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.
A Port Angeles man claims he and his wife were banned from the Port Angeles YMCA because he objected to the sharing of child porn in the weight room and young men sexually harassing women and girls. He offered to pay to upgrade the Y’s security system so they could capture the conduct and was ridiculed by staff.
On the day the youths made sexually vulgar humping actions behind his pregnant wife, threatened to kill his newborn baby and vandalize his car, he was banished from the Y. His wife was also banished. They say the Y has never explained to them what it is they did to have their memberships cancelled.
Olympic Peninsula YMCA manages and owns the Port Angeles YMCA. It also manages Port Townsend’s municipal Mountain View pool where Julie Jaman, who had been swimming there for 35 years, was banished for objecting to a male Y employee in the women’s shower area.
A Life with the YMCA, Until He Saw Something, Said Something
Tyler Abbott grew up in YMCAs. His mother worked in the Rockwall, Texas YMCA for 25 years. For his Boy Scout Eagle project he raised money for the Rockwall YMCA and repaired its sign with donated local pottery. He trained young men at the Port Angeles Y in weightlifting. He worked with obese boys to help them gain control over their weight, and mentored and trained with a Senegalese immigrant. “I probably spent more time training kids than I did on my own workouts,” he told the Port Townsend Free Press.
Olympic Peninsula YMCA CEO Wendy Bart
As he traveled the nation while serving in the Coast Guard, he raised thousands of dollars for the Y’s he came to know. A family friend donated a million dollars to a YMCA after experiencing the Y through his mother’s good works. And she was not alone. “Not only is my family deeply involved in the YMCA, but our impact on other YMCA members inspired millions of dollars in donations to the YMCA family.” He wrote that to Olympic Peninsula YMCA CEO Wendy Bart while reporting to her the sexual misconduct he had witnessed in the Port Angeles Y and his expulsion by a staff person for objecting to it.
What did he see and hear?
For months, he told Bart, he had been complaining to staff about “vile, disgusting, and sexually deviant behavior of some of your members at the YMCA, particularly towards my wife, other women, and especially underage girls.” The behavior involved a group of teenage boys leering and creeping on women and girls by taking advantage of their vulnerability while they were lifting weights.
When a women or girl had a barbell on their shoulders, which would push their chest forward, the teenagers would come close and peer down their clothing at their breasts. When they were performing deadlifts, in which the legs are straight or slightly bent and the women grasp a bar on the floor, the boys would circle behind them and stare at their backside and gesture. Similar conduct occurred when women were laying on a weight bench doing chest presses or flyes.
Dumb bell flyes
Abbott said the young men would use their phones to take video recordings of the women. He said he had seen young girls stop their workouts and leave because of the boys’ conduct.
On the day of his family’s termination, Abbott informed Bart:
[T]here were three high school/middle school age kids in the YMCA weight room. All of them have been kicked out of the YMCA before for their behavior toward other members, such as telling a member yesterday to “mind their Fing business” when somebody called out their vile behavior. These young people were showing nude images of underage girls in the stretching section of the weight room… Last week they were on the bench press talking about doing drugs, graphically sexual conversations about girls at their school and constantly swearing loudly. I asked them to stop and please read the rules that were posted by the door. They swore at me and said “okay, dad.” I did nothing and finished my work out.
He further informed Bart:
[T]he same youth were behaving the exact same way, this time made crude sexual gestures behind my 6 months pregnant wife, doing humping motions, making faces resembling some form of oral sex. Despite this disgusting behavior, I cordially and respectfully requested that they stop immediately or I would get staff members to intervene…. The youth began attempting to antagonize, instigate and agitate me, to which I responded, “Do your parents know you behave like this at the YMCA? This is a family YMCA, with kids and women present. How can you think it’s okay to talk that way?” Staff then came to intervene, and while they did this the young men began calling my wife ugly to her face. They said “wait till we catch your kid outside her womb,” and that they were “going to find my car in the parking lot.” The young man who is the leader of this group…also made racially disparaging remarks…saying “f-ing white people” and said the N word multiple times.”
On the occasions when Abbott reported the alleged misconduct to Y staff, they rejected his claims, saying that their security cameras could not catch the reported activity. Abbott offered to raise money so they Y could upgrade their security system. He says staff mocked him, even though he and his family have a history of raising considerable sums for YMCAs. He wrote to CEO Bart:
Your staff is oblivious to this [sexual misconduct] because during their shifts they’re busy on their cell phones, spraying the same machine 10 times in a row, or sitting in their office on their computer.
Abbott says that after “this traumatic ordeal,” Y staff members proceeded to “publicly shame, humiliate and embarrass” him and his pregnant wife in front of other members. He was told their memberships were terminated because he was “threatening.” When he asked the staff person delivering the news to tell him what he had done or said that was “threatening,” Abbott wrote to Bart, “she couldn’t define or describe any threatening behavior that I ever exhibited. I requested a simple example, to which she couldn’t come up with one.”
Why Mrs. Abbott’s membership was terminated has never been explained.
In his letter to Bart, Abbott provided the name and phone number of a witness, Tanner Boggs, then a Port Angeles city employee and Afghan war veteran, and offered to provide affidavits from others to corroborate his statements. I was able to communicate with Boggs, who now lives in Hawaii.
“I can say,” Boggs wrote in a text message, “that Tyler was very respectful handling the situation and is always respectful to others, especially teens. I’ve seen him on numerous occasions helping others in the gym.”
Teens causing problems, Boggs wrote, “had been using the club for an after school hangout. These teens were seen looking through other people’s backpacks, using obscene language and conducting themselves in a manner that was not conducive to working out and disrespectful to other persons at the gym. Lack of gym supervision and training with the staff made the situation uncomfortable and Tyler took it upon himself to confront the teens in a respectful manner. The two teens responded with hostility and Tyler remained calm and continued to ask them to be courteous and respectful.”
It took fifteen minutes, Boggs wrote, for Y staff to appear and address the situation. They banned Abbott and his wife from the Y and cancelled their memberships.
