You have probably never heard of Terry Bean, but the multi-millionaire Oregon real-estate developer has been commonly described as a “gay rights pioneer,” a co-founder of the Human Rights Campaign, and often credited with pushing through the state “equality” law under which Oregon bakers were compelled to bake cakes for gay weddings:
Terry Bean has been a lifelong Democrat and has considerable influence in the party as a member of the Democratic National Committee since at least 2009. Among his contributions are his fundraising for Bill Clinton, serving on the DNC’s Convention Committee in 2000, serving as a co-chair of Howard Dean’s 2004 National Finance Committee,and being the first LGBT member of Barack Obama’s National Finance Committee. . . .
On November 19, 2014, Terry Bean was arrested on charges of sodomy and sex abuse in a case involving a 15-year-old boy, in what Bean’s lawyer Kristen Winemiller characterized as an extortion attempt by an ex-lover. Law enforcement sources said Bean was charged with “two counts of sodomy in the third degree, a felony, and sex abuse in the third degree, a misdemeanor.” He was arraigned in Lane County, Oregon, where the crimes allegedly occurred in 2013.
After the case continued for over a year, lawyers for Bean and the youth reached a civil agreement, which the judge ultimately rejected. The alleged victim declined to testify, his attorney Lori Deveny stating that “he did not seek out this prosecution and made his unwillingness to testify known at every step of the process”. The judge dismissed the case on September 1, 2015 without prejudice. In a statement, Bean wrote “I take some measure of comfort that the world now knows what I have always known – that I was falsely accused and completely innocent of every accusation that was made.” On January 4, 2019, Bean was re-indicted on the same charges. In March 2019, the alleged victim filed a civil lawsuit against Bean. In September 2019, Bean’s former partner was found guilty of third-degree sodomy and third-degree sexual abuse, which The Oregonian reported as “a blow” to Bean’s claims of innocence.
Now, I had not followed this case and am unfamiliar with the details, but a few facts seem self-evident here: First, that in 2013 a 15-year-old boy was the victim of sexual abuse, a crime for which “Bean’s former partner” was convicted. So this is not, as some in the media may describe it, “alleged abuse” — the abuse actually happened, as demonstrated by the conviction of Bean’s ex-partner. The only matter in dispute is Bean’s role in this crime, and the fact that “lawyers for Bean and the youth reached a civil agreement” could be interpreted as evidence that Bean was not wholly innocent. Furthermore, at the time this crime occurred, Bean was 65 and his partner Kiah Loy Lawson was 24. Would you say that a man having a partner more than 40 years his junior could be presumed to have, shall we say, an appetite for young flesh?
But who are we to judge, eh? Who can say what trouble we might get into if we were multimillionaires? The hypotheticals are perhaps limitless, so we ought to be grateful for our relative poverty, but leaving aside (possibly criminal) fantasies, now let us consider the reality:
The trial dropped bombshell after bombshell allegation: a Grindr app meeting, adult men engaging in sex acts with a 15-year-old boy, a scorned ex-boyfriend, a purported extortion plot against a well-known Portland gay activist and disavowals that any crimes occurred.
But a Lane County Circuit Court jury sorted through the messy details and took only two hours Friday to return a guilty verdict against Kiah Loy Lawson on two counts of third-degree sodomy and one count of third-degree sexual abuse.
The verdict is a blow to Lawson’s co-defendant and former boyfriend, Terry Bean — the Portland real estate developer, civil rights trailblazer and Democratic fundraiser. Bean, 71, faces trial in two months on the same charges.
Both men were accused of picking up the 15-year-old boy in Bean’s Mercedes S500 from a 7-Eleven in Eugene in September 2013 after meeting him via Grindr, an online dating app for gay men.
Police and prosecutors alleged the men drove the teenager to a Eugene motel room, sexually abused him, showered with him and then sent him home in a cab after Bean gave him $40 for his fare. At the time, Lawson was 24 and Bean was 65.
During the three-day trial, Lawson testified that he and Bean picked up the boy, but said they promptly dropped him off after learning he wasn’t 18, as he had claimed on the app. Neither of them engaged in any sex acts with the boy, Lawson said.
But Lawson conceded that he is the reason Portland police started investigating both Bean and him.
He testified that he was upset with the way Bean had treated him after their relationship ended badly. Bean had refused to give him a $40,000 payout that had been negotiated between their lawyers after Bean secretly video-recorded him in the bedroom and bathroom, Lawson said.
