Breaking Silence

[June 30th, 2004] It is highly unusual for this or any newspaper to reveal a confidential source. Certainly, the paper had no intention of doing so back in March, when Willamette Week first received four pages of a court document from someone who demanded anonymity. That document kicked off a two-month investigation that led to other public documents in several Oregon counties and Seattle and, ultimately, to interviews with more than four dozen people, from here to Nevada to Turkey. The result of that effort was the revelation that former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt repeatedly sexually abused a 14-year-old girl in the mid-'70s. And while the original document included only a portion of the information necessary to develop the story, it started the process.

Since the story broke, speculation about that source's motives has heightened. Last week, she told WW she wanted her identity disclosed so readers could focus on what she believes the real story to be: a tale of sexual abuse and subsequent coverup and insincere apology from a group of what she called "good old boys."

--Editor Mark Zusman

Eugene state Sen. Vicki Walker was driving home from Salem on Jan. 15 when Portland Tribune columnist Phil Stanford called.

Walker did not know Stanford, but he knew her as the leader of a group demanding greater accountability from SAIF Corp, the state-owned workers' compensation insurance provider.

Walker's pursuit of SAIF had gotten her crosswise with SAIF's most powerful ally, former Gov. Neil Goldschmidt. Last fall, Walker filed an ethics complaint against SAIF, charging, among other things, that SAIF had not properly accounted for the more than $1 million it had paid Goldschmidt for lobbying help. Goldschmidt did not appreciate the scrutiny, and in December 2003 he implied to the Salem Statesman Journal that Walker had been bought off by SAIF's major competitor, Liberty Northwest. Records show Liberty has contributed $750 to Walker's election campaigns since she first ran for state office.

Stanford also knew that Walker and her Senate colleagues would get a chance to grill Goldschmidt publicly Jan. 21 when he sat down for a confirmation hearing for his recent appointment to lead the State Board of Higher Education.

What Stanford told her nearly caused Walker to drive off the road.

"He said he had a document that showed that Neil Goldschmidt had sexually abused a 14-year-old girl," Walker says. "I said, 'Oh, my God.'"

Stanford added he had spoken to the victim and identified the law firm that had represented Goldschmidt in a legal settlement with the victim.

Nonetheless, he told Walker his reporting on Goldschmidt had reached an impasse. "I'd been living with this thing for the better part of a year, but I couldn't get a copy of the settlement or affidavits from the girl or her mother," Stanford explains. "I was dead in the water."

He offered to share the court document with Walker, but the two were unable to meet prior to the confirmation hearing.

After lengthy testimony, Walker and three other senators voted against Goldschmidt, but his nomination passed anyway.

Walker was distraught after the vote. Senate colleague Kurt Schrader asked why she took the defeat so personally, Walker recalls. "He said, 'Come on, this is no big deal.' But it was to me." It was doubly difficult, Walker adds, because she felt she could not tell Schrader or anyone else what she had learned from Stanford.

When Walker arrived home from Salem, an envelope from Stanford waited in her mailbox.

As it turned out, the partial Washington County court record he provided did not name Goldschmidt or refer specifically to sexual abuse. It simply identified a woman for whom a conservatorship was being established because she could not take care of herself, and it indicated the woman's lawyer was planning to file a lawsuit against someone for injuries suffered from 1975 to 1978.

Stanford says he knew when he contacted Walker that she was one of few state officials willing to criticize Goldschmidt publicly. What he didn't know was that Walker was a sexual-abuse victim.

As a freshman legislator in 1999, Walker stunned colleagues during a floor discussion of sexual abuse by talking about her own abuse.

Today, Walker says she was raped at the age of 5 by a neighbor and then regularly sexually abused by family members until she was 15.

When Walker received Stanford's materials, she was unsure what to do. "I felt I couldn't tell my colleagues because they were already mad at me for going after Goldschmidt on SAIF," she says.

When she's not serving as a legislator, Walker earns her living as a court reporter. Without mentioning Goldschmidt's (or the victim's) name, she asked friends at the federal courthouse in Eugene how to prove what the documents suggested was true.

"People said that if a lawsuit was never filed you won't find proof," Walker says. (Indeed, although the Washington County documents threatened a lawsuit, Goldschmidt settled with his victim before she filed.)

Everywhere Walker went, it seemed, she ran into Goldschmidt supporters who had no inkling of the truth.

On Jan. 24, Walker traveled to Portland for the NARAL dinner, which brought together progressive pols from all over the state. "I remember meeting [mayoral candidate] Jim Francesconi," she says. "He said, 'Take it easy on Goldschmidt--he's done a lot for this city and the state.'"

Walker says she wanted to tell Francesconi and everyone else in the room she had issues with Goldschmidt that had nothing to do with SAIF but couldn't disclose them because she had insufficient proof. "I just said, 'He's not the man you think he is, and there's more to come,'" Walker says.

For all of February, Walker stewed over what to do.

Then, on March 11, this reporter, working on a story about Goldschmidt's consulting firm and its role in the pending takeover of Portland General Electric, called Walker. After being assured of confidentiality, she faxed the Washington County court document to WW that day. It then took nearly two months to prove the connection between Goldschmidt and his victim.

When the story broke May 6, Walker experienced a range of emotions. "I wondered if I'd done the right thing," she says. "I got depressed when I thought about how the girl had suffered and what this meant to all the people he had deceived."

Over the past six weeks, Walker says, she has decided to come forward. "I don't like secrets, and I didn't want to be part of one," she says. "This story's about Neil Goldschmidt, it's not about me. I was just a conduit, and I couldn't look the other way."

"He said he had a document that showed that Neil Goldschmidt had sexually abused a 14-year-old girl."

Closed-Door Meetings

FOLLOW-UP

Neil Goldschmidt met more often and more publicly with the woman he sexually abused than has previously been disclosed.

Two weeks ago, Ruth Ann Dodson, the aide in charge of Goldschmidt's schedule, admitted to WW that she fielded calls from the young woman.

In response to written questions, Dodson said she did not tell Goldschmidt or any other staffers about the victim's calls. "I didn't tell anyone else on the Governor's staff, at least that I remember," she wrote.

But documents found in Goldschmidt's archives seem to contradict Dodson's recollection.

Dodson kept Goldschmidt's calendar (a job she also performed when he was Portland's mayor and federal secretary of transportation) and headed a scheduling committee of three to four staffers who met regularly to winnow down the dozens of requests for meetings with the governor each week.

His calendar shows that on Dec. 23, 1987, Goldschmidt's victim came to his Salem office for a 3:15 pm appointment. On March 11, 1988, he met her at Portland State University at 1:15 pm, according to another calendar entry.

WW was unable to contact Dodson this week. But in an office where almost every minute of the governor's day was planned, it is difficult to believe that nobody asked why Goldschmidt was meeting with the woman.