I’ve been following the many sordid stories about former Maine senatorial candidate Graham Platner, a trash-stashed, communist “oyster farmer” who apparently has been undone by a series of ugly stories about his behavior, including allegations of rape. Oh boy.
I’m not going to list the many bizarre and strange things he’s said and done. You can Google it. As for the rape allegations, that’s exactly my point. They are only allegations at this point.
As of today, two women have publicly accused him of sexual misbehavior and violence, and it brought his campaign down. The first accusation came from Lyndsey Fifield, a former girlfriend, who claimed in a New York Times article that he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom, and held the door shut so she couldn’t get out. She called him the most toxic, abusive man on earth. Pretty ugly stuff. But her accusation didn’t sink him. The media passed it off as, well, she’s a Republican operative or something. Good grief.
The next woman, Jenny Racicot, was featured in a Politico article. She said she also dated Platner, and claimed he showed up at her house drunk and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. After the encounter, she broke off all contact with him. Platner denies that anything non-consensual happened. Racicot is progressive, so some people are claiming bias in reverse. And Jesus. Settle down.
Because of what I’ve been through, friends have asked what I think about all this. Rape is a serious charge. It requires serious evidence. I have no way of knowing if either woman is telling the truth, and neither does anyone posting about it. His past public statements and verified behavior suggest a pattern that makes the allegations seem more plausible. But plausible isn’t proof. I don’t know what happened. Neither do you.
Everything I’ve read about this guy makes him look messy, maybe creepy, maybe a drunk creep. But I don’t think he should have resigned. He hasn’t been formally charged. He hasn’t had a chance to legally defend himself. Let it work out through the courts. That would have been the right move.
I also don’t believe a good argument is “Well, Trump is a dirty pig, with more baggage than a Kardashian on vacation, so we have Platner.” It’s true, but it’s also not the point.
Let me sort this a bit more. I think it’s legitimate that he lost the confidence of his party. That’s their prerogative, whatever the reasons. For the same reason, the Minnesota Renaissance Festival was under no legal obligation to keep me on contract after I was accused.
But they didn’t believe the allegations. They worked with my legal team, providing documents important to my defense. That was the right thing to do. They had no legal obligation to keep me on contract. But didn’t they have a moral one? If you believe someone who works for you is innocent, shouldn’t you spend both social and financial capital to make that case, instead of just walking away?
Their insurance company wouldn’t allow me back on site. So what. Find another insurance company after I’m acquitted. This is the same insurance company my wife spent hours with, going over every detail, every piece of the story. At the end of one day, they told her this was little more than a nuisance lawsuit. They said they saw no evidence that suggested I was guilty. They said this is where they spend most of their time, on bullshit lawsuits that are, by design, about getting money.
Take this a step further. Instead of taking a principled, moral stand and defending me, the festival settled all the claims out of court. No lawsuit was ever filed. Only the threat of one. Two women performers and my accuser were given substantial amounts of money. To be clear, “substantial” in my estimation is anything more than a dollar. But they got a lot more than a dollar. I have no idea how much. Whatever it was, it was too much.
To seal the deal, the festival admitted no wrongdoing. The women were paid. They’re no longer allowed to perform or appear in costume at the festival. I was no longer on contract, though there was no agreement, no stipulation, that I wasn’t allowed to visit or attend.
This is a bad outcome for me, and it rewards connivers with cash. It further destroyed my reputation and the festival’s. And in the end, there’s no admission of wrongdoing on anyone’s part? How does that happen?
They should have stuck it out through the trial. Then, after I was exonerated, told my accuser’s attorney eat shit, and maybe even invited me back to work. Sure, it would have been controversial, and there’s a good chance I wouldn’t return, but it feels more, righteous. I didn’t break any laws. I didn’t attack or hurt anyone. I was smeared, and of all the people in this story, I deserved better. That would have been a principled outcome, not a practical one.
After I was acquitted, I joked with someone on the festival’s management team that the quickest way to get rid of the worst performers and crafters at the show would be to bring me back. It would be an exodus of the idiotic. Bring out the confetti.
Graham Platner, like me, is innocent until proven otherwise. In my case, there was no trail of evidence, no ugly texts, no drunk behavior, no social media posts, no police reports, no complaints. A jury found me not guilty, with little deliberation, and sustained my claim of innocence. Platner hasn’t had that chance yet. If I were him, I’d want a trial. I’d stand behind my word that I was innocent. I wouldn’t leave the race. And I’d tell the establishment to go to hell.
But the institutions that hire us need to stop waving the white flag at the first sign of trouble. I know. I know. It’s not that easy. It’s a risk calculation. But like so many things in life, that calculation should be biased in favor of truth. If everything comes down to a cost-benefit analysis, morality rarely wins. Backing people we believe are innocent is potentially costly. Sometimes we get it wrong. But if institutions wait for the investigation to run its course before they act, then people like me don’t get crushed in the process of paying off the loudest voice in the room.
I know I’m oversimplifying it. Juries are unpredictable, and had I been found guilty, the insurance company would likely have had to fork over millions. The festival was in a difficult spot, but, again, given the paucity of incriminating evidence, and the abundant and available evidence that I didn’t do this, I wonder what would have happened had they waited, and publicly supported me. We’ll never know.
Today, social media is full of people yammering about rape. They’re accusing the women of lying. They’re accusing Platner of lying. They’re saying the establishment bailed on him because he was sinking in the polls. Creepy. Rape. Rape. Rape. Put up or shut up. It seems to me our political class is increasingly being run by children, our media has no depth perception, and the adults have left the room.
Maybe it’s a little foolish to say you should stand by your word. Let the voters decide. Let the jury decide. Quit listening to mewing mobs. Patience.
The last people who should be deciding the outcome of this mess are the politicians who backed him through thick and thin, until now. You owe it to the accuser and the accused to act on principle, not the polls. And somewhere, an insurance adjuster closed a file years ago, called it a nuisance, and a folder with my name on it went into the drawer right behind it.
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