Bart replied to Abbott’s letter:
“Thank you so much for reaching out… I was not aware of any concerns of this nature.” She said she would be looking into the incident, and added, “On a completely separate note, thank you for all your service to the Y.”
Bart never contacted any of the witnesses Abbott said would corroborate his account of events.
The Y Dissembles
At the same time he contacted Bart, Abbott filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, which does not really deal with situations like this. Nonetheless, the BBB file contains Bart’s only written response to Abbott’s complaints about sexual misconduct at the Port Angeles Y and the cancellation of his family’s membership.
Abbott repeated in his BBB correspondence the allegations described above. Throughout the back and forth, Bart never stated what YMCA rule or code of conduct Abbott violated to earn the punishment of cancellations of his membership, and that of his wife. At most, it was a concern that Abbott was “policing” the weight room by reporting misconduct and asking the young men to read the rules and behave. There was no allegation by Bart that Abbott had ever raised his voice, used profanity, or threatened anyone. Bart, notably, did not dispute any of Tyler’s asserted facts about what happened.
I wrote Bart to ask her what the specific grounds were for expelling Abbott and his wife, since her responses to Abbott’s BBB complaint had not answered that question. She replied, “It is our policy not to disclose member privacy information.” Apparently, that also applies to withholding from Mr. and Mrs. Abbott the reasons that ended a lifetime relationship with the YMCA.
As for the youths in question, Bart told the BBB that the Y had taken some unspecified action. She did not state that their memberships had been canceled. But she did let the BBB know that the Y was refunding the unused balance of dues paid by the Abbotts, thus finalizing cancellation of their memberships.
The YMCA Retaliates
The YMCA then went after Abbott’s career with the U.S. Coast Guard. Abbott believes it was the same staff person who humiliated him and his wife who contacted a Chief Warrant Officer who, in turn, passed along complaints about Abbott’s behavior toward YMCA members “and how he is constantly submitting negative reviews in Yelp and Facebook.” Abbott does not hesitate to confirm that he and his wife have posted negative reviews to let others know what they experienced at the Port Angeles YMCA.
Abbott’s superiors made inquiries and cleared Abbott. Abbott was so concerned that he retained an attorney who, Abbott says, would have sued the YMCA if he had suffered any adverse consequences of what Abbott calls “defamation of my character” by Port Angeles YMCA staff.
Parallels with Julie Jaman’s Experience at Mountain View Pool
Just as Abbott’s requests for an explanation of precisely what it was that ended his lifetime relationship with the YMCA went unanswered, so, too, have Julie Jaman’s requests been met with silence. Jaman, as we have reported, was banished on the spot by a YMCA staff person for objecting to the unexpected presence of an adult male in her shower area, while she was naked and without consent.
Later, the YMCA told media, before telling Jaman, that she had been banned for “a pattern of disrespectful behavior.” This “pattern” was, they claimed, “documented.”
That allegation was repeated in the City of Port Townsend’s Q&A on the controversy. Jaman’s public records request to the city manager for those documents came up empty. The city manager told her to go the Y, where he said he had seen unidentified documents.
Jaman has repeatedly requested that Bart provide her with those documents, if they exist. She insists that she had never once been notified of any infraction in her 35 years of using the pool.
Jaman’s lawyers and the Free Press have also requested from Bart the documents that supposedly explain this “pattern of disrespectful behavior.”
Bart has not responded to those requests. On August 25th Bart sent Jaman written notice that she will be charged with trespassing if she sets foot in any facility managed by Olympic Peninsula YMCA. That letter was sent after this story became a huge national and international controversy unflattering to the Y.
Is the YMCA No Longer a Safe Place?
What’s happened to the YMCA? From an institution once dedicated to families and character development — “a refuge from the hazards of the streets” — it has descended to being focused heavily on sex and the setting for a growing number of problems and conflicts. For instance, the Mountain View pool is decorated extensively with Pride flags and placards — well after Pride Month has come and gone. There’s no way to avoid messages focused on particular kinds of sexuality, even before one gets to the door.
It appears that one slice of society is being favored and promoted above all others. Recently, the entire pool and the locker rooms were taken over by the Transgender Support group of Jefferson County and Olympic Pride for a “Queer/Trans Pool Party” with invitation extended to “all ages.”
Clem Adams, the adult male in the women’s bathing suit whom Julie Jaman encountered while she was showering, was a Y employee sent into the women’s locker room to oversee little girls peeling off their swimsuits so they could use the toilets. Adams is 19 years old with a Facebook page profile (until we wrote about it) stating he is heterosexual (“interested in women”). He was alone, no other Y employee in sight, when Jaman was confronted with him at her shower curtain.
That is a violation of the Y’s policy of having two adult employees with children at all times while they are in the locker room.
Now we learn of a man expelled from the Port Angeles Y and the punishment upheld by the same CEO because he objected to child porn being shared inside the Y and the sexual misconduct against women and girls by crude, arrogant young men. His wife, against whom nothing has ever been said by the Y, was apparently innocent collateral damage. Then the Y retaliated against Abbott for educating others on what they might encounter were they to patronize the Port Angeles Y.
Kaeley Triller Harms in 2015 was communications director for the Kitsap County YMCA. Y management instructed her to draft a policy permitting biological males to use women’s locker rooms, showers and bathrooms. She was told that it was for staff purposes and members would not be informed. When she insisted members should be notified of what they may encounter in previously women-only facilities, she was harassed and eventually fired.
Harms had survived prolonged sexual abuse that started when she was in diapers. Her abuser liked to watch her shower. She well understood the consequences of this policy change for women and girls. However, the change in policy took place without corresponding signage. A year later Washington state enacted its open access law that permits biological men to use women’s facilities.
Kitsap County YMCAs, Harms told the Free Press, had wide open communal showering areas, with no possibility of privacy for women from biological males who could be showering with them. The Mountain View pool’s women’s showers are modified communal areas with colorful, but inadequate provisions for privacy. Jaman says the curtains billow and move when showers are in use, exposing the user to view. There also appears to be no way a woman using the shower can cover herself when she steps out as there are no hooks for hanging towels or robes within reach.
