Port Townsend’s Fentanyl Forest: In Photos

by Jim Scarantino | Nov 5, 2022 | General

The approach to Port Townsend’s gateway runs past the city’s Fentanyl Forest, where addicts survive night to night, fix to fix, saying they have no drug problems unless they don’t have enough to stay high. This is where campers rousted from Kah Tai Park go.

Those kicked out of the county’s Caswell-Brown encampment on Mill Road find refuge there. Colonies of addicts have been living in the dark woods for years, rotating in and out of campsites cleared in the forest, piling up unimaginable heaps of trash and debris.

There are always newcomers, more broken people finding their way into the woods and occupying an abandoned tent or making a new spot for themselves among the thorns and bracken. Fentanyl, those inexpensive, deadly blue pills mass manufactured in Mexico and China, now matches or surpasses the popularity of methamphetamine, the long-running scourge of our community. Heroin has dropped pretty much out of sight.

At least with addicts inhaling the fumes of burning Fentanyl off tin foil instead of injecting heroin there are fewer needles littering the ground. But don’t forget alcohol. There are still plenty of liquor bottles and beer cans around most campsites.

What about the county’s $2 million Caswell-Brown camp set up for the homeless?

Jefferson County’s Caswell-Brown homeless shelter marks the entry to the Fentanyl Forest. It houses fewer than twenty people remaining from those relocated from the chaotic, tragic Fairgrounds camp. Managed under long-term contract by OlyCap, the camp is a gated community in the Fentanyl Forest, but still part of its surroundings.

OlyCap’s Executive Director Cherish Cronmiller maintains that Caswell-Brown hosts 17-23 residents. In April 2022, Kathy Morgan, OlyCap’s Director of Housing and Community Development, told the County Commissioners they were hosting 19 adults and one child.

According to information from the Jefferson County Sheriff Office obtained through a public records request, since April, OlyCap has trespassed — ejected from the camp — at least eight of the residents. If so, only a dozen people may currently be living there.

Reports from the Sheriff’s office and my interviews with former residents reveal that the camp experiences drug use and trafficking on a significant scale. One resident told us that 60% of the residents in the Caswell-Brown camp continue to use drugs. As for dealing in order to pay for drug use, he said, “Everyone has their own gig.”

Cronmiller told us she cannot deny that the campers are using. Abstinence or participation in a recovery program are not required as a condition of living there.

Quite a few of the tents and RVs at the Caswell-Brown camp are empty. Cronmiller told the Free Press that OlyCap is allowed to admit only those people who previously lived in the cleared out Fairgrounds camp. That explains why it has been turning away people despite being less than half full.

This makes no sense to the people in the woods who had hoped for a safe place to set up a tent. It makes no sense, period, but that is how the County Commissioners wrote their order establishing the camp as an emergency shelter.

The Fentanyl Forest stretches south to Mill Road where the multimillion-dollar Caswell-Brown camp is situated, west and north to Sims Way, and east to where Larry Scott Trail reaches the water.

2022 Google map aerial view of large wooded tract north of the mill. Dense tree cover camouflages the sprawling encampments scattered throughout the woods comprising the Fentanyl Forest.

It encompasses the city’s newly acquired Evans Vista parcel and land belonging to the Port Townsend Paper Company (“the mill”), claims the trees around the field with the state Department of Social and Health Services building (DSHS), and ends behind Les Schwab and the other businesses on that side of Sims Way at the first roundabout.

Community angels help dozens in the forest.

I tagged along with crews of volunteers who deliver sandwiches, hot meals and fresh water, but mostly love and encouragement to the forest dwellers. The teams are led by Michael McCutcheon who has been conducting his outreach for over ten years, including four years when he worked for Olympic Peninsula Health Services.

Those helping included an entire family with young children and a man just out of prison. A Marine vet who has overcome alcohol abuse and a woman who recently, tragically lost a child, were also among the volunteers.

McCutcheon knows something about addiction, desperation, withdrawal and recovery. He lost a large construction company — twice — and two wives to 38 years of opiate disorder. He recovered his life, he says, when he gave it to Jesus Christ. With invaluable support from the Food Bank, helping others find their pathway to freedom is what he does now, all the time, seven days a week, 24/7.

The photos I took on those outings tell more than I can convey in words. I have not photographed the inhabitants of the forest out of respect for them. None could be said to be at their best. As telling as the photos are, they don’t impart the sense of surrender and despair, the stench of feces and rotting food, of mildew and mold on everything.

Dishing out love and enchilada casserole

For each outing, the teams prepared food for forty people, the approximate population in the woods around the large grassy field to the east of the roundabout at the city’s entrance. This day’s meal was enchilada casserole. The week before it had been pastrami, ham and roast beef sandwiches. There’s always a side dish or salad, and always homemade cookies. The teams also distribute gallon jugs of water. McCutcheon started doing that after encountering a woman trying to wash her face with alcohol wipes.

Arriving at the field we parked by large cement blocks where the blacktop ended. The spot serves as a trailhead into the undergrowth. There we encountered a man who looked to be in his twenties, groggy and stumbling out of the bushes. He was soaked through after spending the night unconscious outdoors, oblivious to the rain. He gratefully accepted breakfast and McCutcheon asked his clothing sizes so he could return with something dry for the young man to wear.

Temporary home of former business owner.

The week before, we had encountered a man in a hole scooped out of a hillock at the edge of the forest. He shouted paranoid stuff at us when we asked if he needed water. McCutcheon and others in the team knew him. He had run a profitable pot shop but had been taken down by Fentanyl. He was gone a week later. All that was left was a kind of open grave.

Immediately behind the hillock is a derelict RV engulfed by blackberry bushes and mounds of refuse. It reeks of gasoline and solvents. On the first outing we pushed through branches arranged to create a barricade intended to keep out police. We learned that one of the young men in the trailer had OD’d the night before. He’d been saved when his roommate administered Narcan, a medication used to treat opioid overdoses. McCutcheon distributes Narcan and ensures that the camps remain stocked. It is needed far too often.

Four people live in the RV under the tarp.

On our second visit there were three men and a woman in the RV. One of the men had previously lived at the Mill Road Caswell-Brown camp. They were all using Fentanyl and meth. McCutcheon says that everyone out there who uses Fentanyl also uses meth, but not necessarily the other way around. We left water for them.

Several trails lead from here into the woods. Take any fork and you will almost certainly come across an inhabited camp and piles and piles of trash accumulated by current and past residents. How much of the stuff was stolen is hard to say.

There are appliances, welding equipment, expensive tools, rusted knives and axes, upholstered furniture and strollers, shopping carts, makeshift kitchens, small mountains of rotting clothing and bedding. Solar-powered lights and candelabra are nailed to trees along the pathways. There are hundreds of abandoned bicycles in the woods and thousands of bicycle parts.

Levi DuPuy, maintenance manager for the Port Townsend Paper Company says it costs the mill $8,000 to $10,000 to clean up each small to medium size camp. “As soon as we get a spot cleaned up, they’re back two weeks later,” according to DuPuy.

It is very, very grim, a human dumping ground for a county that pretends it doesn’t have a desperate addiction crisis with all its consequences: mental illness, environmental and health hazards, crime, violence and suicide.

But there are rare slivers of light.

We encountered a well-dressed woman walking a trail that would take her deeper into the woods. She had come to visit a friend living in a tent.

“Hi, Michael,” she said. Her eyes sparkled. Her clothes were color-coordinated from the stars on her Converse high tops to the scarf knotted at her neck.

She was the woman who had inspired McCutcheon to add jugs of water to his outreach. I recognized her from the Fairgrounds encampment. I had seen her pass out and crumple onto a muddy road. In the past year she had moved to Caswell-Brown, been trespassed from there, then found her “bottom” in a miserable existence in the woods.

Law enforcement intervened somehow and it turned her life around. She cried out for help and received the care and medications needed for her dual diagnosis of addiction and mental illness. She quoted the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous to McCutcheon and said, “You helped me a lot.”

“You look beautiful,” I told her. “Everyone says that now,” she replied. “Because it’s true,” McCutcheon and I said in unison. He was beaming with joy.

Pictures tell the rest of the story.

The following photos are but a small sampling of what’s under those trees. The featured photo (at the top of this article) shows a sprawling tent complex on city property. It is far too large to capture in one shot. The photo was taken in the approximate center of the complex, with debris and trash in every direction.

People in the photos below are all volunteers, part of the crew bringing food and supplies – not those who are dwelling in the forest.

Typical trash pile, on city property.

Elaborate camp behind Les Schwab.

Soggy tent and trash.

Two people and an undernourished large dog live here.

Choking, sobbing woman given help here.

Trail on city property.

Shelter hidden in the bushes.

