Kentucky GOP Gov: Children Were Raped, Poisoned, And Tried Drugs Because Teachers Are On Strike

ABC News reports:

Republican Gov. Matt Bevin has opposed Kentucky teachers’ rallies for pension protection and public education funding since they began, but never quite the way he did on Friday afternoon, when he told a gaggle of reporters that the strike would directly cause children to be injured, poisoned and sexually assaulted.

“I guarantee you somewhere in Kentucky today a child was sexually assaulted that was left at home because there was nobody there to watch them,” he said. “I guarantee you somewhere today, a child was physically harmed or ingested poison because they were home alone because a single parent didn’t have enough money to take care of them.”

The Lexington Courier-Journal reports:



Bevin said “hundreds of thousands of children” were left alone across Kentucky as a result. “Children were harmed – some physically, some sexually, some were introduced to drugs for the first time – because they were vulnerable and left alone,” Bevin continued.

Kentucky Education Association President Stephanie Winkler, who has sparred with the governor in recent weeks, said she was “appalled” by the remark. “There is no rational comment I could make to that,” Winkler said. Jefferson County Teachers Association President Brent McKim said that using Bevin’s logic, schools should never close.