Mountain View showers. Photo from FB page of Beau Ohlgren of Transgender Support of Jefferson County
Jaman also complains that there was no notice that women could encounter a man in their showers. CEO Bart has replied that the omnipresence of Pride regalia was warning enough.
The Mountain View pool, as we’ve written previously, is no longer a place where many women and girls can feel safe, especially survivors of sexual trauma. The Port Angeles Y now seems like another place where women and girls cannot feel safe.
YMCA Sexual Assaults Nationwide
Across the nation, more and more YMCAs are being revealed as unsafe, with increasing incidents of sexual violence or abuse, sometimes leading to murder.
“A string of sexual assaults on women and children have been reported at YMCAs across the country in just the past few years,” reports The Epoch Times, “dozens more spanning the last two decades.” Cases they cite include:
In 1968, a man in the women’s bathroom abducted 10-year-old Pamela Powers from the Des Moines, Iowa YMCA. She was sexually assaulted and murdered. See 2014 story by The Des Moines Register.
In 2019, a male YMCA employee (who had undergone the Y’s vaunted background checks) was convicted of raping a 3-year old and 4-year old at the Wichita, Kansas YMCA.
Last year, a 19-year-old man was arrested after attacking a woman in the women’s locker room at the East Nashville YMCA. A few months later, another man was arrested after he was found showering in the women’s locker room and peeking under stalls.
A 19-year-old male employee (who had undergone the Y’s background checks) was convicted in 2019 of second-degree sexual assault of a 12-year-old girl who had been under his supervision in a camp class at the Fulton County, New York YMCA.
Several YMCAs have been hit with multi-million dollar legal settlements or judgments as the result of sexual assaults against women and girls, and also boys, in their facilities. The Rochester, Minnesota YMCA is currently the subject of a lawsuit by two young women who were sexually assaulted by a 15-year-old male in 2018. He pled guilty to first-degree sexual assault.
A brief search turns up even more incidents of sexual violence and abuse at YMCAs:
On June 23, 2022, a registered sex offender managed to get into the pool at the Grants Pass, Oregon YMCA and was arrested for physical contact with a 6-year-old girl.
Just last week, a 24-year-old employee of the Ridgewood YMCA Camp in Pennsylvania was arrested for sexual contact with three girls, all under age 13.
A class-action lawsuit was filed in 2012 by a man and his wife alleging that YMCAs that advertise themselves as safe and appropriate places for families are actually “brothels” where homosexual men accost and assault men as they “cruise” for sexual relationships.
In April 2022 a Palm Harbor, Florida couple sued the local YMCA for the sexual assault of their 3-year-old daughter in an area that was supposed to have been under the watchful eye of YMCA staff. This was the second sexual assault in the same YMCA by the same two boys. The YMCA staff person who should have been safeguarding the little girl reportedly told the parents, “What’s the big deal? They [the boys] just wanted to look.”
The culture in YMCAs across the country has shifted dramatically from what previous generations knew. What was, up until recently, considered inconceivable conduct has now been normalized. With that normalization has come the risk of predation and sexual assault of women and children.
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Tyler Abbott’s wife went into labor just as we were publishing this article. We had requested a photo of him to accompany the story and are pleased to present him here with new baby Liam.
[Mr. Abbott wishes to state that at all times in all matters related to this story he was acting solely as an individual citizen and not in any capacity related to his service with the U.S. Coast Guard.]
An angry white crowd screaming at a Black woman pleading for civil rights. Threatening her. Intimidating her. Senior women linking arms to protect a rape survivor trying to speak. A lesbian being shouted down by a mostly male mob decked out in Pride colors. A man with an AR-15 imposed over a Trans flag on his ball cap, the impression of a handgun in his left cargo pants pocket, hiding behind sunglasses and a mask that made identification difficult.
This was the face of rage and hate Port Townsend showed to women who asked for equal rights, to have their spaces respected, to be able to go to the bathroom and showers in pubic facilities and not suffer PTSD flashbacks from memories of being raped and assaulted because there is an adult male human being where they once could feel safe.
Most of the jeering, intimidating mob of hundreds pressing elder women against the wall of the Cotton Building appeared to be from out of town. According to another journalist covering the event, the Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club was there, the group that provides armed “security” at Antifa riots. Antifa was there, clusters of men dressed in black with black face coverings. Several women were knocked to the ground by large men who broke through their linked arms. They tore down flags and tried to steal equipment being used to amplify and record the event.
Notice a pattern to the violence? Men attacking women. “They must be very afraid of us,” says Amy E. Sousa, the event’s organizer. “Strong women speaking for their rights are very threatening to them.”
The event was billed as a press conference at the Pope Marine Park on August 15, 2022, for supporters of Julie Jaman. Her story went viral and international after it was first reported here. Jaman says she was showering in the Mountain View pool’s women’s showers. The pool is owned by the city of Port Townsend and managed by the Olympic Peninsula YMCA. Jaman heard a male voice. She saw a man in a woman’s bathing suit not far from her shower opening watching little girls peel off their swim suits. He was able to see her nakedness. She asked him if he had a penis. He told her, “None of your business.” Thereupon she shouted for him to leave. The man in the bathing suit was the only other adult in the shower area initially. Unbeknownst to Jaman, he is an employee of the YMCA. Another Y employee entered the room and yelled at Jaman that she was being “discriminatory” and was prohibited from ever using the pool again and that the police were being called.
Jaman says the pool needs to provide an area where women—adult female human beings, not males who identify as or claim to actually be women—can dress and shower with dignity and privacy.
Sousa is a local women’s rights activist with an international reach. She has been a leader in the movement to reclaim and protect women’s rights against encroachments and appropriation by Trans ideology. One of the organized chants of the angry mob was, “Trans women ARE women.” Not “men who identify as women,” but women. As Jaman said in an interview with the feminist publication Reduxx, if the man she saw in a woman’s bathing suit is a woman, “Then what am I?”
