasingly presented himself as a protector of traditional Christian values, although that image has been undermined somewhat by the sex scandals involving officials and allies of his Fidesz party over the past few years.Last year, a Hungarian diplomat in Peru was convicted of possession of child pornography and handed an $1,800 fine and a suspended prison sentence after being brought home and charged in Hungary. That case, which sparked the public pressure on the legislature to enact stricter sentencing for pedophilia crimes, was just one in a series of scandals that has undermined public faith in Mr. Orban’s government.Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, center, at a Parliament session in Budapest last year.Tibor Illyes/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBefore Hungary’s 2019 municipal elections, a series of video clips released online by an anonymous source showed a prominent Fidesz mayor participating in an orgy on a yacht.The following year a Fidesz lawmaker in Brussels was detained after trying to escape out of a window and down a drainpipe when the police raided a party being held in violation of Covid restrictions that Belgian news media described as an all-male orgy.The last-minute additions to the legislation were criticized by human rights groups, including the Foundation for Rainbow Families, which promotes legal equality for all Hungarian families with children.“Fidesz does this to take the public conversation away from major happenings in the country,” said Krisztian Rozsa, a psychologist and board member with the foundation, citing corruption and the government’s responses to the pedophilia scandal and the coronavirus pandemic.Content providers such as RTL Klub, Hungary’s largest commercial television station, and the Hungarian Advertising Association have come out against the new law, saying the rules restrict them from depicting the diversity of society.“Children don’t need protection from exposure to diversity,” said Lydia Gall, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. “On the contrary, L.G.B.T. children and families need protection from discrimination and violence.”Linking the L.G.B.T. community to pedophilia is a tactic that may score Mr. Orban and his party points with conservative rural voters, many of whom, spurred on by a steady stream of government propaganda, see the government as a bulwark against the cosmopolitan liberalism symbolized by opposition political figures in the capital.Last year, the Fidesz-controlled Parliament enacted legislation that effectively bars gay couples from adopting children in Hungary through a narrow definition of the family as having to include a man as the father and a woman as the mother.Shaken by a bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic, a foreign policy pivot toward China and Russia that has angered his partners within the European Union, and increasing international isolation, Mr. Orban is facing a tough election campaign against a six-party opposition alliance.Balint Ruff, a political strategist, said the move to target the L.G.B.T. community was a “cynical and evil trap.” He added: “It’s a method used in authoritarian regimes to turn their citizens against each other for their own political gain.”It is not uncommon for someone who has spent their whole life in rural Hungary to have never met an openly gay person, Mr. Ruff said, adding that by inundating rural voters with conspiracies about gay propaganda taking over the world, Mr. Orban has found an effective tool for mobilizing voters.“The theme of the campaign will be liberal homosexual Budapest versus the normal people,” he said.By not supporting the new law, the opposition would be branded supporters of pedophilia for the duration of the campaign, Mr. Ruff said. But supporting the bill would betray more liberal voters who find linking pedophilia and the L.G.B.T. community deplorable.For those whose families are directly impacted by such laws, the effects hit closer to home.Mr. Rozsa, from the Foundation for Rainbow Families, said he was worried that bullying and exclusion among Hungarian teenagers would increase against those not seen as heterosexual — and also feared the implications of the governing party’s move for the children of same-sex couples who attend public schools.“Our kids are also going to be targeted,” Mr. Rozsa said. “Our kids have same-sex parents.” More

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      Hungary Adopts Child Sex Abuse Law That Also Targets L.G.B.T. Community