Camp on city property.

Trash from large abandoned camp on mill property.

Camp on private property north of state DSHS building.

Camp on city property.

Camp and trail on city property.

Camp deep in woods.

Blue tents seem to be most popular, perhaps donated by some organization?

Huge tent complex on city or mill property.

Small tent at edge of larger campsite.

Kitchen and pantry. Pressurized tanks.

Another large tent complex.

Well established campsite, surrounded by debris. Several people live here.

Dozens of butane cannisters.

Trash just outside tent in lower right of photo.

A glimpse inside a tent.

People living under trash.

Delivering water to RV trapped by years of overgrowth.

Guitar in the trees at this compound.

Tidiest camp we found.

Soggy books, soggy camp.

“This Is Not Over” – Sorting Truth from Deception in YMCA Blame Game

by Jim Scarantino | Oct 10, 2022 | General

“This is not over,” Julie Jaman told the Port Townsend City Council on October 3, 2022.

At that meeting Katie Daviscourt, a reporter with Rebel News, confronted Mayor David Faber with his own words about having sex with dead chickens and a dog, and declaring that, “As mayor, I am legally required to be a pervert and deviant.” Faber has yet to explain using his title as mayor in connection with such statements.

Women’s rights advocate Amy E. Sousa addressed council about sexism and the misogynist lies of transgender ideology. She promised she would be back to seek council’s support for a declaration like the one it issued to “especially” recognize people who have declared themselves a man though born a woman, and vice versa. The forthcoming declaration, Sousa said, would call upon council to stand up for women and girls. Will Port Townsend City Council lift up women and girls as much as it has wrapped its arms around people who say they are transgender?

Earlier that day Daviscourt had attempted to deliver to the YMCA more than ten thousand signatures on a petition circulated by Rebel News to “Let Julie Swim.” But the Y and Mountain View Pool were again closed. Was another day of locked doors and dimmed lights due to lack of staffing or to duck Daviscourt?

The Mountain View Pool has been closed quite a bit since August 2 when we published the first story on how Jaman — an 80-year old woman who had been using the pool for much of her life — was banned for stating her objection to a man in the women’s showers. Jaman encountered “Clementine” Adams in a woman’s swimsuit when she was naked. She states she saw him watching little girls in states of undress. Jaman has also said he was leering at the little girls. She told him to get out and repeated herself to the Y’s pool manager who had entered the room. Unknown to Jaman at the time, this man was a Y employee who in March of this year decided he would henceforth be a woman. He acknowledges he is biologically still quite male and “interested in women.”

Adams, we learned from his interview on a Stitcher podcast, never returned to work. Thus Jaman accomplished her objective of getting him out of the women’s showers. The Y has since been advertising an opening for an “Aquatics Program Lead,” the title of the person who banned Jaman on the spot, as she stood naked and wet from her shower. As we reported, both the male employee in the woman’s bathing suit and the aquatics manager failed to safeguard children in accordance with basic YMCA policy and the common sense of anyone with the slightest concern about the dignity, privacy and safety of women and children.

Adams gave his only public statement in that Stitcher podcast that we wrote about on September 10. His admissions hurt himself and his former employer. Public officials for their part (the pool is public property, owned by the school district and leased to the city) have chosen to hide behind a bland and inaccurate statement drafted by City Manager John Mauro. That statement repeats the smear that Jaman had a history of misbehavior that justified her permanent banishment — allegations never explained or supported by the plentiful documents we were once assured existed. Two months after publicly spreading accusations that Jaman had a history of misconduct, the Y still has not told even Jaman, let alone her attorneys or the media, what horrible things she allegedly did that justified barring an elderly woman from using a public pool to keep up her health and fitness.

The Mayor distinguished himself by excreting infantile and sick comments on Twitter that have made Port Townsend a national embarrassment. His glib and cruel dismissal of the concerns of rape victims prompted the women’s press conference on August 15 that turned into an ugly mob scene more fitting of Portland and Seattle than the “welcoming” laid-back Victorian seaport and arts community of Port Townsend. His comment the day after older women were knocked to the ground outside City Hall — that the previous evening’s confrontation had been “beautiful” — only further fanned flames, leading to the September 3 rally by members of the Proud Boys and Washington Three Percenters who cast themselves as champions of women and free speech.

There was at least one gun among the mob on August 15 assaulting women’s rights advocates. According to law enforcement sources, there were plenty of guns on both sides at the September 3 rally. An overwhelming law enforcement presence, including a police spotter on City Hall’s roof and the Washington Highway Patrol Rapid Deployment Team at the ready, kept things quiet and even comical. At one point, a burly Three Percenter danced with willowy counter-protestors to The Village People’s iconic “YMCA.” A more recent version of that tune, adapted specifically to the Julie Jaman/YMCA controversy, was released this summer by comedian Mr. Menno. Called “Y Chromosome.” It’s cringey and wickedly funny.

It has been an interesting past couple of months, and as Jaman promised, it’s not over.

On October 6, Daviscourt returned to the Mountain View Pool with a camera crew, Sousa and Jaman. Daviscourt was attempting again to deliver more than 10,000 signatures on the petition calling for the Y to “Let Julie Swim.” As of this writing the signatures on that petition now exceed 11,000.

Daviscourt checked to make sure the pool would be open. It was, but minutes later, a sign went up banning media from entering. The doors were locked and it went dark inside. When Daviscourt knocked, a business card for the Y’s communication director along with the sexist pink and blue banner of the trans movement (remember when boy/girl stereotypes were condemned?) were slipped through the door. Minutes after that the Y called police and the women were ordered to leave and threatened with arrest if they returned. Daviscourt’s video report may be viewed here.

Enter Councilor Wennstrom

Port Townsend City Councilor Libby Wennstrom

Which brings us to Port Townsend City Councilor Libby Wennstrom. Following the August 15 mobbing of older women who were calling for respect for women’s dignity and safety, she posted on her Facebook page a call to expel all “TERFS” from Port Townsend. That acronym for Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists has become a sexist term used to justify violence and threats against women who do not buy into the fiction that a man or boy — human males — can magically become a woman or girl — human females — by snapping their fingers and switching around the blue and pink in their wardrobe. Ana Wolpin covered that bit of hate-mongering from Wennstrom in her article, “City Officials Lead Hate Campaign Against Women.”

Wennstrom’s Facebook post with the tagline “Libby Urner Wennstrom updated her cover photo.”

Wennstrom removed the post once The Free Press reported on it here and at our Facebook page. Her comments, which were partially preserved by one of our readers, show an even deeper malevolence, particularly towards Sousa. Wennstrom later said she “never intended it to go public, but in retrospect as a public official she doesn’t think she should have posted it.” She only meant to share it among friends, not publicly, as if that excuses her actions. If she does not want her actions to be those of a public official, she should not have accepted elected office.

Shortly afterward, Wennstrom participated in the Stitcher podcast released September 1 that revealed much about the YMCA’s failures to safeguard children, including Adams’ bizarre, unsolicited claim that he was so blind — due to not wearing his eyeglasses, though he was on duty as a children’s caretaker — he had trouble seeing around the women’s showers.

The podcaster, a fellow named Garrison, repeatedly expressed his misogynist contempt for women. He’s a man who says he’s been taking hormones for a year, presumably testosterone suppressants. Somehow that qualifies him to judge which women are really feminists and which are “so-called feminists,” the latter identified as any woman who does not embrace transgender ideology and holds to biological truths about men and women.

The podcast also interviewed some anonymous local residents who disclosed they’ve been training themselves in “gun clubs” with members of the “queer community” and people who say they are trans. They claim they are “getting this really good organic network building throughout the community” to kick Jaman “out of their businesses on sight.” Despite all the calls for calm and the prudent discretion of other city officials (with the exception of the warped Mayor), Wennstrom chose to participate in this broadcast.

Contrary to the desires of anonymous thugs on Stitcher, Jaman has not been kicked out of any Port Townsend business. She is not having to do all her shopping and dining in Silverdale and Sequim. Instead, she has been given surprising support from local businesses. I was interviewing her when she received well-wishes from the head of one of downtown’s largest business operations. On that same day she had received several letters of support, including one envelope with a gift of cash. The only operation that has excluded Jaman is the YMCA.

Lies and Agitprop

According to Wennstrom’s podcast statements, Julie Jaman “attacked” the young man in the women’s shower area and “made a jerk of herself.” Further, the Port Townsend Free Press itself was responsible for causing the mob scenes, the Proud Boys event, the months of disruption and civic discord and PT’s bad international press. “Right wing media” piled on and Amy Sousa tried “to force her way” into the Mountain View Pool to film patrons as they were undressing, Wennstrom lied. And, Proud Boys are everywhere, also PTFP‘s fault.