Sousa (white-on-purple outfit) holding hands with weeping supporter of Julie Jaman,
The event began with Sousa and two other women singing a refrain from Sarah Hester Ross’s Savage Daughter: “I am my mother’s savage daughter. I will not cut my hair, I will not lower my voice.” At this point a wide circle of women holding hands surrounded the singers. Sousa next spoke and the mob that numbered in the hundreds closed in tightly around her and her group, forcing them backwards. Their once wide circle collapsed so that they were pressed into each other. When Sousa spoke about the foremothers of the women’s rights movement the mob screamed to drown her out. When she spoke words honoring mothers, the crowd booed her.
Port Townsend police had previously been there, stationed loosely between the groups. But as soon as Sousa started speaking they disappeared. The crowd closed even tighter when Jaman spoke. It was impossible to hear her over screams, whistles, banging on metal and a cacophony of other overpowering sounds. She was assaulted when she finished speaking, with the live feed going black during the scuffle.
The assaults on other women in the group began immediately when Jaman finished, ratcheting up from being screamed at, face-to-face, to pushing and shoving and grabbing at and breaking through the perimeter of linked arms. Dr. Elizabeth Kreiselmaier, the GOP candidate running for Congress against Derek Kilmer spoke inside a small protective circle of women.
When I saw a large man pushing an elder woman up against the wall, then another woman being knocked to the ground, I ran out to Water Street to look for the police. Earlier I had seen maybe ten officers in Highway Patrol and Port Townsend police uniforms, including Chief Tom Olson. Now all I found was Port Townsend Police Officers Kamal Sharif and Marc Titterness across the street, a good ways from and out of sight of the growing melee. I asked them if it was their policy to do nothing. They said they wanted both sides to be able to “protest.” I told them things were getting violent. They did not move.
When I got back to the speakers I saw things getting worse, as the mob had completely enveloped the women, some of whom were using open umbrellas to protect themselves. It was madness and many of the older women were being pushed around, with more stumbling to the ground. One woman went sprawling on the ground when she was pushed from behind.
At that point I called 911 and described the escalating violence. The dispatcher said words to the effect, “Law enforcement is on the scene.” I replied, “No they’re not. They left.”
Thankfully, in several minutes a line of highway patrol officers followed by PT police marched in from Water Street and removed several of the mob from entanglements with the speakers and their protective perimeter. I had to wave for police again when some of the mob grabbed a man’s camera and a scuffle broke out. It is hard to describe how bad things were as men pressed into and pushed elder women, some frail, as they blasted air horns in their faces.
But the nine or so speakers did not fail in their resolve. Every one got through their statements. Some of the elder women linking arms to protect the microphone were weeping. The Black woman the crowd had jeered draped herself over the amplifier to protect it from being stolen.
The women supporting Jaman stood there bravely in the face of hatred and rage that sent one or two supporters’ men home.
This man attacked multiple woman supporting Jaman, including Rachelle Merle who he knocked to the ground.
The Black woman the White mob tried to silence and intimidate is Gabrielle Clark, a Nevada mom who filed a lawsuit against her biracial son’s school for retaliating against him when he resisted forced indoctrination in Critical Race Theory. She describes herself as a fighter for civil rights against woke oppression. That includes erasing and subjugating women to satisfy Trans ideology. After she was done speaking she calmly faced a muscular male provocateur who hurled insult after insult into her face. This same male provocateur body slammed Port Townsend Free Press editor Annette Huenke from behind and knocked Rachelle Merle to the ground.
Half of the woman who pleaded for safe spaces for women are survivors of sexual violence, according to Sousa. We have written why the Mountain View pool is no longer safe for many women and girls who have suffered such violence and abuse from men.
When Crystal Cox spoke from the perspective of a lesbian who believes males should not be in women’s showers and bathrooms, the crowd did not relent. If anything, they grew louder as an air horn let loose about a yard from Cox’s head.
Four Highway Patrol officers walked Julie Jaman and her daughter to their car to ensure their safety.
I am old enough to remember the civil rights movement for Black Americans. What I saw in Port Townsend is similar to what happened at Woolworth’s lunch counters, bus stations and voting registration lines. I can’t say that I saw the birth of the next phase in the struggle for women’s civil rights in Port Townsend on August 15, 2022. But I did see history made when these brave women stood up against a maelstrom of hate and intimidation. They were attacked for making a simple request that should be noncontroversial. As their press release for the event stated:
We support the sex based rights of women/girls’ to facilities designated to us based on our sex. We are against sex based discrimination, which includes depriving us of rights and provisions on the basis of our sex. We support women/girls’ right to boundaries around our bodies. We support women/girls right to say NO to men in our spaces/sports. We support the right of consent for all women/girls. We demand that men respect the boundaries we have around our bodies!
I spoke to Sousa afterwards. “If it had just been me and our 30-40 supporters holding a press conference, this would have gone nowhere. But by their actions [the mob] made this go viral, around the world.” She ended our conversation saying she had to respond to the media inquiries pouring in. Before I had finished drafting this story Matt Osborne’s widely-followed The Distance had already published, “Angry Gender Activists Disrupt Speakers, Assault Elderly Women to Celebrate Diversity.”
A heterosexual male is authorizedby the YMCAto enter the women’s showers and dressing areaat the Mountain View pool while women and girls are naked.
Clementine Adams, who also goes by “Clem,” though he wears a woman’s bathing suit on the job at the pool, is heterosexual. His Facebook page identifies him as “interested in women.” As Julie Jaman has recounted, she saw him looking at little girls as they peeled off their swimsuits. He also looked at her as she stood naked from a shower demanding he leave and grant her privacy. He refused. Jaman was banished from the pool for being “discriminatory.” She was told by another Y employee, who was in the shower room at the time of the incident, that police were called. It was Jaman who went to the police to report the incident.