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      Legislation increasing sentences for pedophiles was changed to include restrictions on portrayals of homosexuality and transgender people that young people might see.BUDAPEST — Hungary’s Parliament voted on Tuesday to adopt legislation that would increase sentences for sex crimes against children, but critics say the law is being used to target the country’s L.G.B.T. community ahead of crunch elections for Prime Minister Viktor Orban next year.Last-minute changes to the bill, which was prompted by public outrage after a series of sex scandals involving governing party and government officials, included restrictions against showing or “popularizing” homosexuality and content that promotes a gender that diverges from the one assigned at birth.Mr. Orban’s critics say the changes were made to target the country’s L.G.B.T. community in an effort to rally support from his conservative base and shift the focus away from the failures of his administration ahead of elections in 2022.The new rules, unexpectedly added to the bill by government-aligned lawmakers last week, require the labeling of all content that might fall into that category of “not recommended for those under 18 years of age.” Such content would be restricted for media like television to the hours between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m. The restrictions extend to advertisements and even sexual education, which the law would restrict to teachers and organizations approved by the government. The bill would also create a public database of sex offenders.Mr. Orban has increasingly presented himself as a protector of traditional Christian values, although that image has been undermined somewhat by the sex scandals involving officials and allies of his Fidesz party over the past few years.Last year, a Hungarian diplomat in Peru was convicted of possession of child pornography and handed an $1,800 fine and a suspended prison sentence after being brought home and charged in Hungary. That case, which sparked the public pressure on the legislature to enact stricter sentencing for pedophilia crimes, was just one in a series of scandals that has undermined public faith in Mr. Orban’s government.Prime Minister Viktor Orban of Hungary, center, at a Parliament session in Budapest last year.Tibor Illyes/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesBefore Hungary’s 2019 municipal elections, a series of video clips released online by an anonymous source showed a prominent Fidesz mayor participating in an orgy on a yacht.The following year a Fidesz lawmaker in Brussels was detained after trying to escape out of a window and down a drainpipe when the police raided a party being held in violation of Covid restrictions that Belgian news media described as an all-male orgy.The last-minute additions to the legislation were criticized by human rights groups, including Foundation for Rainbow Families, which promotes legal equality for all Hungarian families with children.“Fidesz does this to take the public conversation away from major happenings in the country,” said Krisztian Rozsa, a psychologist and board member with the foundation, citing corruption and the government’s responses to the pedophilia scandal and the coronavirus pandemic.Content providers such as RTL Klub, Hungary’s largest commercial television station, and the Hungarian Advertising Association have come out against the new law, saying the rules restrict them from depicting the diversity of society.“Children don’t need protection from exposure to diversity,” said Lydia Gall, a senior researcher with Human Rights Watch. “On the contrary, L.G.B.T. children and families need protection from discrimination and violence.”Linking the L.G.B.T. community to pedophilia is a tactic that may score Mr. Orban and his party points with conservative rural voters, many of whom, spurred on by a steady stream of government propaganda, see the government as a bulwark against the cosmopolitan liberalism symbolized by opposition political figures in the capital.Last year, the Fidesz-controlled Parliament enacted legislation that effectively bars gay couples from adopting children in Hungary through a narrow definition of the family as having to include a man as the father and a woman as the mother.Shaken by a bungled response to the coronavirus pandemic, a foreign policy pivot toward China and Russia that has angered his partners within the European Union, and increasing international isolation, Mr. Orban is facing a tough election campaign against a six-party opposition alliance.Balint Ruff, a political strategist, said the move to target the L.G.B.T. community was a “cynical and evil trap.” He added: “It’s a method used in authoritarian regimes to turn their citizens against each other for their own political gain.”It is not uncommon for someone who has spent their whole life in rural Hungary to have never met an openly gay person, Mr. Ruff said, adding that by inundating rural voters with conspiracies about gay propaganda taking over the world, Mr. Orban has found an effective tool for mobilizing voters.“The theme of the campaign will be liberal homosexual Budapest versus the normal people,” he said.By not supporting the new law, the opposition would be branded supporters of pedophilia for the duration of the campaign, Mr. Ruff said. But supporting the bill would betray more liberal voters who find linking pedophilia and the L.G.B.T. community deplorable.For those whose families are directly impacted by such laws, the effects hit closer to home.Mr. Rozsa, from the Foundation for Rainbow Families, said he was worried that bullying and exclusion among Hungarian teenagers would increase against those not seen as heterosexual — and also feared the implications of the governing party’s move for the children of same-sex couples who attend public schools.“Our kids are also going to be targeted,” Mr. Rozsa said. “Our kids have same-sex parents.” More

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      Anthony Weiner’s Not Coming Back. But He Has Nowhere to Go.