Wennstrom uttered so many false, derogatory and inflammatory statements in her few minutes in the interview, it’s difficult to believe anything she said.

She is apparently greatly impressed by Port Townsend Free Press’ impact. She thinks we have the ability to ignite a global firestorm about the trampling of women’s rights in little Port Townsend. She says we got “so many” facts wrong, and in the same breath accuses us of not reporting that Adams was a YMCA employee. Hold on, councilor Wennstrom… that’s contradicted by the fourth sentence of PTFP‘s first report about the incident, which states: “The woman [Jaman] had to stand naked in the presence of the male, a YMCA employee, despite her pleas that he leave.”

In blaming — crediting? — Port Townsend Free Press for igniting the firestorm Wennstrom completely ignores the broader coverage — much of it original — from the feminist and LGB media (that’s lesbian, gay and bi-sexual, and no “T” for transgender). While PTFP wrote the first story, it was the widely-followed Reduxx that launched it nationwide. Reduxx describes itself as a publication of “pro-woman and pro-child safeguarding and commentary.”

While Adams’ name was available in the police reports (that’s how we identified the man in the woman’s bathing suit described by Jaman), Reduxx was first to publish a photo of Adams in connection with the story. They didn’t have to dig very deep. Adams has published his photo for the world to see on a GoFundMe page, where he is asking for money so he can pay for amputation of his penis and testicles and cutting of his vocal chords.

And though our photos and initial reporting were sometimes used or mentioned, coverage by Matt Osborne of LGB United (a lesbian, gay and bi-sexual platform) propelled the story even further. Post Millenial journalist Andy Ngo and Substack commentator Mattie Watkins were the first to uncover Mayor David Faber’s sordid, sick alter-ego in which he identifies himself as a “chickenfucker,” discusses sex with a dog, defends child pornography and public masturbation, and aligns himself with a YouTube character who calls for decriminalization of child pornography and lowering the age of consent so adults can have sex with children. Then Mandy Stadtmiller, a New York magazine and former Penthouse columnist, asked aloud in an article by the same title, “Why is Self-Described ‘Pervert and Deviant’ Mayor David Faber So Excited About Terrorizing an 80-Year Old Woman Who Doesn’t Want Men in Little Girls’ Changing Rooms?”

We did not write the first coverage of the mobbing and bullying of women permitted by the City of Port Townsend on August 15. Osborne beat us to it. He had his story up within hours of Julie Jaman and her daughter being escorted to their car by four Highway Patrol officers.

We did enjoy unprecedented traffic to our website, far more readers in those days than the Peninsula Daily News and The Leader regularly attract. But our big numbers pale in comparison to the readership in the hundreds of thousands of the Twitter posts and stories by Osborne, Sousa and Watkins, and the more than a million hits we understand Reduxx got on its Twitter posts.

Left Wingers Now “Extreme Right Wing”

That was all separate and independent of what Wennstrom may consider “right wing media,” unless she dumps women’s advocates, lesbians, gays and bisexuals fighting against pedophilia and the sexualizing and grooming of children into her mental “right wing” basket of deplorables. Mayor Faber apparently does, as he dismisses all those concerned about men around naked women and girls — including rape survivors — as suffering from “right wing moral panic.”

Wennstrom labelled The Port Townsend Free Press as “extreme right wing” and “the blog of one person.”

How did we earn the “extreme right wing” label? By writing about how a mob shouted down, intimidated and bullied a rape victim and a Black woman pleading for the same rights and consideration as claimed by people who call themselves transgender? Or was it by reporting on how the cobalt needed for those expensive electric cars being purchased by First World white progressives is mined by Black adult and child African slaves? Or was it by exposing the waste, fraud and corruption in the Cherry Street Project and the utter foolishness of Fort Worden’s $2 million glamping fiasco?

If that’s not it, maybe it’s the in-depth reporting that undermined the imposition of dictatorial decrees by the Governor and local health officer, coupled with commentary favoring liberty and personal choice? If that’s not it, maybe it’s reporting on how the YMCA banned a family from its facilities for reporting the display of child pornography. And if not that, maybe we’re “extreme right wing” because of those articles opposing turning over public parking spaces to a handful of downtown businesses, and exacerbating the already severe parking problems in our fair city’s commercial core?

One last shot in the dark: were we “extreme right wing” because we were the only media reporting on the human tragedy — the drug abuse, crime and suffering — in the troubled encampment at the Fairgrounds that left one young woman dead and led to another suicide? That’s it… writing about the suffering of the homeless and how they were ignored by the city makes us “extreme right wing”!

The current editors of this publication (I started the Free Press in 2018 but handed it off more than a year ago) would laugh at being called “extreme right wing.” They have been fixtures of PT’s progressive, liberal and peace activist community for decades. And as for this being “the blog of only one person,” this site has published articles by over two dozen authors.

We haven’t surrendered our critical thinking abilities. We do our own research, believe what our eyes and ears tell us, and reach our own conclusions. We’re independent thinkers still capable of seeking objective truths. We are not helplessly, blindly “woke.” To Wennstrom, that equates with “extreme right wing.”

Proud Boys Under Every Rock

Anyone who doesn’t toe Wennstrom’s ideological line is “right wing,” and probably a Proud Boy, too (even if female). For example, Wennstrom brought up the Back the Blue rally organized by wives of local law enforcement. She had been asked if Port Townsend had seen much in the way of large-scale protests, and this was what came to her mind.

As we reported on August 31, 2020, a car and truck parade in support of law enforcement stretched over six miles from H.J. Carroll Park in Chimacum to downtown Port Townsend. I personally counted about 400 vehicles in the cavalcade. A former judge, local business owners, law enforcement families, members of the Rakers car club, and local citizens participated in showing support for law enforcement during a summer when they were under attack by the Port Townsend City Council.

Mayor Faber, then a city councilor, had wanted city police disarmed and there was serious talk of defunding and cutting the police department. Black Lives Matter of Jefferson County (now virtually defunct, along with the international, multi-million dollar scam umbrella organization) tried to humiliate our sheriff and police chief. A KPTZ travesty of a radio program subjected the sheriff to fantastical, delusional accusations from a BLM leader who, in addition to having a long history of substance abuse-related incidents — including crashing his bicycle into the Fort Worden gate and urinating himself — had just months before been arrested for trying to break into an occupied Port Townsend residence.

So the community rallied in huge numbers for the men and women of the Port Townsend Police Department and the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office… about which Wennstrom deceived podcast listeners by calling it a Proud Boys event.

That Evil Amy Sousa and Inciting A Mob

Wennstrom has some grudge against Sousa. She leveled personal attacks against Sousa in Facebook comments to her now-deleted post (preserved partially by one of our readers) calling for the expulsion from Port Townsend of all women who don’t like having men in their bathrooms. She implied that Sousa was in this fight just for the money and insinuated that Sousa had caused a young child’s suicide — then disingenuously distanced herself from her own words.

In the Stitcher podcast, she said that Sousa, accompanied by a camera crew “tried to force” her way into the Y’s locker rooms while they were being used by patrons. Wennstrom admits she wasn’t there, but makes the accusation anyway, just as she spread the rumor that Jaman had “attacked” Adams.

Katie Daviscourt, the Rebel News reporter mentioned previously, did politely ask to film in the Y and left when her request was denied. Daviscourt recorded this in her report and you can see her request to film at the 2:22 mark.

That’s not the only lie Wennstrom has spread to inflame people against Sousa, Jaman and her boogey-men of the “right wing media.” In her comments accompanying her hateful “TERFS Out of Port Townsend” call to action, Wennstrom wrote:

“The narrative that’s circulating is that a ‘known pervert’ (sometimes it’s a ‘sex offender’) was masturbsting [sic] and touching/undressing little girls in the locker room. Which is a crime, and would be charged as such. But that’s not even remotely what happened.”

I’ve read almost everything published on the Jaman matter, but I have never seen any allegation anywhere that Adams was masturbating or that he was a sex offender. Jaman distanced herself from claims he had touched the little girls. It was Adams himself in his later Stitcher interview who admitted to touching at least one young girl as she was dressing/undressing.

Wennstrom condemned herself in her own comments when she wrote that “creating outrage from a false or misleading story is part of a larger political playbook.” She herself helped organize the counter-protests against Jaman at the Y and whipped up the crowd that turned into the mob that tore down suffragette flags and called women TERFs and c-nts at the same spot where previous Women’s Marches had rallied.