Clementine Adams Facebook profile, August 8, 2022
Some may object to posting this information. But it is all public, available for anyone to see. Photos of Adams have appeared in the New York Post and other media, such as the feminist publication Reduxx, and in widely viewed tweets from feminists angry about his gaining access to the women’s showers merely by donning a woman’s swimsuit and declaring himself to be a woman.
More importantly, the information about Adams being interested in women, despite his choice of clothing and makeup, was and is available to his employer. The Olympic Peninsula Y manages the pool under an agreement with the pool’s owner, the City of Port Townsend. The Y says it is merely following state law. But no state law authorizes an employer to send men into women’s shower areas while women and girls are naked, and then banish women for objecting. As we explained in our first installment on this controversy, the state law upon which the Y relies did not grant rights to Adams. It protected Jaman. It is the Y that violated the state law protecting Jaman’s right to use to facilities consistent with her gender identity and expression.
Another reason for publishing this information and image is that women using the Mountain View pool have a right to know.
Good Men Don’t Go Into Women’s Bathrooms and Showers
Amy E. Sousa
“These policies put women and girls in danger,” says Amy E. Sousa, a Port Townsend advocate for the protection of women’s rights against oppression, appropriation and erasure by men who identify as or claim to be women. “Good men don’t go into women’s rooms. Good men stay out so bad men stand out.” Sousa is a rape survivor and says she well understands how the presence of a man in a woman’s shower area and bathrooms strips from sex violence survivors their sense of safety and can send them into panic and a state of terror.
Sousa has gained a nationwide following for her public speaking, activism and YouTube videos, such as “What is a Woman?“. Her widely followed twitter handle, “KnownHeretic” has received over 200,000 “impressions” for her reporting of Jaman’s story. Sousa has participated in organizing protests at the NCAA national women’s swim final against allowing L. Thomas, a very mediocre University of Pennsylvania swimmer who declared himself a woman (while continuing to date women) to compete against women as a woman (though he’s a man). Sousa has also protested at the United Nations against that organization’s erasure of sex-specific language and protections for women and girls. Sousa, who holds an M.A. in Depth Psychology and works as an embodiment expert, was formerly education director at Port Townsend’s Key City Public Theater.
“Our foremothers,” says Sousa, “fought long and hard for women to have sex based rights and provisions, for us to have boundaries around our bodies.”
“Our foremothers didn’t fight for us to have ‘identity’ spaces, but to have spaces for the safety, privacy, and fairness of our BODIES. It is a safeguarding failure to teach girls they have no right to boundaries around their bodies, to teach them they do not have the right of consent, that they don’t have the right to say NO to men in their spaces, regardless of the labels those men use to describe their ‘Identities.’
All men are equally physically men. And women/girls have the right to say NO to men in our spaces, this includes ALL MEN regardless of their claimed ‘identities.’ Men need to respect the boundaries women/girls have around our bodies. This includes all men.”
Sousa points to empirical evidence of the dangers of men in women’s private areas, including a longitudinal, nation-wide study done following the Target department store’s decision to allow all sexes to share dressing room areas. The study found that sexual incidents in Target’s dressing rooms, particularly Peeping Tom and upskirting incidents, very quickly increased 200% and more. The study concluded that its findings “support the theory that sex predators may take opportunities afforded by gender-inclusion policies to perpetrate sexual violence against women in public spaces.”
We will return to the extensive evidence of violence and abuse when men are allowed into formerly sex-specific private spaces for women.
YMCA: Fear and Terror is Your Problem, Rape Survivors
The Y has doubled down and declared that it will cancel the membership of anyone who “discriminates,” as Jaman did by objecting to a man standing at her shower seeing her and little girls naked. The CEO of Olympic Peninsula YMCA Wendy Bart issued a letter to all members stating the Y’s policy. Any actions based on sex or sexual orientation—and she was addressing Jaman’s situation specifically—will result in banishment. Women and girls are being told to stuff it. The best a woman can do now is scream and keep screaming, but not explain why if they don’t want to be banished from the pool permanently.
I have spoken with two other rape survivors who told me they would have been terror-stricken being surprised by a man in their showers. The prospect of encountering a naked man while they are coming out of a shower would be a living nightmare for them. We have also received comments from victims of child sexual abuse echoing those fears.
The Y’s policy of sending its male employee into the women’s showers requires women and girls to submit, to surrender, to feel shame and maybe even blame themselves. Mattie Watkins, a mother of four and published author, once struggled with gender dysphoria. “[T]he realization that I grew out of it is what initially brought me into the conversation,” she wrote the PT Free Press.
“Being a stay-at-home mom has put me in a position to talk about these things openly in a way many women can’t. I get messages daily from women telling me that they agree with me but that they are scared of getting doxxed, losing their jobs, losing their social support system, and generally fear a complete derailment of their lives. When women can’t talk freely and openly, the problem is undeniable.”
[The Y is now doing this to Jaman, launching a character assassination campaign against her with unspecified allegations that she has a history of bad conduct that led to her banishment. Jaman, who has been swimming at Mountain View for 35 years, says she’s never been informed of any infractions. The Y has not responded to her request for details and documentation of these alleged incidents. The Y has also not responded to our request for details to verify their claims to media that Jaman was a problem before she objected to encountering Adams in the women’s showering area.]
Watkins, like Sousa, has used social media to spread Jaman’s story, receiving about 100,000 impressions of her tweets and scores of replies. She shared with us this heart-breaking account from a survivor of sexual violence about what it is like to have to share showers with a naked man who says he is, despite an erect penis, a woman:
“Okay, please be kind here; I’m struggling to do the right thing here. I’ve been practicing yoga for two and a half years. I’m a very shy and introverted person and after going to several yoga studios, was very grateful to find one where I’m comfortable. Also their schedule and location are very convenient to me; thanks to this combination I’ve been able to really deepen my practice and I feel like it’s been a miracle in my life.
