Seattle Mayor Ed Murray resigns amid mounting sexual abuse allegations

  13 September 2017    Read: 1097
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray resigns amid mounting sexual abuse allegations
Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (D), embattled by child sex abuse allegations, will resign his post Wednesday.
Murray’s spokesman, William Lemke, told The Washington Post that the resignation takes effect at 5 p.m.

The announcement comes just hours after the Seattle Times reported new allegations that Murray sexually abused a relative in the 1970s. That relative, a cousin, was the fifth man to publicly accuse the mayor of sexual assault, the newspaper reported.

Murray continues to deny all the accusations.

“While the allegations against me are not true, it is important that my personal issues do not affect the ability of our City government to conduct the public’s business,” he said in a statement reported by the Times.

Elected mayor in 2013, Murray dropped his reelection bid in May, after the first four men claimed he had sexually abused them years earlier, when they were teenagers.

One of the men filed a lawsuit against the mayor in April, alleging that Murray “repeatedly criminally raped and molested” him when he was a homeless 15-year-old in the 1980s.

But Murray, a nationally known champion of gay rights and progressive causes, had resisted calls to resign.


More about: #Murray  


News Line