Indeed, This is Not Over

Conflicts between women’s rights and men invading women’s spaces are being repeated across the country. In Vermont, most of a girls’ high school basketball team was banned from their own locker room because they dared express their true feelings about having to undress in the presence of a young man who calls himself trans, and having to be with him as he undresses and showers. Lawsuits challenging men invading women’s sports are pending in many jurisdictions.  A growing number of states are not tolerating the nonsense of men gaining access to women’s private, vulnerable spaces by putting on a bit of make-up for the day.

Wennstrom and other council members will be asked to issue a proclamation in support of the dignity, safety and privacy of women and girls, as Sousa will be coming back to City Council. It was Wennstrom’s suggestion to issue the proclamation declaring that the city is “especially” supportive of people who call themselves trans. Faber and council members Owen Rowe and Amy Howard have cheered on Adams’ quest for funds to cut off his penis by giving him money to pursue “gender reassignment” surgery.  Where will she and the rest of city council stand when called upon to affirm by official proclamation that women’s rights are human rights?

The meme “Trans Rights are Human Rights” is on yard signs across PT, along with the slogan “Science is Real.” But it is biology that stands in the way of men magically becoming woman. As Mr. Menno’s fun parody song drives home, that persistent Y chromosome that makes men men resides in every cell, sinew, muscle, bone, nerve and speck of brain matter. It does not go away when a man puts on women’s attire and cosmetics — the truly sexist equivalent of blackface.

One last time. If you haven’t watched Mr. Menno’s message, take a few minutes. This is a very gay man speaking through his music and comedy, not someone Wennstrom can blithely deride as “extreme right wing.”

When a skeleton is unearthed, its very structure speaks “male” or “female”.  Transgenderism is denial of science and biology. It is ideology pulling us back to the dark ages when logic, reason and the scientific method were suppressed in service to tribalism and religious orthodoxy. Indeed, transgenderism is best understood as tribalism and a faith system. Only by pounding it into people’s heads — by indoctrination of the impressionable or the intimidation of mobs like those Wennstrom whipped up screaming “Trans women are women” — can this lie take hold. It is the stuff of totalitarianism rooted as it is not in any immutable, verifiable, objective truth, but in a fabricated narrative imposed by various manifestations of force.

J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has become a leading opponent of the trans agenda that erases women and sexualizes and victimizes children. She has stood up to attacks far more vicious and threatening than those Wennstrom has leveled against local women. The horrors of the trans agenda now coming to light in the United Kingdom are proving her right. Rowling’s challenge to the “genderists” can be leveled with equal justification against Wennstrom and her fellow council members.

On the heels of revelations about the massive injuries inflicted on children by puberty blockers and mutilating surgeries, Rowling recently wrote in response to the exposure of pedophilia in Britain’s “establishment” trans activist lobby:

“You know, I thought things were pretty bad when you were arguing to put convicted rapists in women’s jails, when you shrugged off masked men roughing up lesbian protestors and tried to shout down de-transitioners talking about what was done to them by ideologically-captured doctors. Women, gay people and vulnerable kids have suffered real harm and you? You cheered it all on. You still prefer wilful blindness and four word mantras to considering you might have got this badly wrong. You became part of an authoritarian, misogynist, homophobic movement and you didn’t even notice. Enjoy the sense of your own righteousness while you can. It won’t last.”

—————————–

Top photo (L-R): Katie Daviscourt, Julie Jaman, and a Port Townsend Police officer, from Rebel News story YMCA calls police on Julie Jaman after dropping off petition to allow her to swim

$1.5 Million Judgment Against
Art Frank for Misconduct
Weighs on Campaign, Prosecutor
[Updated with comment from Sheriff Nole]

by Jim Scarantino | Sep 20, 2022 | General

Unlawful arrest, malicious prosecution, making false statements, misleading the prosecutor.

A California Federal District Court jury ruled that Art Frank and another Glendale, California police officer unlawfully arrested and caused the malicious prosecution of Edmond Ovasapyan. The case arose out of a 2005 home invasion in which a teenage son was murdered in front of his mother. The federal jury in 2009 found that the officers lacked probable cause to arrest Ovasapyan, misled the prosecutor and withheld exculpatory evidence from her.

The case has surfaced in Jefferson County as Frank campaigns to unseat his boss and incumbent Sheriff Joe Nole. Frank serves under Nole as a detective and previously held the number two position in the Sheriff’s Office under Nole’s predecessor, Dave Stanko, another former Califiornia police officer relocated to Jefferson County. Stanko hired Frank and made him Deputy Sheriff, ousting Nole from the position he had held under Stanko’s predecessor, Sheriff Tony Hernandez. During Stanko’s years in office Nole served under Frank. When Nole defeated Stanko’s bid for re-election and was elected Sheriff, he moved Frank over to a detective position and made Andy Pernsteiner Deputy Sheriff and his #2.

Word of the case against Frank has been quietly circulating for months. On September 16, 2022, Jefferson County Prosecuting Attorney James Kennedy issued a letter to criminal defense lawyers notifying them of a judicial ruling of misconduct by a law enforcement officer that could impeach the officer’s testimony. Kennedy restated the jury’s findings, but also said he believes the jury ruled incorrectly. Nonetheless, the jury verdict poses a headache for Frank’s effort to persuade voters to put him in charge of the Sheriff’s office, as well as possibly giving defense lawyers ammunition in any case where Frank is a witness for the prosecution.

Edmond Ovasapyan versus Art Frank, et al.

Jefferson County Detective Art Frank

Frank has addressed some of the facts in the case when asked at election forums what his biggest regret is in his 43 years in law enforcement. Frank has served with distinction through those decades in many positions, from patrol officer, to working on a SWAT team, to training other officers, to accomplished detective work. He has saved lives and taken killers off the street. He saw his partner die next to him. He has seen the worst side of humanity in his years in Los Angeles County, and, let’s be honest, also here in Jefferson County. Though he is opposed in his bid for office by local first responders and all the men and women he serves with in the Sheriff’s Office, I am told by some of those same people that he is respected for his skills as a detective. But they do not think he should be Sheriff and do not want to work for him if he is elected to that position. Those feelings are strong, and account for the unprecedented support among first responders and law enforcement for the re-election of Sheriff Nole.

The Ovasapyan case was as bad as anything he had encountered. Frank has in campaign forums related how five men invaded a home and how the teenage son was shot in the chest in front of his mother. He says he regrets that Ovasapyan spent months in jail for something he didn’t do and says it was he who eventually exonerated Ovasayan.

Frank has left out of those accounts the fact that a jury found he had engaged in very serious misconduct, so serious that the trial judge deprived him of law enforcement officer “qualified immunity.” That means Frank was held personally liable for the judgment because, as the court found, no reasonable law enforcement would not have known that the conduct in which Frank engaged was illegal. This is an uncommon finding by a trial court judge.

Ovasapyan was awarded $1.16 million in compensatory damages. The jury also awarded him $75,000 in punitive damages against Frank and $75,000 against the other officer. The trial court awarded the plaintiff $271,495.57 in attorney fees and $5,543.85 in costs. Frank was ruled jointly and severally liable, meaning personally responsible, for all but the punitive damages against the other officer. The City of Glendale paid the judgment, attorney fees, and costs though it was not legally required to do so. It paid approximately $1.7 million after unsuccessful appeals.

The trial court denied Frank’s motion for judgment as a matter of law, meaning that the court found there was enough evidence to support the jury’s verdict. The judgment was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, which specifically ruled that the District Court was justified in finding enough evidence to support the jury’s verdict.

Prosecuting Attorney Kennedy Says the California Jury Got it Wrong

JeffCo Prosecuting Attorney James Kennedy

In his letter to defense attorneys, Kennedy wrote that “it has recently been brought to my attention” that Frank was found liable for misconduct in a civil case. Kennedy stated that he conducted a public records request of the City of Glendale, spoke with a Los Angeles County Assistant District Attorney familiar with the case and obtained and reviewed the entire trial transcript.

Kennedy told defense lawyers he had concluded that the jury was wrong. He concluded that Frank had been blamed for actions taken by others. He concluded that the evidence Frank allegedly withheld was, contrary to the jury’s ruling, already in the possession of defense counsel and not of any material exculpatory value. Frank allegedly failed to investigate alibi evidence; but Kennedy concluded that alibi evidence, even if true, would not have ruled the plaintiff out as a participant in the crime. Lastly, Kennedy credited Frank with ultimately exonerating the plaintiff when DNA evidence pointed to another individual whom Frank tracked down. Frank learned from that individual that Ovasapyan did not participate in the crime and relayed this information to the DA who then dropped charges. By then, Ovasapyan had been in jail for about eight months.

“In conclusion,” Kennedy wrote, “it does not appear that Det. Frank personally authored any reports or directly engaged in any aspect of the investigation that lead [sic] to the false arrest or malicious prosecution of the Plaintiff. Contrary to the findings made by the jury… it appears that Det. Frank’s actions are what actually lead [sic] to the charges being dismissed against the Plaintiff.”