So there is a new person coming to the studio who’s also new to yoga in general. This person is a transgender woman and I warmly welcomed her to the studio. I do believe and support trans people in using whatever bathroom facilities they feel most comfortable in. Or so I thought, anyway. I was in the open shower area and she and I ended up being the last two people in there.
She is definitely very masculine. She had an erection and took an extended look at my body. I wish I had loudly said “Why are you looking at me?” or “Stop looking at me!” but I didn’t. I have a lot of compassion for the challenges faced by the LGBTQ plus community, but I also have my challenges. I was molested as a girl and this is the strongest I’ve ever been triggered as an adult. This time and another time in college when I had a guy aggressively grind against me. But her locker room etiquette was BAD to have looked at me for so long.
Now I have anxiety. If I stop going to that yoga studio, I won’t be able to do yoga before work. I could go to the owners and what??? Be a little tattletale? Be very unpopular and say I’m not comfortable with a transgender person? That goes against everything I thought I believed in; I have fought to bring kindness and understanding to difficult situations. Trust me, I do understand that me being triggered by an erect penis is my problem; I’ve intermittently been in therapy for most of my adult life. I feel disempowered and old-fashioned and vulnerable and stupid and confused. I hope nobody guesses exactly where I’m talking about and please please be kind with any feedback.“
Biological males invading women’s safe, vulnerable spaces revictimizes women who have suffered sexual violence and abuse. The Olympic Peninsula YMCA does not seem to care. Indeed, it is literally sending a man into those spaces. The YMCA in Washington state has a history of promoting men gaining access to women’s areas and has been deaf to the concerns of women who have been raped, assaulted and abused. We asked Olympic Peninsula YMCA what it has done to make survivors of sexual violence and abuse feel safe in its showers, or whether they should just stay away from the Mountain View pool. They have not responded.
Kaeley Triller Harms
One former Y employee, Kaeley Triller Harms, survived sexual abuse that started when she was in diapers and lasted ten years. Her abuser “liked to watch me in the shower.” She worked in YMCAs for 17 years but was fired for objecting to allowing biological males into women’s bathrooms and showers. That was before Washington’s access law was passed, when the Y on its own permitted the invasion. She says the trans agenda that is claiming women’s and girl’s safe, vulnerable spaces is creating a “rape culture.”
There Is Reason For Fear: Mounting Evidence That Men in Women’s Locker Rooms, Bathrooms and Showers Hurt Women and Girls
The revictimization of women and girls who have survived sexual violence and abuse should be enough on its own. Only a sick institution run by sick, malignant people would disregard their trauma and pain. But there is also empirical evidence that unisex dressing rooms, bathrooms, and showers are the sexual predator’s candy store. The Target study cited above is just the tip of the iceberg. We have aggregated a few of the reported, growing number of incidents where women have been assaulted, peeped, humiliated and stripped of their sense of security and dignity by men in women’s supposedly safe, private spaces.
An 80-year old woman who expressed extreme discomfort and fear about a male in the women’s shower area of the Mountain View Pool was permanently banned from using the facility.
For 35 years the Mountain View pool—a City of Port Townsend facility now operated in partnership with the Olympic Peninsula YMCA—and its women’s showers had been a safe place for her. But not that day. The woman had to stand naked in the presence of the male, a YMCA employee, despite her pleas and demands that he leave. She was also very concerned that this male was watching little girls as they peeled off their swimsuits. Another YMCA employee called the police on the woman. The woman was initially instructed by a Y employee to leave, but then prohibited from exiting the building by two YMCA employees. She exclaimed, “Bullshit! I need the police!” and left to report the incident immediately to the Port Townsend Police Department.
Julie Jaman has been in Port Townsend for about 40 years. She has been swimming at the Mountain View pool for most of those years. She raised children in Jefferson County. She has been a Democratic voter. She describes her gender identity and expression as rooted in her biological sex. “I am an XX woman,” she says, referring to the chromosomal characteristics that make women women and distinguish them from men. Her gender identity and expression, she says, have been shaped by eight decades of womanhood and life experiences that implanted feelings, reactions, intuition and wisdom, strengths, vulnerabilities and preferences. Jaman is a woman whose gender expression and identity recoil at being naked against her will in the presence of strange males and whose mothering instincts (“the momma bear in me,” she says) surfaced when she saw a man in a woman’s bathing suit looking at nearly naked little girls.
Julie Jaman’s Story
Jaman says that on Tuesday, July 26, 2022, she was swimming when the Y’s aquatics manager, Rowen DeLuna, told her that a group of children were going to use her lane. Julie left the pool and went to the women’s showers. There are no private showers. They are all clustered in a common area that requires users to step into and out of the showers in the view of others. The light curtains on each shower stall do not provide much of a shield from the eyes of others. One can see out as well as in.
Rainbow flags and “pride” stickers fill the rooms and corridors of the Mountain View Pool facility, with no signage warning users that biological men identifying as women can use formerly women-only showers and toilets.
While lathered up in the shower Jaman heard a definite, low male voice. She saw a male in a woman’s swimsuit very close to where she was showering. Julie says he was “looking at the little girls as they were taking off their suits.” She remembers about four little girls being in the room.
Jaman says she was shocked. “There were gaps in the curtain and there I was, naked, with soap and water on me, and this guy, right there very close to me. I asked, ‘Do you have a penis?’ He said, ‘That’s none of your business.’ That’s when I told him, ‘Get out of here, right now.’”
Jaman then noticed that DeLuna was also there just outside her shower stall. Julie said to her, “Get him out of here.” DeLuna responded, according to Jaman,”You’re discriminating and you can’t use the pool anymore and I’m calling the police.”
Jaman remembers standing there stunned, naked and wet. “There was no concern for what I was experiencing.” DeLuna never asked “if I was okay.” Nobody explained anything to her. The male in the woman’s swim suit did not display anything identifying him as a YMCA employee. She does not remember getting dry and dressed. She exited the showers and entered the foyer to leave the building.