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      The man who was almost New York’s mayor talks about the current campaign, selling tweets and why he feels bad for the media.Anthony Weiner doesn’t pay the kind of attention to New York politics that he did back when he was running for mayor, twice, before the exchange of messages with a 15-year-old that sent him to federal prison.He was good on the campaign trail, though. He was the one Mike Bloomberg worried about and spent millions trying to deny the nomination in 2009. Mr. Weiner was a kind of test subject, too, for the sort of media and social media storms that destroyed his 2013 mayoral campaign, and are now just how politics is.So I was curious what he thought of the current campaign, which is entering its final weeks. It is, as always, a brutally revealing moment for the candidates, for the media, for the psyche of the city. I persuaded Mr. Weiner to watch last Wednesday’s debate after his twice-weekly hockey game. By the time we met last Thursday at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square, he had the energy of a star on the bench who knows what he’d do if he were back out there.First, he said that if he were onstage, he’d break with the escalating sense of panic about New York’s future that has consumed the campaign.“All right, let’s dial down the apocalypse. Let’s relax, everybody,” he’d say. “It’s going to be all right if we make some smart decisions.”And then he’d throw some punches. He said he was “surprised at how relatively undisciplined the candidates were.” He watched Eric Adams meander through an attack on Andrew Yang and thought about what candidate Weiner would have said: “Are you from Philadelphia?”He has also been surprised about how little heat the former aides to Mayor Bill de Blasio, Maya Wiley and Kathryn Garcia, have taken. “How come no one says, ‘Anyone who worked for that administration should have to shower for four years to clean this thing off.’”He was also puzzled by how an unverified allegation against Scott Stringer derailed his campaign, and about the way the claim seemed to break out ahead of any attempt to verify it.“This is not a thing I’m in any position to be commenting on,” Mr. Weiner said. But “that doesn’t feel right.” (He was speaking before Katie Glueck, of The New York Times, reported a second allegation on Friday.)But Anthony Weiner, now 56, isn’t in politics any more. The barista at the third-floor cafe didn’t even recognize him. “I’d be really good as a campaign manager,” he said, but of course no politician would be caught dead even speaking to him. He said he had given some informal advice to mayoral campaigns, though, “I don’t talk about which ones, because it would hurt them.” They won’t even take his money.Ten years ago Mr. Weiner was a new kind of public figure, a congressman who had become a national star in the hyperpartisan terrain of cable news, and who used social media fluently for authentic, direct connections with supporters and the media. My former colleague at BuzzFeed News Matt Berman called him the most important politician of the 2010s, a man who “helped create social media politics, fully embraced it, and was quickly swallowed by it.”Then Mr. Weiner became a character out of a Philip Roth novel. His scandals all played out through digital media, driven by an inexplicable compulsion to exchange sexts with women who liked him for his politics.He resigned from Congress in 2011 after conservative media, led by Andrew Breitbart, caught him at it. He was leading in the polls in 2013 when I brought him the news that a young woman in Indiana, Sydney Leathers, was sharing their explicit photos and messages, and his campaign fell apart as she literally pursued him around Manhattan, all under the watchful eye of a documentary crew.Sydney Leathers, who was involved in a sexting scandal with Mr. Weiner, turned up at his election night party on primary day, Sept. 10, 2013.Michael Appleton for The New York TimesHe says that, even at the time, he knew in the back of his head that the 2013 campaign was doomed. “I was famous for being famous, and I was a candidate because I had been a candidate, and I had all this money from past campaigns,” he said. But, he said, he had “too many struggles, too much self-loathing.”Lately, the news that Mr. Weiner said he has been following “with some interest” is the story of Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican who is currently trying to brazen out allegations that he paid young women, possibly including an underage girl, for sex. Mr. Weiner said that people tell him all the time that, in 2011 and again in 2013, “you never should have quit.”But the sort of media and social media storm he was in the middle of felt new then. “We didn’t know what we were working with at the time, and I was lying to everyone around me,” he said.And after he left public life in 2013, he slipped from compulsion into crime, and the saga broadened from damage to his own life to the