Res Judicata

The matter has been decided. Res judicata is a legal principle that “a decision by a competent court in a case fully and fairly litigated is final and conclusive as to the claims and issues of the parties and cannot be relitigated.” Prosecuting Attorney Kennedy may be absolutely correct that Frank got a raw deal from a California jury. The verdict against Frank may have been as great an injustice as the wrongful imprisonment of Ovasapyan. Justice is sometimes ill-served in our judicial system. Maybe Frank’s lawyers were incompetent. Mr. Kennedy said in an e-mail that the city of Glendale chose to use its in-house lawyers instead of contracting with more skilled and experienced outside counsel, and those lawyers did “a pretty poor job.”

However wrong the Ovasapyan jury may have been, its decision was upheld by a United States Federal District Court judge and later by the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The argument that there was insufficient evidence to find that Frank did the things he was accused of doing was rejected by both courts.

Kennedy’s independent review of the records may blunt the impact of the Ovasapyan verdict outside of court. The reputation Frank has built since moving here may remain intact, though bruised. Frank can point to Kennedy’s conclusions in defending himself on the campaign trail. But when Frank testifies in court, and the defense seeks to impeach him with the Ovasapyan verdict and findings, the trial judge will likely not entertain arguments that the Ovasapyan jurors and several federal judges messed up or that Frank was screwed over by his lousy lawyers. Relitigation of the facts of that case will in all likelihood not be permitted, and Mr. Kennedy’s conclusions–regardless of how well they may be reasoned–will not be allowed in a court of law.

Frank Responds

Good morning Jim,

Thank you for the opportunity to comment on the Ovasapyan case. The civil verdict is just one part of the story and has to be viewed in the context of the original investigation in order to be properly understood.

Though it is one small event in my 43-year career and history in law enforcement it is something voters should consider. I have always been transparent about it.  I have spoken about it openly and publicly during the campaign, including at the Democratic Party forum and the League of Women Voters forum, both of which were recorded and are available online. I have answered questions about it from voters and community leaders.  Both the fact of the verdict and the underlying investigation were fully known and understood by my opponent prior to my hiring in 2016 as he was the person who hired me.  He has never raised it as an issue in the campaign because he understands the facts.

Like any career or life experience the case investigation itself did have an impact on my leadership to the extent that it reinforced that it is always important to follow the evidence no matter where it leads and that as police officers, with power comes responsibility.  In this case I had the responsibility to see the investigation through to exonerating and freeing Mr. Ovasapyan, which I did. This is a value and ethic that I live and work by and I would instill and expect from all of my staff if elected.

I did not pay any part of the judgment or costs because the investigation was part of my official responsibilities as an employee of the City of Glendale.

Regarding how the fact of the verdict reflects on credibility, the elected Prosecutor has reviewed both the civil trial as well as the facts of the underlying investigation and concluded that the allegations regarding any wrongdoing on my part are not supported.  I expect his letter re same will be released next week. The fact that I saw the investigation through to exonerating and freeing Mr. Ovasapyan proves my commitment to transparency and justice and should reassure voters that I will always do the right thing.

In my experience you have been fair and given me a full opportunity to respond.  In this case I would appreciate it if you would wait to run any story on the case until I can provide the letter from the Prosecuting Attorney.  You have a powerful voice and it is important that you have all of the information before running a story.

I will send the letter from the prosecutor as well as a more full response as soon as I have the letter, which should be early next week.

As always, thank you for your interest in the campaign and in the truth.

Art

———————————-

Mr. Frank subsequently sent a longer statement and other materials when notified we had obtained Mr. Kennedy’s letter to defense lawyers.

———————————-

Mr. Scarantino,

To best understand what happened in this case it is necessary to know some of the facts related to the crime and original investigation itself, which I have outlined below. 

There were at least six individual suspects involved.

The initial victim, a mother of two adult men, was home alone.  She heard a knock at the door and looked out to see a man who she recognized as a construction worker and associate of her older son who had done tile setting work for her at her business.

She opened the door and a group of men – including the man who knocked at the door – forced their way into the house and tied her up. They then demanded money indicating they had some familiarity with her older son, using his name.

Minutes later, her younger son walked into the house from the rear driveway access door and confronted the home invaders. He fought with the invaders to save his mother and one of the men – though not the one who knocked on the door who she recognized as her son’s acquaintance and tile setter – shot her son in the chest. He died at the scene.

All the invaders fled the house. Typical of a case of this seriousness, several detectives were assigned to work various aspects of the case.  Some of the evidence they gathered: Mr. Ovasapyan had done tile work at the mother’s business in the past. Mr. Ovasapyan had a dispute with one of her sons over a construction project.  Witnesses identified at least two vehicles outside, including a dark colored Honda sedan. Mr. Ovasapyan was known to drive a Black Honda.  The mother was shown a photographic lineup by a detective which included Mr. Ovasapyan’s photo.  She told him it looks just like him, but younger, but maintained it was the tile setter.   While running from the scene one of the suspects (not the man who knocked at the door) dropped an item of clothing. DNA analysis of this item of clothing provided a lead that identified the possible shooter. There was no DNA evidence left by the suspect the victim believed to be Ovasapyan.

I was assigned to gather all of the various reports from the group of detectives who worked the case and to present the case to the prosecutor’s office.  The prosecutor’s decision to file charges in the case was based on an evaluation of the totality of the evidence and not solely the photo identification of Ovasapyan.  As the case moved through the court system Mr. Ovasapyan maintained his innocence.  I did not rest and I continued to investigate the case, and when the DNA results returned they provided the lead that helped me to exonerate Mr. Ovasapyan prior to any trial or conviction.

I am including a letter from Steve Dickman, a prosecutor intimately familiar with the original case as well as the civil trial that followed. His letter is in the form of an endorsement written earlier this year in which he touches on the case and from which this case can be seen in the continuum of my entire career.

I am also including a motion written by Mr. Dickman which discusses the case in detail and explains why the result of the civil trial has no impact or bearing on my credibility as an investigator or witness. Every court that heard this motion did not allow evidence of the verdict or my role in the investigation to be presented to any jury on the issue of my credibility because there was no evidence of wrongdoing. 

Art Frank 

———————————-

The letter from Mr. Dickman is available on Mr. Frank’s campaign website. The motion Mr. Frank mentions is a 27-page legal brief from one party in a criminal case, not a judicial ruling. We have not been provided the motion to which this brief was filed as a response, the reply to this brief nor the ultimate ruling by a court. We print in full all written responses to questions we pose, but publishing this full brief — without knowing anything about the surrounding case and the court’s ruling — is beyond the scope of our policy.

Sheriff Joe Nole has not responded to a request for comment on the statements made by Mr. Frank. I specifically asked Sheriff Nole about Frank’s claim that Nole hired him and was aware of the Ovasapyan verdict at the time. Frank’s account would mean that Nole, not then Sheriff Stanko, hired Frank as Stanko’s second-in-command and demoted himself from the position he had held under Sheriff Hernandez and put himself under Frank’s supervision. Nole, as Frank states, has not used the case against him in debates.

———————————-

[Update to original story] It appears that the Ovasapyan veridict was known at the time of hiring, and the information was passed along to Sheriff Dave Stanko, who made the decision to hire Mr. Frank. Sheriff Nole provided the following answers to the questions we posed last week. He just got back to us after publication of the story. We can also now provide Mr. Kennedy’s full letter to defense counsel.

Q & A with Sheriff Nole:

Q: Was the judicial ruling against Mr. Frank known at the time of his hiring?

A: Yes. Mr. Frank’s pre-hire background investigation developed information on the ruling and that information was discussed with Mr. Frank.

Q: How could he have been hired with this matter so recently in his background? (He was hired a few years after the 9th Circuit upheld the verdict).

A: The information developed in the background investigation and discussed with Mr. Frank regarding the judicial ruling was presented to then Sheriff Dave Stanko, who made the hiring decision.

Q: How does the case impact his ability to do his job?

A: At this point it does not impact his ability to do his job.

Q: Does it detract from his credibility as a witness when he must testify?

A: It could, depending on the circumstances presented at trial and a judge’s interpretation.

Q: How could this detract from his ability to lead the Sheriff’s Office and defend against charges of misconduct?

A: How it could detract would be dependent on the particular situation occurring at the time.

Here is a link to Mr. Kennedy’s letter: PID Letter Det A Frank

Olympic Pride Doesn’t Want You To See What They’re Promoting to Children

by Jim Scarantino | Sep 14, 2022 | General

Covering its tracks, lawyering up. Olympic Pride got a lawyer to demand that Port Townsend Free Press remove photos showing its interactions with children. The lawyer said it was about copyright. But the same images have also been removed from Olympic Pride’s own website and social media. What was in those photos they don’t want you to see?

