The Seattle Times just dropped a bombshell: Several men are accusing Mayor Ed Murray of sexually abusing them and paying them for sex when they were teenagers. A spokesman for Murray denied the accusations, saying Murray is the victim of an attempted election-year shakedown.

The extensive Times piece details the accusations of three men: Jeff Simpson, Lloyd Anderson, and a man only identified as “D.H.” D.H., who now lives in Kent, filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Murray, claiming Murray “raped and molested him” starting when D.H. was a 15-year-old drop out in 1986 in Seattle. Simpson and Anderson claim to have never had contact with D.H.

Shortly before the accusations—some of which the Times says were first levied against Murray in 2007 but never made public—came to light on Thursday, a press conference to discuss police reform was abruptly cancelled—so abruptly that the press release sent to media misspelled the word cancelled as “cacnelled.”

D.H. says that Murray first approached him at a Metro bus stop in 1986 and propositioned him for sex, an offer he accepted, he says, because he was desperate and living on the streets. D.H. says Murray, who was in his 30s at the time, knew he was 15, and paid him for sex “at least 50 times,” the Times reports. Simpson says Murray began abusing him when he was 13; Anderson says Murray offered him $30 and some marijuana for oral sex when he was about 16.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/news/seattle-times-3-men-accuse-ed-mur...

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