nation’s. In January 2016, he began exchanging explicit messages with a 15-year-old girl. After the texts were reported in September 2016, prosecutors seized his laptop computer. And then, 11 days before the presidential election, the F.B.I. director, James Comey, wrote a letter to Congress saying that new emails discovered on Mr. Weiner’s computer had prompted him to reopen the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.Weeks later, as Democrats tried to understand how Donald J. Trump had been elected president, Mr. Weiner came in for some of the blame. He was the butterfly who flapped his, er, wings and led to the election of Mr. Trump. Mr. Weiner said he believes, in retrospect, that there were larger forces at play in that campaign and that if it hadn’t been the emails, Mr. Trump’s supporters would have seized on something else. And indeed, Trump-like figures have been elected all over the world. It wasn’t just Mr. Weiner.But his own skepticism that he was the fatal butterfly “is complicated by the fact that that’s what Hillary thinks,” he said. (“I wouldn’t call it a net positive,” a spokesman for Mrs. Clinton, Nick Merrill, told me.)His life hit bottom in 2017, when he was sentenced to 21 months in prison for transferring obscene material to a minor. He served 15 months in a federal prison in Massachusetts, and three more in a Bronx halfway house. His compulsion destroyed his career and his marriage to Huma Abedin, a senior aide to Mrs. Clinton. And it has left him nearly unemployable, and officially labeled a sex offender.Mr. Weiner has spent most of the last year running a Brooklyn company called IceStone, which makes environmentally sustainable countertops. He put in place a policy of offering job interviews to formerly incarcerated people. He’s now in the process of stepping down as chief executive, he said, to try to turn the company into a “worker-run cooperative.” He and Ms. Abedin, who still works for Mrs. Clinton, are finalizing their divorce, but they live down the hall from each other in the same apartment building. Mr. Weiner is in a 12-step program for sex addiction, and one of its conditions is that he not talk about it. His life, he said, largely revolves around their 9-year-old son..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}Sometimes people tell him he should try to “change the narrative” about himself. But there’s no point. There’s no route back to public life for him. “‘The narrative’ implies you’re telling a story,” he said. “To what end?” The exception, he said, is that his agent has shopped a book about sex addiction, which he said he hoped could help other people in his position.Mr. Weiner’s notoriety, and his sex offender status, will make it pretty hard for him to find another job. “It’s very narrow — the places that I can work without having The New York Post just make everyone’s life miserable,” he said.Mr. Weiner enters the federal court in New York for his sentencing hearing in September 2017.Andres Kudacki/Associated PressBut he said he has also been wondering whether he can parlay his notoriety into something new. People sometimes yell at him from passing cars (and on Twitter), “Where’s your laptop?!” The device, which is in his closet, was ultimately not found to contain anything incriminating about Mrs. Clinton. But it retains a certain infamy.“I’m wondering if I should call up the MyPillow guy and offer to sell him the laptop,” he mused, referring to Mike Lindell, the bedding entrepreneur and Trump loyalist who has promoted wild theories about the Clintons.He is thinking more seriously — really seriously — about the 2021 version of that transaction: getting into the booming business of digital collectibles, known as nonfungible tokens or NFTs, and starting with some of his own holdings.“If you do believe in this butterfly effect, I’ve got the butterfly’s wings and its antennas,” he said. He could make an NFT, he said, of the errant tweet that began his long spiral in 2011. He could make an NFT of the search warrant for his laptop, or of the email his old friend, the comedian Jon Stewart, wrote to apologize for making fun of his troubles, or of the check that Mr. Trump wrote to one of his earlier campaigns.“Cashing in would be nice,” he said. But he also wonders if he could make a career of it — “to sell my own stuff but also to create a new category that lets people buy and sell political collectibles as a form of political fund-raising and contributing.”