From jsonline: After the alleged victim recanted Monday, police are dismissing an
allegation that a volunteer for a GOP congressional campaign was beaten
for being a gay Republican.
As a result, the campaign of Republican Chad Lee said it was
dismissing the volunteer because he had misled them about the alleged
incident.
Before that Monday, the conservative website Media Trackers posted and then retracted a story
that alleged that days before the attack the recanting volunteer had
received threatening text messages from the husband of openly gay
Democratic candidate for Congress Mark Pocan of Madison. The
conservative website never checked with the Pocan campaign before
running with the story.
Tamara Packard, an attorney for Philip Frank, Pocan's husband, said
Monday that her client had not sent any such text messages, didn't know
the victim and was considering a libel lawsuit.
The victim was not identified by Madison police but conservative media such as Media Trackers, the Daily Caller, Wisconsin Reporter, and Christian Schneider, a conservative blogger
for the opinion section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel all
identified him as Kyle Wood, a volunteer for the campaign of Chad Lee,
Pocan's Republican challenger.
The Madison police late Monday updated an earlier report they had released last week describing Wood's original allegation.
"In an interview this afternoon with Madison Police detectives, the
victim in this case recanted his earlier statements in regards to this
crime. This crime, alleged to have occurred on High Street in the South
Police District, will be cleared as 'Unfounded' for case reporting
purposes," the police statement read. "Once follow up investigation is
completed, MPD's case file will be reviewed with the Dane County
district attorney's office."
The Lee campaign put out a statement Monday night saying that Wood had been dismissed.
"Today, our campaign unfortunately learned that a deeply troubled
volunteer misled police, news outlets, and our own team in regards to an
attack at his home that apparently never occured," the statement read.
"Our campaign dismissed Mr. Wood immediately and we will fully cooperate
with the authorities as they continue with their investigation. As the
Madison Police Department is investigating this matter, we cannot
comment further at this time." http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/176338211.html
How many times have we heard about attacks to gays, blacks, women and minorities and then it turns out to be false?
It makes legitimate cases of bullying and harassment less believable. The people making these false cases need to be prosecuted for filing false police reports and sued for slander and/or libel.
At the Prairie Café...
3 hours ago
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