DeLuna was at the door and told her, “You have not abided by our principles and values.” Jaman said, “I am respectful, but I’m not a Christian and I don’t follow Christian ideology.” She told us she was referring to the “C” in YMCA which once stood for “Christian”. Jaman said she raised concerns about her loss of dignity and being stripped of her sense of safety when she was in a vulnerable state. She raised concerns about the little girls being naked in front of the male in the swimsuit. DeLuna dismissed her concerns by sharing a past trauma of her own. Another YMCA staff member then appeared and told Jaman that she could not leave. DeLuna said the same thing, either before or after this other person. Jaman said, “Bullshit! I’m going to the police right now. I want help and I need it immediately.”
The police department in the Mountain View Commons complex is just a few yards from the door to the pool. Jaman filed a complaint about what had happened and was told she would be called. Port Townsend Police Officer Marc Titterness called her and she told him what happened.
Jaman also called Wendy Bart, the CEO of the Olympic Peninsula YMCA and left a message. They were able to talk later that day. Bart said she had talked to her staff and stood by their actions, including banning Jaman from ever again using the pool. Bart said a staff member told her that Jaman said to the male in the woman’s swimsuit, “You’re going to stick your fucking penis in those little girls.” Jaman adamantly denies saying any such thing.
Ms. Bart told Jaman she assumes the posted “pride” signs indicating the Y welcomes all people is adequate for women to know that crossdressers and men who identify as women will be using the women’s dressing/shower room. In a written comment to the Port Townsend City Council, Jaman stated:
“The YMCA should immediately post clear signage indicating the existing dressing/shower rooms will be used by the opposite sex who gender identify differently. Also, all parents who send their children to YMCA programs should be informed that men who identify as women are allowed to accompany little girls into the dressing and bathroom areas.”
“This is unbelievable,” Jaman says. She says she did not sleep for days following the incident.
The YMCA’s Side of the Story
We have asked Bart, DeLuna and Clementine Adams to state what they say happened. Adams, a first year college student, is the male who was in the swimsuit and in the shower area while Jaman was naked. We let them know that we always publish verbatim and in full every word written to us in response to questions. None of them have responded to telephone calls or Facebook messages.
Police Call Records Support Key Parts of Jaman’s Story, are Vague on Others
Officer Titterness summarized his conversation with Jaman in a police call report obtained by the Free Press. He says that “Julie,” as he refers to her, was using the “restroom” and “heard a man’s voice and observed what appeared to be a man in a female bathing suit assisting a small female child.” Jaman became “very triggered” and “had an emotional response to a strange male being in the bathroom and helping a young girl take off her bathing suit.” Officer Titterness and Jaman “had a long discussion about the complex issue.” [Jaman states she did not claim to see any touching; see author’s note at the end of the article.]
The report we obtained also records calls made by someone from the YMCA who refused to identify themselves. The anonymous caller told the police that “Clementine was in the bathroom with a child in the day camp and Julie asked if she had a penis and started screaming at her to get out.” In another call, the anonymous caller said that “Julie” has “been asked to leave and is refusing.” Another call from the same person was recorded as Julie “was screaming at employee and calling names and refusing to leave.” Nothing appears in the contemporaneous call records about Jaman saying anything like what the YMCA’s CEO says was reported to her sometime after the incident.
A Word on Words: He, Her, Trans, Male, Female, Man, Woman
What Jaman saw is what will be described here as “a male in a woman’s swimsuit.” How Adams sees himself does not alter the physical facts in the shower room on that day. Jaman was very upset at finding herself naked in front of a male in a woman’s swimsuit, and seeing this male looking at little girls in various stages of nudity. Adams was not excluded from the facilities. It was Jaman who was told to leave when she expressed her gender identity, sensitivities and vulnerabilities. State law imposes obligations upon and prohibits actions by the Y and its employees; state law imposes no duty upon Jaman to overcome or hide her concerns, fears and humiliation about being suddenly naked, without consent, in front of a male unknown to her in a place she had considered safe for more than 30 years.
What is a woman? Adams declared himself to be a woman in March of 2022 according to his Facebook page; Jaman has been “an XX woman” for eighty years since the moment of her birth. To describe Adams as a woman would be disrespectful to “XX women” shaped by immutable biological blessings and their life’s journey, joys, struggles and wounds as a woman. Anything less implies there is nothing all that special and profound about womanhood. Uttering the word “woman” cannot change biology nor instantly give a biological XY chromosomal male the intuition, strengths, vulnerabilities, emotions, powers, and wonderous, incomparable gifts unique to those astounding and amazing human beings who are, in fact, women.
The YMCA’s Violation of Washington State Law Against Discrimination of the Basis of Gender Expression or Identity Protects Jaman
WAC 162-32-060 states that all public accommodations “shall allow individuals the use of gender-segregated facilities, such as restrooms, locker rooms, dressing rooms and homeless or emergency shelters, that are consistent with that individual’s gender or expression or gender identity. In such facilities where undressing in the presence of others occurs, covered entities [like the YMCA] shall allow access to and use of a facility consistent with that individual’s gender expression or gender identity.”
Julie Jaman’s gender expression is that of a woman in the traditional sense, the sense understood by most of her generation and all past generations until a few people have attempted fairly recently in human history to erase that identity by asserting it can be claimed by declaring oneself to be a woman. Jaman’s gender expression and identity recoils at and rejects appearing naked in front of men in public restrooms or showers, or seeing naked men in similar places, all without her consent and against her will. In this way, it is similar to a sexual assault, though Jaman has not used that terminology explicitly. For her it is palpably wrong, humiliating and threatening. This gender expression was strongly displayed when she was “triggered” and lost her sense of safety upon finding a male in a swimsuit just a few feet from her while she was naked during her shower.