(I was a little incredulous, but bounced the idea off a few cryptocurrency enthusiasts at the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami this weekend. They liked the idea.)And why not? It’s not really clear what else Anthony Weiner can do. We don’t live in a moment with much room for redemption — even if, like Mr. Weiner, you’ve served hard time for your sins. It’s hard to know what society wants from someone like him.I played my own small part in Mr. Weiner’s demise. After calling to tell him we’d identified Sydney Leathers, I edited the story that named her and helped end his mayoral campaign. Three weeks later, I interviewed Mr. Weiner onstage at a raucous bar in Chelsea. I asked him mischievously why he hadn’t used Snapchat for his sexting, so the messages would have disappeared. He winced; the audience laughed. In retrospect, I wince a little, too. The guy was obviously suffering, as the judge would later say at his sentencing, from “a very strong compulsion.” I asked him what he made of the lack of empathy he found in journalists like me when his life fell apart.“Journalists, even in their best moments, are what their readers are and what their readers want. Any momentary thing — there’s got to be a lot of pressure on you to be writing it,” he said.“I don’t know how you guys do it,” Mr. Weiner said, invoking the Yiddish word that can mean empathy or pity. “I have rachmones for you guys.” More

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      Anthony Bouchard Says He Impregnated 14-Year-Old When He Was 18

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      A Wyoming state senator who is challenging Representative Liz Cheney in the 2022 Republican primary acknowledged this week that when he was 18, he had sex with a 14-year-old girl — which is statutory rape in many states — and that she became pregnant.The state senator, Anthony Bouchard, made the disclosure in a Facebook Live video posted on Thursday and in a subsequent interview with The Casper Star-Tribune, saying that the girl gave birth to a son “more than 40 years ago” in Florida and that he married the girl after she turned 15.She died by suicide a few years later, after they had divorced and she had entered another relationship, Mr. Bouchard said.Mr. Bouchard sought to downplay his actions, saying in his video, “She was a little younger than me, so it’s like the Romeo and Juliet story.” But under current Florida law, his actions would be illegal.Because he did not specify the year he impregnated the girl, it is not clear what Florida’s laws were at the time.Mr. Bouchard said he went public with the story after a newspaper reached out to him. In the Star-Tribune interview, he blamed a “political opposition research company” for spreading it.He used his video to highlight his stance against abortion, saying he and the girl had resisted pressure to terminate the pregnancy.There was “a lot of pressure, pressure to abort a baby, I got to tell you,” he said in the 13-minute video. “I wasn’t going to do it, and neither was she. And there was pressure to have her banished from their family. Just pressure. Pressure to go hide somewhere. And the only thing I could see as the right thing to do was to get married and take care of him.”Mr. Bouchard is one of several Republicans who have said they will challenge Ms. Cheney, who was kicked out of her House leadership position this month for criticizing former President Donald J. Trump and saying she would do everything possible to ensure he was not the Republican Party’s presidential nominee in 2024.Mr. Bouchard was first elected to the State Senate in 2017 to represent the Laramie County area. He is a gun-rights activist who owns a septic system cleaning business with his wife, according to his official biography. More

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      Scott Stringer Is Accused of Sexual Assault

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      Jean Kim said Mr. Stringer assaulted her when she worked on his campaign 20 years ago and warned her not to tell anyone. He denied the allegation.A woman who said she worked on a 2001 campaign for Scott M. Stringer, the New York City comptroller who is now running for mayor, has accused him of sexually assaulting her 20 years ago.The woman, Jean Kim, now a political lobbyist, said at a news conference on Wednesday that Mr. Stringer, without her consent, “repeatedly groped me, put his hands on my thighs and between my legs and demanded to know why I would not have sex with him.”She said that Mr. Stringer warned her not to tell anyone about his advances, some of which she said took place during taxi rides.Mr. Stringer strenuously denied the allegations, and said that he and Ms. Kim had a consensual relationship over the course of a few months.Roughly two hours after Ms. Kim’s news conference ended, Mr. Stringer convened his own. Standing with his wife outside their Lower Manhattan apartment building Wednesday afternoon, he repeatedly characterized Ms. Kim’s allegations as “false” and “inaccurate.”“Sexual harassment is unacceptable,” he told a gaggle of reporters. “I believe women have the right and should be encouraged to come forward. They must be heard. But this isn’t me. I didn’t do this. I am going to fight for the truth because these allegations are false.”After he spoke, his wife, Elyse Buxbaum, came to the microphone and attested to her husband’s character.Ms. Kim said Mr. Stringer, who was then a state assemblyman running for New York City public advocate, had offered to make her the first Asian Democratic Party district leader on the Upper West Side, with one proviso.