Ana Wolpin’s The Dark Underbelly of the Trans Movement: What is Olympic Pride Promoting? prompted the scrubbing and lawyering up. Wolpin’s article took a close look at how Olympic Pride is sexualizing children and promoting transgenderism to kids. That means moving children towards macabre mutilations and a lifetime of taking hormones that can harm their brain development, cause abnormally low bone density and induce severe depression and suicidal ideation. The FDA recently issued a warning that puberty blockers in minors can cause brain swelling and loss of vision. The damage caused to minors by puberty blockers is no longer considered reversible — bad news arriving too late for many young and middle-aged adults.

The mutilations may involve a greedy surgeon cutting flesh from a young girl’s arm or elsewhere to make a fake penis that will be sewn onto the pubic area where her vagina and uterus once were (they’ve been scooped out and sliced away). Many more surgeries and follow-up treatments may be required. Synthetic sex identity is big business. Surgeries can cost $300,000 and up. Just 100 minors on Lupron (a testosterone suppression drug also used to chemically castrate sex offenders) produced $27 million in sales in just seven years, and a lifetime will be required to make the “transition” stick.

Joey Maiz is a woman who at age 27 underwent sex change surgery and took hormones to try to make her a man. Here she weeps for the children being sucked into the same literal meat grinder that ruined her life. [This video is still mostly available off the Gays Against Groomers Facebook page. Try this link.]

Pressure from Olympic Pride’s Attorneys:
Mayor Faber’s Law Firm

On September 13, 2022, the small company that hosts the Port Townsend Free Press website received a demand letter from attorney Sam Feinson, of Faber & Feinson. That is the two-man law firm of Port Townsend Mayor David Faber. He demanded that six images be removed from Wolpin’s article for alleged violation of copyright laws.

Most of the images showed Olympic Pride’s engagement with children, some appearing to be of kindergarten age. These images disappeared from their website after Wolpin’s article. One of the photos was screen-grabbed from a Facebook post of a person not represented by Feinson. Images posted on Facebook are not protected by copyright, particularly when they are posted to allow sharing.

But making these arguments would require engaging an attorney and exposing the web-hosting company to the costs and disruption of legal process. They would be caught in the crossfire. Wolpin took down most of the images, and will be replacing them with others to give readers an idea of what it is Olympic Pride does not want seen by an audience wider and more diverse than the one that hangs around its website.

Grooming 101 and Gays Against Groomers

What exactly is in those images that Olympic Pride does not want seen? Did they show Olympic Pride and its supporters engaged in grooming? Grooming, according to a Wikipedia definition, is “befriending and establishing an emotional connection with a minor, and sometimes the child’s family, to lower the child’s inhibitions with the objective of sexual abuse. Child grooming is also regularly used to lure minors into various illicit businesses such as child trafficking, child prostitution, cybersex trafficking, or the production of child pornography.”

Before the photos were removed you, the reader, could have judged for yourself whether the photos were evidence of grooming. Apparently, that is a judgment Olympic Pride does not want you making.

Gays Against Groomers opposes indoctrinating and sexualizing children under the guise of “LBGTQA+.” They state, “our community that once preached love and acceptance of others has been hijacked by radical activists who are now pushing extreme concepts onto society, specifically targeting children in recent years.” The featured image at the top, from a gay pride parade, is an example. Olympic Pride is the local sponsor of transgender promotion to children, and the sponsor of Jefferson County Transgender Support. Photos of transgender promotion and celebration with young children were among the photos Olympic Pride demanded The Free Press take down.

From Gays Against Groomers FB page

According to Gays Against Groomers, “The overwhelming majority of gay people are against what the community has transformed into, and we do not accept the political movement pushing their agenda in our name.  [T]hese radicals aim to restructure it entirely in order to accommodate a fringe minority, as well as seek to indoctrinate children into their ideology.”

They are talking about groups like Olympic Pride.

“There are millions of gays within the community.” Gays Against Groomers continues, “that want nothing to do with this Alphabet religion and join the fight with parents and concerned people everywhere to protect children. We also aim to return sanity and reclaim the community we once called our own. The gay community is not a monolith. Those pushing this agenda do not represent or speak for us all, nor do we want to be associated with them in any way. What we are witnessing is mass scale child abuse being perpetrated on an entire generation, and we will no longer sit by and watch it happen.”

Gays Against Groomers recently helped defeat trans ideology indoctrination in Florida schools. Their truck was photographed in Miami outside a critical school board hearing. They recognize evil and speak out against it. Raising concerns about the life-long damage done to children by the promotion of trans ideology and what it physically entails cannot be dismissed as homophobia.

Olympic Pride aggressively seeks contact and interaction with children. It sponsored the recent “Queer/Trans Pool Party,” where it occupied the entire Mountain View pool and locker rooms. It was an “all ages” event. Olympic Pride sponsors the Rainshadow Youth Collective, which specifically targets those under 19 years of age. The “Collective” (an interesting choice of a Marxist term) promoted the “Queer/Trans” all ages pool party to kids and holds a variety of ostensibly innocent events for children.

Remember Joe Camel? 

Marketing experts know how to get kids’ attention. The makers of Camel cigarettes once employed the character of Joe Camel to entice children to try its carcinogenic product. He was one cool, fun dude and everyone liked him. Food marketers use cartoons to entice kids to eat junk food. Toy companies have long used cartoons to sell their products to kids (or parents, pressured by kids). The USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism states, “Many different organizations, ranging from governmental health agencies to cigarette companies, develop specific campaigns that are designed to appeal to children. These advertisements may target youths’ interests and attention in many ways, such as through the use of cartoon figures or the promise of maturity.”

Among the images Olympic Pride demanded be taken down were the cartoons it uses to promote transgenderism to children. Their lawyer’s demand letter stated that these images were “illustrations and graphics created to advertise Olympic Pride events.” They are more than that. They are Olympic Pride’s advertising tools to reach children.

Fair Use and Facebook

Use of the images objected to by Olympic Pride’s lawyer is arguably “fair use” and not a copyright infringement. As Facebook explains, copyright “laws allow people to use, under certain circumstances, someone else’s copyrighted work [for] criticism, commentary, parody, satire, news reporting, teaching, education and research.”

That’s what Wolpin did. The images she used were already out there, and she used them for the purpose of criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching and education about what Olympic Pride is up to. But being right does not end a fight with lawyers. Vindication comes through sometimes expensive and burdensome litigation. The Free Press did not want to get its hosting company or its contributors and editors consumed in legal wrangling that would distract from its mission of reporting and commenting on what is happening in our community. We think that by demanding that the images be hidden from the public Olympic Pride is telling on itself. Their attempt to erase the evidence gave us an opportunity to draw more attention to what they are up to.

Olympic Pride also demanded that photos from someone else’s Facebook page and website be taken down. Those photos depicted Beau Ohlgren, who runs Olympic Pride’s Jefferson County Transgender Support Network. Ohlgren is also director of Family Ministry at the Quimper Unitarian Universalist Church (QUUF). The photos Olympic Pride demanded be removed were Ohlgren’s head shot from the QUUF website and a photo of Ohlgren in a leotard with waist-length hair from another person’s Facebook page (which had enabled sharing). Wolpin declined to take down these photos.

Why Mayor Faber’s Law Firm?

David Faber’s selfie on Twitter, in a toilet stall

Mayor David Faber has written on his social media that, “As mayor, I am legally required to be a pervert and deviant,” and also “absolutely filthy.” He has described himself as a person who has sex with dead chickens and discussed having sex with a dog. He has written that Pee Wee Herman, who was convicted of possession of child pornography and public masturbation, “did nothing wrong.” He has embraced Vaush, a YouTuber who argues for the decriminalization of child pornography and lowering the age of consent. New York magazine contributor and former Washington Post reporter Mandy Stadtmiller, Andy Ngo and other journalists have recently dug into Faber’s troubling, creepier alter-ego.

Faber’s selfie, published on his Twitter account for the world to see, shows him wearing eye liner in a bathroom stall. What is that about? Ugh.

Feinson, Faber’s partner, is well aware of Faber’s social media revelations and has engaged with him on the same Twitter account Faber used to issue these abhorrent declarations. This has been established by Substack researcher and commentator Mattie Watkins. Her two articles are here and here.

This is the law firm Olympic Pride chose to use to demand that the Port Townsend Free Press remove photographs that may show evidence of grooming and aggressive marketing of transgenderism, and all that entails, to children. Faber has even encouraged the teenager at the center of the Julie Jaman/YMCA controversy to cut off his genitals by giving him $200 through his GoFundMe page towards what is euphemistically called “bottom surgery.”