So in July 2014 he said he went to police with a made-up story about Bean — telling Portland Detective Jeff Myers that Bean had engaged in sex acts with the boy in the motel room.
But after Myers tracked down and interviewed the teenager, Lawson also was charged with the same crimes.
“It’s ironic how everything has essentially flipped on me,” Lawson told jurors.
Lawson described how he felt controlled and taken advantage of by Bean. He said Bean had lavished attention on him. Bean ultimately put up Lawson in his Hayden Island condo and told the younger man to quit his job because Bean would pay him a “salary,” Lawson said.
“He provided me with a lot of money, perks, travel, shopping — everything I needed and wanted, really,” Lawson said. But Bean had stipulations, too, such as he didn’t want Lawson to have a cellphone, Lawson said.
Lawson said after three to four months of dating, he felt as if Bean was using him to lure men to have sex. Lawson said he watched as Bean wooed his conquests, sometimes paying “younger people” a couple of hundred dollars to have sex.
“He would tell me how he liked younger guys,” Lawson said. “Also, he told me about a couple of times he had paid off younger people who were underage, just not to say things.”
“At first I felt special,” Lawson said. “… I thought I had it good. But then I realized that’s how he treated everybody and that was how it was just his M.O. to sleep with younger people.”
You can read the rest of that 2019 story, but you get the point: It is beyond a reasonable doubt, according to an Oregon jury, that a 15-year-old boy got picked up via Grindr and was sexually abused. And while prosecutors convinced the jury that Lawson was a liar — insofar as his denial was not to be believed — his testimony about Terry Bean’s predilection for “younger people” as sex partners seems credible. Also, don’t miss this detail near the end of that 2019 article:
In late 2014, Bean and Lawson were originally charged with sex crimes against the teen. But in 2015 on the day their cases were scheduled to go to trial, the young man failed to show up. Police and prosecutors have alleged the teen hid out in a mountain cabin because Bean agreed to pay him a total of $220,000 as a reward for not testifying then.
Again, who are we to judge? What would you do for $220,000? Speaking for myself, I think I’d probably skip court and hide out in a mountain cabin, too. The lawyer accused of brokering that payoff was found in contempt of court and is reportedly the subject of a disbarment investigation, but what about Terry Bean?
The long-running criminal prosecution of Portland real estate investor and gay rights pioneer Terry Bean came to an abrupt end today [Friday, Jan. 14] when the state moved to dismiss sex abuse charges against him.
“After a judicial settlement conference on December 27, 2021, before the Hon. Jean Maurer, the alleged victim in this matter communicated to me unequivocally that he has relocated out of state, and he no longer wishes to participate in this pending prosecution,” Lane County deputy district attorney Erik Hasselman wrote in court filings today.
The case goes all the way back to a 2014 WW cover story that detailed Bean’s tangled personal life. At the time, Bean, co-founder of the Washington, D.C., Human Rights Campaign and one of the largest Oregon fundraisers for President Barack Obama and other Democratic politicians, had recently ended a relationship with a man named Kiah Lawson.
Lawson and Bean would both later be indicted for sexually abusing a 15-year-old boy in Eugene in 2013. Lawson was convicted of that crime in 2019 but, through a series of developments and delays, Bean’s trial was set for 2022. Now, that will not happen.
“On December 28, 2021, the alleged victim’s attorneys reiterated in writing that for a variety of personal reasons, the alleged victim wished this office to resolve the pending matters against the defendant without a conviction in the case at bar,” Hasselman wrote.
“Given the alleged victim is an adult, represented by counsel, and has clearly expressed a desire not to participate in the pending prosecutions of the defendant, the State respectfully requests this Honorable Court dismiss this pending Indictment, in the interests of justice.”
Oh, it’s “in the interests of justice,” and the victim has “a variety of personal reasons” ($$$$) for wanting the state to drop the case against the multimillionaire Democratic Party fundraiser. What a coincidence!
Meanwhile, there must be thousands of guys in Oregon serving time in prison, or out on parole and permanently on the sex offender registry, for crimes no worse than those involved in this case, and the only difference is that those perverts are not multimillionaire Democrats.
The moral of the story is that $200,000 is now the going rate for teenage hookups with rich Democrats, who can never be convicted in Oregon.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