This law is not a law exclusively for those humans who identify themselves the opposite gender of their biological sex. It is not so limited by its language. It is a law that protects ALL gender expressions and identities, including those of Julie Jaman. It prohibits the YMCA from denying use of its facilities to even the most puritanical, unyielding, judgmental, heterosexual, even bigoted male or female to the same extent such discrimination would be illegal against an inconsiderate male or female expressing their sexuality as other than their biological gender. Jaman’s discomfort and concerns are entitled to the same unquestioning deference and response as it would have to grant anyone asserting their gender expression or identity.
She had never before in her experience been subjected to, against her will, being in the presence of a male while naked in the Y’s showers. The first time it happened, and the first time she vocally expressed her gender identity, the Y called the police and has forever now denied her use of this public accommodation. Julie Jaman was under no legal obligation to surrender the sensitivities and preferences that spring from her gender identity. The state law applies to the YMCA and its employees, not to her.
Instead of ignoring and condemning Jaman’s gender expression, Y employees DeLuna and Adams were legally obligated to accommodate her gender expression and related preferences. They should have acknowledged and honored Jaman’s preference that Adams grant her privacy by removing himself, at least until she was dressed. DeLuna and Adams have not responded to our questions as to why they acted as they did instead of allowing Jaman to use the facility she had for decades been using in a manner consistent with traditional gender expression and identity.
State Law Recognizes the Legitimacy of Expressions of Concern and Discomfort
WAC 162-32-060(2)(a) states “If another person expresses concern or discomfort about a person who uses a facility that is consistent with that person’s expression or gender identity, the person expressing discomfort should be directed to a separate or gender-neutral facility, if available.”
This is what Julie Jaman is asking for now. The Legislature legitimized such concerns by providing a procedure for addressing them. Jaman believes that if biological males will be in the women’s shower room—where there is no privacy—then the YMCA should provide a separate or gender-neutral facility for women (or men) with gender expressions and gender identities that experience discomfort, insecurity and humiliation from as the result of being naked in front of unknown persons of the opposite sex, or being exposed to their nakedness.
I asked Erin Hawkins, who is identified as the YMCA’s person for marketing and communications, what the Y is doing now to protect the dignity and gender-based sensibilities of someone like Julie Jaman. Hawkins said such a person should do their best to wrap themselves in a towel and deploy the shower curtain while washing. She acknowledged that the shower area is not private and had no answer for how someone like Julie Jaman would be shielded from a male exposing his genitals. As for employees like Adams, she said, the Y provides separate dressing and shower facilities.
Protest and Obfuscation
Jaman and supporters held a protest outside the Mountain View pool on Monday, August 1, 2022. They argue that in 2021 the YMCA promised, quoting Y literature, “the addition of family changing rooms/all-gender bathrooms…” but instead “took over the traditional binary areas” to accommodate individuals with gender identities different than their biological gender. Jaman and her supporters want the Y to provide three separate dressing areas: men, women and gender-free.
After the protest, a large number of concerned citizens also addressed City Council that evening. Though they don’t address the state law in their list of demands, the Y could not require a man in a women’s swimsuit to use a gender-neutral room, but it would be available to resolve conflicts between gender expressions and identities. A male in a woman’s swimsuit could show respect and compassion by using the alternative area voluntarily instead of forcing himself and his preferences on non-consenting women, and vice versa. At least there would be an option to resolve conflicts.
Trans activists who organized a counter protest have been trying to tear down Jaman as a bigot, though she is only asking what the trans people they advocate for have been asking: a place that fits her gender expression and identity where she can be herself and feel safe and dignified. The activists are trying to make the question one of an attack on trans people instead of a plea by Jaman and other women with similar gender expressions and identities to have their rights equally recognized and served by the YMCA. As the sign of one of Jaman’s supporters said, “Women’s rights are human rights.”
What is becoming clear in the attacks on her, as Jaman wrote to us in an email, “It seems everything is about them. No one else’s needs matter.” The Y and the trans activists are demanding that women like Jaman surrender their gender expressions and identities, change who they are and their gender-based emotions, values and sensibilities, in order to accommodate people such as Adams.
Jaman says she is considering her options, including pursuing legal remedies for violation of her rights. As things now stand, despite the Y’s pledge of inclusivity and respect, its facilities are not a place where everyone can feel safe and assured that their dignity is being respected.
A facility like the Y must take at face value a person’s assertion of their gender expression or gender identity. Washington’s law on nondiscrimination in use of public facilities does not permit questioning the basis for a person’s preference for facilities consistent with the asserted gender expression or identity. A man dressed as a lumberjack, or in a cut off shirt to revealing massive biceps, who comes across as very macho and stereotypically masculine, may use the women’s facilities. If questioned, he need only say they are at that moment consistent with how he identifies—even if this is but a ruse so he can gratify himself by seeing naked women and children or gratify himself by exposing himself to them.
If a women who identifies as a man objects to biological males sharing the same showers with her (asserting to be comfortable only around people with their same gender expression and identity or women in general), the YMCA must allow them use of a space consistent with that preference. Just as a man who identifies as a woman need not substantiate feelings and objections to using a shower or bathroom inconsistent with who they say they are, Jaman need not undergo cross-examination in the assertion of her feelings of invasion of privacy, humiliation, vulnerability and fear. In the next installment, we will, though, examine the justification for concerns about biological males in women’s facilities. These are not frivolous concerns. We will also report on an extraordinary, impassioned session of Port Townsend’s City Council where both sides of this controversy shared their views.
[Author’s note: The police records say that Jaman reported seeing the male in the woman’s swimsuit “helping a young girl take off her bathing suit.” That would have required some physical contact. In comments to the article Jaman says, however, she did not see any physical contact, but saw the male in the woman’s bathing suit looking at 4-5 young girls pulling down their swimsuits. The use of the word “touching” in the original posting of this article was based on the police report of the interview with Jaman. That word has been deleted at Jaman’s insistence. To her credit, she wants the story reported as accurately as she can recall events.]
The activists are trying to make the question one of an attack on trans people instead of a plea by Jaman and other women with similar gender expressions and identities to have their rights equally recognized and served by the YMCA. As the sign of one of Jaman’s supporters said, “Women’s rights are human rights.”