“You would have to prove yourself to me,” she recalled Mr. Stringer saying.Ms. Kim said she did not come forward earlier because she was “fearful of his vindictive nature and that he would retaliate against me and destroy my career in politics.” Her lawyer said that Ms. Kim faced less of a risk now that she was transitioning away from political work.Ms. Kim’s account, which was reported by Gothamist, comes roughly eight weeks before the June 22 mayoral primary. In the limited early polling that is available, Mr. Stringer is often in third place, behind Andrew Yang, the 2020 presidential candidate, and just behind Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president.Mr. Stringer denied the allegations on Wednesday, appearing with his wife at a news conference in Manhattan.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesMr. Stringer’s campaign had recently started to gain more steam, as he won the endorsements of the United Federation of Teachers and the Working Families Party, as well as one of two endorsements from the New York chapter of Sunrise Movement, a group of young climate activists. “The Momentum Continues to Build” was a headline in a recent email his campaign sent to the news media.People who had spoken with Mr. Stringer’s team in recent days described a sense of having turned the corner after months of struggling to break through in a crowded primary field. But among allies and others in touch with his campaign, there was concern that the accusation would damage his chances.Indeed, by late Wednesday, he had lost the backing of State Senator Jessica Ramos, one of the earliest supporters of his mayoral campaign.“I am officially rescinding my endorsement of Scott Stringer for mayor,” she said. “This kind of behavior is unacceptable in any workplace, and those who have perpetrated such acts must be held accountable for their actions, not given bigger platforms.”In Ms. Kim’s remarks on Wednesday, she said that she met Mr. Stringer, who was not married at the time, in 2001, through an introduction by Eric Schneiderman, who was then a state senator. Mr. Schneiderman would go on to become New York State attorney general, before resigning amid allegations that he abused women.Mr. Schneiderman, who admitted to the misconduct, did not return requests for comment.Ms. Kim said that she was an unpaid intern for Mr. Stringer’s 2001 campaign for public advocate; Mr. Stringer later said that she was a campaign volunteer. At some point that year, she joined a West Side Democratic club in which he was involved.Mr. Stringer “inappropriately and relentlessly pursued a sexual relationship with me,” she said, adding in a statement that he “kissed me using his tongue, put his hand down my pants and groped me inside my underpants.”She said she decided to come forward because she was sickened by Mr. Stringer’s run for mayor, and his portrayal of himself as an ally to women.“I am coming forward now because being forced to see him in my living room TV every day, pretending to be a champion for women’s rights, just sickens me when I know the truth,” Ms. Kim said.She called on Mr. Stringer to resign and withdraw from the mayor’s race.Mr. Stringer said his relationship with Ms. Kim was friendly until 2013, when she wanted a job on his campaign for comptroller and did not get one. Mr. Stringer also said that Ms. Kim had donated to his political campaigns..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-1dg6kl4{margin-top:5px;margin-bottom:15px;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}#masthead-bar-one{display:none;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-1rh1sk1{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-1rh1sk1 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-1rh1sk1 em{font-style:italic;}.css-1rh1sk1 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;text-decoration-color:#ccd9e3;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:visited{color:#333;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#ccc;text-decoration-color:#ccc;}.css-1rh1sk1 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“Based on my understanding, she did not apply for any job on his 2013 campaign,” said Ms. Kim’s lawyer, Patricia Pastor, who said that it was part of Ms. Kim’s job as a lobbyist to make small donations to candidates.Ms. Kim, seen at a news conference with her lawyer, called on Mr. Stringer to resign as city comptroller and resign from the mayor’s race.Gabriela Bhaskar for The New York TimesStephen Levin, a Brooklyn councilman, said he had known Ms. Kim a long time professionally, and described her as a “a very nice, very good person.”