Terry Bean Pleads Not Guilty

Yesterday HRC co-founder Terry Bean pleaded not guilty at his arraignment on charges that he had sex with a 15 year-old boy that Bean and his then-partner met on the hook-up site Grindr.

Bean, 66, was arraigned Wednesday morning in Eugene. Both he and his ex-boyfriend, 25-year-old Kiah Lawson, were arrested last month and charged with two counts of third-degree sodomy and one count of third-degree sexual abuse. Lawson pleaded not guilty to all counts in late November. In a statement, Bean’s attorney Kristen Winemiller said, “Terry absolutely did not have sex with a minor. As we’ve said before the circumstances behind this are not what they appear to be. Terry Bean is a principled and esteemed citizen of the state … He’s eager to share the truth with the public and with all of his supporters. He has been the victim of a series of crimes perpetrated by a group of men that include his so-called ex partner and now co-defendent Kiah Lawson. “Out of respect for the court today we will not comment on the specifics, but we are eager for the opportunity to represent the facts to the court and we look forward to clearing Terry’s name.”

RELATED: Yesterday right wing shrieker Michelle Malkin published a column in which she accuses the New York Times of ignoring the story to protect President Obama.



Consider this: Harry Reid has taken to the Senate floor to repeatedly demonize GOP donors and upstanding businessmen Charles and David Koch for exercising their First Amendment rights. Hollywood celebrities Alec Baldwin, Kathleen Turner, Jason Alexander and Stephen Colbert have all targeted conservative Citizens United for its historic role in protecting political free speech. All are mute on a powerful Democratic donor actually accused of heinous sexual abuse crimes against a child. While The New York Times has spilled gallons of ink on the campus rape epidemic, the GOP’s Mark Foley underage page scandal and the Catholic Church’s pedophilia problem, it has remained silent the past six months on the alleged child rape scheme of one of the Democratic Party’s most prominent campaign contributors and activists. On Tuesday, the paper saw fit to run a 652-word A-section story on an obscure GOP aide who was forced to quit her job after criticizing Obama’s daughters on her Facebook page. Nothing on Terry Bean.