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Two Wisconsin state legislators, Chris Taylor and Melissa Sargent, are going to jump into a lake in solidarity with sexual assault survivors

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There are eight Democratic candidates who are actively seeking the Democratic Party’s nomination in the race for Governor of Wisconsin. Seven of them are candidates that I believe are capable of defeating Scott Walker, should any one of them win the Democratic nomination. The other is Matt Flynn, a former chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin who, as an attorney, helped cover-up sexual abuse committed by priests of the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee.
I strongly believe that Flynn is completely unelectable as a statewide candidate in Wisconsin, because of the fact that he helped cover-up sex abuse committed by Catholic priests and because of his belligerent attitude toward those who stand with victims of sexual assault and have the courage to publicly criticize Flynn because of his role in enabling pervert priests. For example, Flynn has publicly called for those who have called for Flynn to end his gubernatorial bid to “jump in a lake”.
Two members of the Wisconsin State Assembly, Chris Taylor and Melissa Sargent, both of whom are progressive Democrats, have bravely stood up against Flynn, including jointly writing this op-ed for The Cap Times, an alternative newspaper based in their hometown of Madison. In their joint op-ed, this is how they described Flynn’s actions while an attorney representing the Archdiocese of Milwaukee:
Media accounts in May that referenced Flynn’s role in one of the largest coverups of priest child sexual abuse in the country by the Milwaukee Archdiocese and his treatment of the victims spurred us to do our own research.
What we discovered when looking at the electronic files of a handful of priests, consisting of hundreds of documents (thousands more remain that we didn’t review, but are publicly available), was that Flynn played a central role in facilitating the cover-up of priest sexual abuse of children. As chief legal counsel to the Milwaukee Archdiocese from 1989-2004, Flynn was aware of priests’ sexual abuse of children, assisted in transferring abusive priests to other parishes, failed to — and sometimes prevented others from — reporting instances of child sexual abuse by priests to law enforcement, paid off priests who went on to pursue professions working with families and children, negotiated settlements with victims requiring secrecy, and filed liens against survivors whose cases fell outside the statute of limitations. We drafted a memo detailing just a portion of these findings. Some of our findings were also independently corroborated by media reports.
It is important to note that Taylor and Sargent are not gubernatorial candidates, and that they have not endorsed a gubernatorial candidate. However, I strongly commend Taylor and Sargent for standing up for victims of sexual abuse and for their role in being willing to publicly condemn a member of their own party because of his horrific record in covering-up sexual abuse. If Flynn is going to tell his critics to jump in a lake, well, Taylor and Sargent are going to literally jump into a lake tomorrow in solidarity with survivors of sexual assault:

Taylor and Sargent have recommended that people who are not going to attend the jump into a lake event in the Madison, Wisconsin area donate to the Rape Crisis Center that serves Dane County, Wisconsin; since I don't have any money to donate to any organization of any kind, here's a webpage where you can donate money to the Rape Crisis Center in Dane County, Wisconsin.
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