The 30 year old secret:

The investigative piece that we choose to analyze was about a well-admired and popular politician… called Neil Goldschmidt who had raped a young girl in the 1970s. The girl was fourteen years old, when Goldschmidt started to sexually abuse her. At that time, Goldschmidt was a 35 year old governor and mayor for the state of Oregon…needless to say, he was a public figure. However, little did the public know that he had a 9 month “affair” with a minor.

This investigation of this case describes the hard ships the rape victim (known as susan) had to endure throughout her life whilst Goldschmidt himself was living a very comfortable and prosperous one. The articles explain how her abusive childhood led her to experience very little, if any happiness and when asked to explain the situations by psychologists and doctors, susan hands start to shake constantly, which is why she’s been prescribed medicine to control the seizures she so frequently experiences. To get a little taste of the kind of mental state susuan was in through out her early adulthood, a doctor who had dealt with rap and murder victims for the past 20 years said “"I have never seen a victim who was so completely psychologically and mentally, emotionally destroyed,""She will never be well again."

This quote is from susans

The woman, whom WW is calling Susan, suffers from physical and psychological ailments that have robbed her of health and happiness. She weighs little more than 100 pounds; she suffers insomnia, nightmares and a recurrence of flashbacks. Her hands shake constantly, despite the anti-convulsive medicine she takes to control seizures she's experienced. 

She didn't change overnight from the bright and beautiful girl her childhood friends remember to the woman who eventually served time in a federal penitentiary. It is undeniable, however, that her future was never again so promising as when Goldschmidt first led her into her parents' basement. 

The late '70s were a giddy time in Portland. Goldschmidt had put the city on the national map with such projects as Pioneer Courthouse Square, Tom McCall Park and the blocking of a proposed interstate highway that would have cut across Southeast Portland to Mount Hood.Goldschmidt surrounded himself with the best and the brightest aides--including, for a time, Susan's mother. 

Goldschmidt, who was married, would sometimes hire Susan to watch his two small children. But, according to a cousin of Susan's and more than a dozen of her friends, he used her for much more than babysitting. He would often take her down to her parents' basement, to hotels and other private spots and have sex with her, the sources say. 

In Oregon, if an adult has sex with someone under the age of 16, it is considered rape. (According to law-enforcement officials, however, the statute of limitations for prosecution has long since passed.) 

In 1979, Goldschmidt, who as mayor had won national renown for the development of the downtown bus mall and the city's then-revolutionary light rail, was tapped by President Jimmy Carter to be Secretary of Transportation. 

Carter lost his re-election bid the next year, and Goldschmidt, who'd represented indigent clients as a Legal Aid lawyer before entering City Hall, came home to make some money. He took a senior position at Nike. 

Susan took a different path. 

Once a straight-A student and class president in elementary school, Susan dropped out of high school in her sophomore year, she says. She earned a GED and took some classes at Portland State University in the early '80s but never graduated from college. 

On two occasions she went off to New York to study acting but found herself just another pretty face. "I was good at comedy," she recalled in an early-April interview with WW near her current home in Nevada. "But I couldn't sing." 

In the mid-'80s, Susan occasionally waitressed at downtown restaurants and bars, including Valentino's, in the U.S. Bank building, the Lovejoy Tavern (now the Indian restaurant Swagat) and Pink's.She was part of a hard-partying crowd that frequented nightspots like the Virginia Cafe and the Dakota. Instead of testing what friends describe as a keen intellect with college and a career, Susan rarely worked. Despite intelligence, looks and charm, she was sinking fast. "She had more ability and less confidence than anybody I have ever known," says a boyfriend from that time. 

Part of what was holding her back, friends say, was her inability to come to terms with what happened with Goldschmidt. "At times she'd talk about him as though she was bragging," says a female friend. "Other times she'd be incredibly angry and bitter." 

In 1986, she moved in with some new roommates in an apartment off Northwest 23rd Avenue. If Goldschmidt was no longer an intimate part of her life, he wasn't altogether forgotten. 

Susan spent the afternoon of Dec. 15, 1986, in the Virginia Cafe downtown tossing back brandy and champagne. Later, as she drove her tan '79 VW Rabbit out of the garage below the Galleria, she clipped the rear bumper of a pickup truck. A security guard who witnessed the accident called the police. 

"I want to personally make sure you get shit for this," she told Portland police officer Clarence Lankins, according to his report. "Neil Goldschmidt is my best friend." 

In 1988, Susan moved to Seattle for a fresh start. She took a job as a clerk in a downtown law firm--a job one source says Goldschmidt arranged for her--and began a paralegal course. Susan told a cousin, who lived nearby, that she was proud of getting a job and finally beginning to get her life together. She was 27. 

Susan's happiness proved short-lived. On a December morning in 1988, she went to get an allergy shot. Outside the clinic, according to court records, a stranger abducted her at knifepoint. 