Tweet from David Faber

Olympic Pride has helped organize and lead the protests against Julie Jaman and women who have called for safe, dignified spaces where they change, shower and go to the bathroom. Olympic Pride, as did Faber, had a large hand in whipping up the crowd (mob) that bullied and roughed up mostly older women at the August 15, 2022 press conference. Rape survivors and a Black woman pleading for the same consideration trans people claim faced a crowd screaming that they were “c*nts” and TERFS, a sexist slur used to justify violence.

Faber fanned the flames — indeed, the press conference had been organized in response to his taunting rape survivors and women’s rights activists. Faber wrote on his Twitter feed, where he makes official statements in his capacity as Mayor (including his perceived job requirements about being a pervert and deviant), that what happened to the older women, whom he has also called TERFS — was “beautiful.” Council member Libby Wennstrom subsequently called for the expulsion from Port Townsend of all women who did not agree with her that men can become actual women and belong in women’s showers and bathrooms.

Olympic Pride was asked if it condemned such hate speech. It has remained silent despite its self-proclaimed welcoming “inclusive” mantra.

Olympic Pride Doesn’t Want You Knowing Their “Pride Partners”

Wolpin’s article copied a collage of logos of the local businesses Olympic Pride says are its “Pride Partners.” Their lawyer demanded that image be removed. One would have thought Olympic Pride would want people to know about the businesses supporting their indoctrination and grooming of children so they might choose genital and other bodily mutilation and a lifetime of hormone treatments. Or maybe not. Maybe those businesses have been hearing from customers following publication of Wolpin’s article, and they’ve passed that ire along to Olympic Pride.

It’s said a picture is worth a thousand words. Olympic Pride doesn’t want us using pictures, so we’ll use words.  And we won’t need anywhere near a thousand to wrap this up. Here is a full list of Olympic Pride’s “Pride Partners,” who wittingly or unwittingly are endorsing its marketing of transgender ideology to children, which includes surgical and chemical “transitioning”:

• Shanghai Chinese Restaurant
• Propolis Brewing
• Tommyknockers
• Sirens
• The In Between
• The Old Whiskey Mill
• Vespertine
• Jefferson Healthcare
• Newport Healthcare
• Bunny’s Bath
• The LI Law Firm
• The Production Alliance
• PT Shirt Company
• The Food Co-op
• Gift of Grace
• Discovery Behavioral Healthcare
• Corvus Crafts
• Pride Foundation
• Jefferson Community Foundation
• Sugarfoot Studios
• Bill’s Plumbing
• Dove House
• Chimacum Corner Farmstand
• Bell Tower Brokers
• Frameworks
• MJ Photography
• Sea Change Cannabis
• Uptown Cutlery
• Port Townsend Picnic Parties
• The Washington
• Greener Housekeeping
• Finnriver
• Marrowstone Vineyards
• Oak & Well Acupuncture
• Mad Hatter & Co.
• With These Rings
• Two Hooligans Cider
• The Rose Theatre
• Mystic Monkey Yoga
• Seal Dog Coffee Bar
• PT Scene
• Zack’s Donuts

Clementine Adams Interview
Reveals Shortcomings
in Local YMCA Child Protection Rules

by Jim Scarantino | Sep 10, 2022 | General

Clementine “Clem” Adams finally spoke. And when he did, he revealed shortcomings in local YMCA child safety rules, the policies designed to prevent the sort of conduct that has led to lawsuits against the Y for child sexual abuse and numerous cases of sexual assaults across the country.

We’ve written how the Port Angeles Y expelled a family for reporting child pornography and sexual misconduct, and how the Mountain View pool managed by the Y is no longer a safe place for many women and girls. These reports have touched on the increasing incidence of sexual assaults against women and girls in YMCAs nationwide. Adams’ interview reveals a level of negligence that should alarm upper management and any parent who entrusts their children to inept and poorly trained YMCA employees.

A Stitcher podcast hosted by “Garrison” was released September 1, 2022, entitled, “How Transphobia Took Over a Town.” For the first time Adams gave his version of events when Julie Jaman encountered him while showering in the Mountain View women’s showers. Adams is a 19-year old male who in March 2022 said he is now a woman. He is fully male and is “interested in women” according to his Facebook profile just a few weeks ago (a screenshot saved it).

Jaman says she heard a male voice and there, close to her shower curtain, was a “man in a woman’s swim suit looking at little girls.” The girls, Jaman says, were partially naked as they took off their swimsuits to use the toilets, only ten to twelve feet away. Jaman says she asked Adams, “Do you have a penis?” He answered, “None of your business.” She then told him “Get out of here!” He refused. He said in the interview that he just shook his head, “no.”

The pool manager, Rowen de Luna, then entered the woman’s shower area, told Jaman she was “discriminating,” was being banned from future use of the pool and the police were being called. Neither he nor de Luna informed Jaman that Adams was an employee of the Y. (He was not wearing a uniform or any identification.)

Jaman’s and Adams’ accounts agree on these basic facts.

We had offered Adams the opportunity to tell his side in writing, without any editing by us — completely and verbatim — before our first report on this incident, that since led to international attention and two demonstrations in Port Townsend attended by hundreds of people. Adams has not responded.

The same invitation to de Luna also went unanswered. Instead, we were contacted by Erin Hawkins, communications director for Olympic Peninsula YMCA, and instructed not to attempt to contact any Y employees. The Y offered a few vague details and accused Jaman of a “documented” history of misconduct, but has refused to reveal those documents or tell even Jaman what that alleged misconduct is.

Adams’ FB profile pic, added 9/9/22

Now we hear directly from Adams, and what he has to say vindicates Jaman and shows that her maternal instincts were correct: she was seeing something very wrong in the women’s showers at Mountain View pool on July 26, 2022.

Adams Speaks 

“Garrison” was able to record the first interview with Adams. Just a few words about him:

“Garrison” is a man who says he has been taking hormones for about a year. He is virulently anti-woman. He expressed total disdain and contempt for women’s rights activists and feminist/women’s rights publications such as the influential Reduxx, which has covered this controversy extensively. They were the first to publish photographs of Adams. “Garrison” repeatedly called women who object to biological males in their private spaces “TERFs,” a recognized sexist slur and hate speech used to dehumanize woman and frequently justify and encourage violence against them. This man called women who disagree with him, “so-called feminists.”

Adams obviously felt comfortable talking with Garrison and his story spilled out. He said he was observing the Y’s “Rule of Three” but apparently does not understand the rule. We were informed by Hawkins that rule requires two adults to accompany any child to the bathroom. This is confirmed by mention of the rule found in the polices of other YMCAs. The presence of another adult deters misconduct and also protects the adults in the event of false accusations.

But Adams said the rule allowed him, alone, to take two young girls to the bathroom where he admits he touched one of them and saw at least one of them partially nude. He also revealed that other little girls came to the bathroom unescorted. And, to make things worse, he claims that because he was not wearing his glasses he couldn’t see much of anything, and even had trouble finding Jaman though she was but a few feet away.

Inadequate Local YMCA Child Protection Rules 

According to Hawkins, the employee manual for Mountain View YMCA employees says the following regarding bathroom procedures:

“Children who are participating in YMCA programs are not to be sent to bathrooms without a YMCA staff member present. Staff will make sure the rest room is not occupied by suspicious or unknown individuals before allowing children to use the facilities. This policy allows privacy for the children and protection for the staff (not being alone with a child). No child, regardless of age, should ever enter a bathroom alone on a field trip or at other off-site location.” [Italics added.]

What policy? What in those bare four sentences on an issue as important as protecting children from the sexual predation and misconduct that has plagued YMCAs provides privacy for children and protects staff from being alone with a child? Something is missing from what Hawkins says is the Olympic Peninsula YMCAs bathroom policy for children. The “Rule of Three” of which Adams spoke in his interview and Hawkins described to me is not there. Yet, both have stated this “Rule of Three” is a requirement regarding bathroom use by children.

I asked Hawkins if she had sent me the entire, unredacted children’s bathroom policy in force at Mountain View. She did not respond. Did the Y send us an edited version because the full policy and procedures would show that Adams and other Y staff deviated from mandatory child protection measures? We’re left to wonder.

A search of child protection policies posted online by other YMCAs around the country, from California to Kansas in our search, found uniform, quite detailed child protection procedures, far more protective of children than the scant, incomplete four sentences Olympic Peninsula YMCA is saying is their bathroom policy (but not confirming it is their entire policy). Adams and the Y’s pool manager violated even those flimsy regulations by allowing him to be the only staff person with children. His conduct also violated other child protection requirements in force uniformly at YMCAs that publish their entire policy manual for the public to see.