“For someone like Jean, her entire career is in New York City politics,” said Mr. Levin, who is backing one of Mr. Stringer’s opponents, Maya Wiley. “So I have no reason to believe that she’s not telling the truth. Just like in elected office, for a lobbyist, your credibility is the most important thing.”Mr. Stringer, who has spent decades in politics, has cast himself as an ardent progressive in recent years. In the mayoral election, some observers view him as the most viable of the three left-wing options, along with Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, and Ms. Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio.Ms. Morales was the first mayoral candidate to issue a statement condemning Mr. Stringer. She and other candidates — Ms. Wiley; Mr. Adams; Mr. Yang; and the former Wall Street banker Raymond J. McGuire — all expressed solidarity with Ms. Kim.Kathryn Garcia, another mayoral candidate and the former sanitation commissioner, called on Mr. Stringer to drop out of the race. So, too, did Shaun Donovan, a mayoral candidate and former federal housing secretary.Ms. Garcia noted that Mr. Stringer backs a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment and that in March, he called for Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, who is facing several sexual harassment allegations, to resign.Mr. Stringer said that he believed his situation bore no resemblance to Mr. Cuomo’s.“The allegations against Governor Cuomo are serious and multiple and they are in the workplace,” Mr. Stringer said. “I don’t think we are in the same situation.”Several supporters of Mr. Stringer’s mayoral campaign — State Senators Alessandra Biaggi and Julia Salazar and Assemblywoman Yuh-Line Niou — issued a joint statement demanding “accountability.”“As survivors of childhood sexual assault, we believe survivors,” they said. “Our commitment to a harassment-free government, workplace, and society is steadfast, and our zero tolerance standard regarding sexual assault applies to abusers like Andrew Cuomo, if not more so, to our friends.”State Senator Liz Krueger, a Manhattan Democrat, said that she had dealt with Ms. Kim in a professional capacity.“I was surprised and disturbed,” said Ms. Krueger, who has not yet endorsed a candidate in the mayor’s race. “There’s no reason for me not to think of Ms. Kim as a credible person.”“Maybe it’s time for us to stop voting for men,” she added. 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      In a Changing Boston, a New Mayor Challenges the Police

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      Three weeks into her tenure as Boston’s acting mayor, Kim Janey has done something her predecessor did not: order the police to release documents about a leader accused of sexual abuse.BOSTON — Three weeks after her swearing-in as acting mayor of Boston, Kim Janey was enjoying a sort of honeymoon, enacting feel-good policies like forgiving library fines and basking in the spotlight that came with her status as the city’s first Black and first female mayor.Though she had landed the position in part by happenstance — she was City Council president when her predecessor, Martin J. Walsh, was tapped to be secretary of labor — Ms. Janey has moved slowly and deliberately to build her political profile, taking her place on the growing list of Black women running major U.S. cities.That cautious approach ended last Saturday, when Ms. Janey found herself responding to a police scandal.A report in The Boston Globe reviewed the handling of sex abuse allegations involving Patrick M. Rose, 66, the former president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, the largest and most muscular of the city’s three major police unions.The police, The Globe reported, had allowed Mr. Rose to serve for more than two decades after a 12-year-old accused him of sexual assault. Though the victim ultimately recanted and the criminal case was closed, an internal affairs investigation by the police subsequently found he had most likely broken the law.Those allegations resurfaced last year, when another child came forward, alleging abuse between the ages of 7 and 12, followed by four more victims. Mr. Rose was ultimately charged with more than 30 counts of sexual abuse of children.Patrick M. Rose, former president of the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association, served on the police force for two decades after a 12-year-old accused him of sexual assault.Jessica Rinaldi/The Boston Globe, via Associated PressMr. Rose maintains his innocence, both in the 1995 charges and in the more recent ones, said his lawyer, William J. Keefe.Ms. Janey, one of six candidates running for election in November, was faced with a choice: Should she keep the internal police records private, as Mayor Walsh, her predecessor in City Hall, had, citing the victims’ desire for privacy?Or should she take the path urged by fellow progressives in the City Council, demanding that the police release the records to the public — and risk unsettling the victims and poisoning her relationship with the powerful police union? This week, Ms. Janey’s choice became clear.