We found the following exact same child protection policies (even formatted exactly the same) in a number of YMCAs in different areas of the country. This is copied from the manual of the Silicon Valley YMCA:

Adams and the Y management, which permitted and has supported his conduct, violated these YMCA child protection rules as follows:

• Without another staff person he took two little girls to the bathroom. (Paragraph 3).
• No other staff person could see Adams when he was with the little girls. (Paragraph 3).
• He did not stand in the doorway to grant the girls privacy, but entered the bathroom area and stood directly outside the toilet stalls. (Paragraph 5).
• He had physical contact when he pulled up a little girl’s swimsuit. (Paragraphs 5 & 6).
• He assisted the little girl in putting on her swimsuit without a second staff person present. (Paragraph 5).
• Two other little girls were permitted to leave the pool and come to the women’s showers and bathrooms unattended by adult staff, and Adams allowed them to leave, again unattended. (Paragraph 5).

Adams Says He Really Couldn’t See Anything, Undermining His Credibility and Raising Suspicions About His Motives

“It might be worth noting,” Adams said in the interview, “I am prescribed glasses and wasn’t wearing my glasses, which is kind of terrifying, ‘cuz, you know, it was like a shot in the dark. I just heard a voice and I had to search around before I could figure out who was talking to me.”

Adams, according to Jaman, was just outside her shower curtain, where he could see her and she could see him. The distance from Jaman’s shower to the bathroom stalls, she says, is only ten to twelve feet.

“A shot in the dark” trying to find her when she spoke to him? His vision is that bad?

Mountain View Pool

But this is the person who was employed by the Y as a caretaker for kids in and around the pool. If he couldn’t see Jaman easily, from either one to two or ten to twelve feet away, how could he have been doing his job? He says in the interview he came directly from the pool with two children. Where were his glasses if his eyesight is so impaired that it is “kind of terrifying” to be without them?

Yet, in the next breath in the interview Adams said he was able to see “the concerned look” on the faces of two children who entered the bathroom unescorted.

This is a very strange part of the interview. Adams digressed to bring up the issue of his allegedly terrible eyesight. Why? To imply that his eyesight was so bad we should think he couldn’t see naked women and children in the showers?

Adams’ former Facebook profile photo shows him with wire-rimmed glasses with thin lenses. In another recent photo he posed without glasses and did not look “kind of terrified.”

An earlier Adams Facebook profile pic

Photo from Adams’ GoFundMe page

Adams, despite pronouncing himself a few months earlier to be a woman, is a heterosexual male. He is “interested in women,” according to his Facebook profile. Men are sexually stimulated visually, much more than women. That’s just how men are wired.

Adams’s interjecting a hard-to-believe diversion about extremely poor eyesight into his story of being in the women’s showers can only make one wonder about his motivation. It certainly undermines his credibility. As does the next part of his story.

Adams was the Only Staff Person with Partially Naked Children. Where was the Pool Manager?

He says that when two other children entered the showers and he saw “the concerned look on their faces, I just kinda told them to leave ‘cuz I didn’t want them to get involved.” He says they went “straight to her [de Luna, the pool manager] and asked her to help and told her that someone was yelling at me. Moments later Rowen entered and as she walked by I got her attention. And I told her, you know, there’s an older lady yelling at me to leave and I pointed at the shower stall Julie was using.”

As she walked by I got her attention. This makes no sense. The shower area is not that large, and the space where the showers and toilets are is not on the way to anywhere else. (See featured image.) This statement by Adams makes it sound like he, not the children, brought de Luna into the room, or that de Luna just chanced to enter the women’s showers, when he got her attention.

I asked Jaman about this and she said de Luna did not enter the showers from the pool but rather from a staff lounge or office area. In any event, both Adams and Jaman agree that de Luna came from somewhere outside the showers and that, therefore, Adams was the only staff person with up to four children, in violation of even the Mountain View YMCA’s flimsy child protection policy. Jaman says all four were at some point in time in some stage of taking off their bathing suits while Adams was looking at them, close enough that he actually touched one.

Child Protection Does Not Come First at the YMCA Mountain View Pool

YMCA staff violated child protection common sense and rules left and right, yet it was Julie Jaman who was punished. She may not have acted as a shy, retiring, proper little lady when her maternal protective instincts kicked in. But her instincts were correct. Yet she is the one who received a letter from the Olympic Peninsula YMCA notifying her she would be charged with trespassing if she set foot on any Olympic Peninsula YMCA property.

The first response of the pool manager was to lecture Jaman, expel her and call police.  Where was she while Adams — nearly blind, he says, so much that it was “kind of terrifying” — was taking care of children in and around the pool? Where was she when he led two children to the bathroom then helped one pull up her swim suit? Where was she when two more children wandered from the pool unescorted to the women’s showers where, according to Jaman, they also were at some point undressed in front of Adams?

As we reported about the expulsion of a family from the Port Angeles YMCA for reporting child pornography, the Jaman case shows that when it comes to child protection and making its facilities a safe place for women and children, Olympic Peninsula YMCA has other priorities and agendas.

(Mattie Watkins contributed significant research for this article. You may read her stories on the Jaman/YMCA controversy and Mayor David Faber’s dark and, to quote him, “pervert[ed] and deviant” side at lollobrollo.substack.com.)

Transcription of Adams’ Account

Here follows a transcription of Adams’ account of his interaction with Julie Jaman, excluding the interviewer’s interpretations or fills:

“I was using the women’s room, cuz, you know that works more me, and that lines up with how I feel. We went through all that (on July 26, 2022), no problem, we got the kids…the kids got changed in the stalls. Once we were out at the pool one of the kids needed to use the locker room bathroom. So I took that kid and another kid to the locker room in accordance with the Y’s Rule of Three system.

“I was waiting outside the stall with the kid being the buddy, making small talk, when Julie Jaman initiated the dialogue by asking if I was a member of the LBGTQ Plus community. I responded, uh, yes, I’m trans and she asked me if I had a penis. It kinda caught me off guard and I told her that’s none of your business. Julie asserted that I needed to leave, that I can’t be there. Then in response to her assertion I just shook my head ‘no.’ I couldn’t really leave or I’d be leaving the kids unattended and, you know, I was backed into a corner. The kid at some pointed exited the stall and had her swimming, her bathing suit wasn’t fully pulled up and she asked me for help and so I assisted her by pulling up by the straps. And there were other patrons present in the locker room at this time. As some point after the girl coming out and needing her straps pulled up Julie was back in the shower stall. Around then two more kids entered the locker room.

“It might be worth noting  I am prescribed glasses and wasn’t wearing glasses, which is kind of terrifying, cuz, you know, it was like a shot in the dark. I just heard a voice and I had to to search around before I could figure out who was talking to me.

“But any ways, two more kids came into the locker room and they overheard Julie shouting at me asked me what was going on, like, they had this concerned look on their face and then I just kind of told them to leave cuz I didn’t want them to get involved.

“”They went straight to her (Rowen de Luna, the pool manager) and asked her to help and told her that someone was yelling at me. Moments later Rowen entered and as she walkd by I got her attention and I told her, you know, there’s an older lady yelling at me to leave and I pointed at the shower stall Julie was using. Rowen kinda like posted up and stood in between me and the kids and Julie and waited for her to come out. And then Julie, you know, poked her head back out and said, ‘Get out. You’re a man.’ and Rowen intervened and said, ‘No, actually you need to leave. You’re discriminating and kind of being a bigot. So it’s actually you that needs to leave right now.’ And Julie told Rowen she was confused about gender and Julie pointed at me and said, “He has a fucking penis. He has no business being around little girls. He has a penis and he could rape someone.’

“After that Rowen sort of ushered me and the little girls out of the locker room and told me to go to her office. Then the other staff members found me and helped me. Rowen stood outside the lobby side of the office when I was in there and, I guess, like, after the police had been called Julie came out and engaged with her and they were yelling. But I couldn’t hear what was going on. And that’s kind the end of it.”

Several other questions arise:

If the little girl was done using the toilet and had her suit back on, and Adams could tell the two later-arriving little girls to leave, why didn’t he just leave with the little girls that had accompanied him?

As for the question that initiated the “dialogue” with Jaman, her asking him, “Are you a member of the LGBTQ Plus community?”, Jaman denied this ever happened, saying: “I can’t ever remember all the letters. LGBXYZ. No, we were not having a dialogue. He was leering at little girls.”

Jaman, as reported previously, also denied using an F bomb.

As for other patrons being present, Jaman says she did not notice a woman who may have been in the room until she had dressed and was on her way out. Jaman says that woman told Jaman that she agreed with Jaman’s actions.