“As a mother and as a grandmother I was heartbroken and angry to learn nothing was done to keep Mr. Rose away from children, or to terminate him, for that matter,” she said. “Transparency cannot wait any longer.”Her decision points to a larger political calculus, said Daniel Medwed, a law professor at Northeastern University.“She has probably made the calculation that she is better off without the police, which is amazing,” he said. “Because the support of the police is, to some extent, code for the support of white voters in Boston.”This election will provide a snapshot of a city undergoing rapid change, as professionals move into neighborhoods once dominated by middle-income Irish-American and Italian-American families.Though Boston’s white population had dipped to 44 percent by 2017, white voters historically turn out in far greater numbers in city elections, and police union endorsements, telegraphed early in the race, were signals to them.This year, however, “none of the top-tier candidates are shopping for police support,” said Erin O’Brien, a professor at University of Massachusetts Boston.A poll released on Wednesday by WBUR and MassINC, a polling group, found that 46 percent of voters were still undecided. But it identified two front-runners — City Councilor Michelle Wu, with 19 percent support, and Ms. Janey, with 18 percent — who are both outspoken proponents of policing reform.Describing the way politicians viewed the police in the past, Dr. O’Brien said, “It’s like the boogeyman, in some ways — ‘don’t cross the police, don’t cross the police’ — well, no one’s done it, they’re afraid of them.” Rachael Rollins beat a prosecutor with police backing when she was elected Suffolk County district attorney in 2018.Cody O’Loughlin for The New York TimesBut recent elections suggest the clout of the police is waning, she said, pointing to the 2018 upset win of Rachael Rollins, a progressive, as district attorney in Boston, over a longtime prosecutor with police backing. Dr. O’Brien compared the union’s political clout to the Wizard of Oz, who appears formidable but only from a distance.“They have a lot of power until the curtain gets pulled,” she said. “The question is whether the curtain has already been pulled.”The internal affairs file on Mr. Rose, which will be made public early next week, should shed light on the decision to return him to street duty after a 12-year-old came forward with an allegation of sexual abuse.Although the victim’s complaint was dropped, ending the first criminal prosecution, a subsequent internal affairs investigation by the police, which uses the lower legal standard of preponderance of the evidence, found he had broken the law, according to The Globe.The findings should have been forwarded to the department’s legal adviser and the police commissioner at the time, Paul F. Evans, who would determine a punishment, said Daniel Linskey, a former superintendent in chief of the Boston Police, who is now a managing director at Kroll, a security consultancy firm.Mr. Linskey said he supported Mayor Janey’s decision to make the files public, which he said could help “restore trust and integrity in the system.”He added that, as far as he knows, police officers are not rallying to Mr. Rose’s defense.“I don’t think the police union is going to die on the hill for this one,” he said. “There is no rallying cry behind Pat on this because the information to date seems to indicate that there is some substance to the charges.”Mr. Keefe, Mr. Rose’s lawyer, said his client did not pressure any witness to withdraw the charges.“He denies anyone was pressured to do anything,” he said.A police spokesperson referred The New York Times to the mayor’s statement. An official at the Boston Police Patrolmen’s Association did not respond to requests for comment.The Rose case is only one of the thorny police matters that Mayor Janey inherited, including the fact that the department has no permanent commissioner. Though Mr. Walsh appointed one, a veteran officer named Dennis White, he was placed on paid leave after The Globe reported that he had threatened to shoot his wife, also a Boston police officer, and was later ordered to stay away from his family.Many of the legal structures governing Boston’s police, like overtime rules and disciplinary practices, are outside the direct authority of the mayor, determined in collective bargaining between the city and the unions.Still, Mr. Walsh, before leaving office, had embarked on new steps to increase oversight of police, including creating a new Office of Police Accountability, which includes a civilian review board.Thomas Nolan, who served as a Boston police officer for 27 years and is now an associate professor at Emmanuel College, said Boston could follow the lead of cities like Oakland, Calif., or Chicago, which have increased civilian control over policing.“It may come to a point where we scratch our head and say, ‘Do you know there was a time when they let the police investigate themselves for wrongdoing?’” he said. “The accountability will come when they can’t basically absolve their own people of wrongdoing.” More