He forced her to drive to her apartment, correcting her when she tried to steer toward her cousin's house instead. Inside Susan's apartment, the stranger raped her repeatedly, taunting her for hours and threatening to kill her. 

A suspect was soon arrested for the crime. His attorney interviewed Susan, according to court records, and discovered that she had been the victim of "prior sexual assault," when she was 14 to 17 and had undergone counseling. 

The court record shows that the accused rapist's attorney wanted to enter Susan's counseling records into evidence. The lawyer argued that Susan's identification of the Seattle rapist was suspect because the counseling records showed that she was confusing--in her dreams--the rapist with the man who abused her as a teenager. "The counseling records...reveal that [Susan] was confusing both situations, e.g., the prior abuse and the...rape, in her dreams." 

The judge refused to allow most of the counseling records into evidence. The accused rapist was convicted and sentenced to 636 months in prison. "I have never seen a victim who was so completely psychologically and mentally, emotionally destroyed," said Judge Charles Johnson, who had presided over rape and murder trials for 20 years. "She will never be well again." 

At the time Susan was raped, Goldschmidt was finishing his second year as the governor of Oregon. 

He had made progress on key projects, such as reforming the state's workers'-compensation system and recruiting many of the high-tech giants who today make up Oregon's Silicon Forest. But Goldschmidt knew he would face a strong challenge in the 1990 election from then-Attorney General (and now University of Oregon President) David Frohnmayer, a Republican.

While that battle took shape in 1989, the defense and the prosecution were battling in a Seattle court over how much of Susan's counseling files--and perhaps the identity of her abuser--should be introduced into the record. If Goldschmidt's name--or even a more precise description--were in the counseling records, he could have been finished politically. On Aug. 9, 1989, Susan's rapist was convicted and the bulk of the counseling records remained under seal per the judge's order. But in October, the defense appealed the verdict--arguing that the counseling records should have been fully introduced. If the Washington Court of Appeals agreed with the defense attorney, the risk of exposure for Goldschmidt remained great. As the appellate court in Olympia prepared to consider this procedural question, 150 miles south in Salem reporters and pundits puzzled over Gov. Goldschmidt's reluctance to announce his intentions for a second gubernatorial term.Part of Goldschmidt's hesitancy may be traced to Frohnmayer's August campaign kickoff event, when the AG's campaign manager, Donna Zajonc, said, "I gotta believe the best family will win." (Zajonc says she was unaware that Goldschmidt was hiding a damning secret. "I absolutely did not know and have always regretted that quote," Zajonc says today.) On Feb. 7, 1990, Goldschmidt, then only 49, said he was walking away from public life. "His announcement left Democrats shocked and his campaign workers tearful on Wednesday," The Oregonian wrote. The media attributed the decision to the impending breakup of Goldschmidt's marriage and, to a lesser degree, his frustration at his dealings with the Legislature. Until now, Goldschmidt's untimely retirement from the governor's office has remained one of the great mysteries of Oregon politics. "It was a stunning and unexpected political vanishing act," the Portland Tribune's Don Hamilton wrote in a 2001 profile of Goldschmidt. In September 1992, halfway through Barbara Roberts' first term as Oregon governor, the Washington appeals court denied the defense motion to introduce Susan's counseling records into evidence. Immediately after the 1988 rape, Susan returned to Portland. She began more counseling and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Unable to work, she received a $400-per-month disability stipend. Public records show that Judge Johnson's fears about her future were well-founded. Susan turned heavily to alcohol and cocaine. She was arrested nine times between 1991 and 1994. In 1992, she violated probation after a cocaine bust and spent five months in Pleasanton federal prison in California. On the streets of Portland, she was a menace to herself and others, according to police reports. Perhaps the lowest points came when she was arrested on consecutive days for hit-and-runs (nobody was injured). On another occasion, David Petty, the man who was with her during both hit-and-runs, punched her and left her lying in a pool of blood near the Arlington Club. Goldschmidt, meanwhile, was enjoying life as Oregon's most prominent public citizen. His first major act after leaving office was to establish the Oregon Children's Foundation, which runs the highly regarded literacy program Start Marking a Reader Today. But eventually, the two paths that veered apart after leaving that basement in the late '70s crossed again. In 1994, nearly 20 years after Goldschmidt first had sex with her, Susan decided to hire a lawyer. "In cases where girls have been abused, they often don't come forward until their 30s or 40s," says David Slader, a Portland lawyer who has brought sex-abuse cases against the Catholic Church. Two sources say Susan was also emboldened by the coverage of the sexual-harassment claims against Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood and the willingness of his accusers to tell their stories. A friend referred Susan to Jeff Foote, a highly regarded plaintiff's lawyer. Foote agreed to take her case. Meanwhile, Portland lawyer Doreen Margolin (wife of lawyer and bestselling crime novelist Phillip Margolin) was appointed by a Washington County judge to be Susan's conservator. (A conservator is similar to a guardian.) Susan's parents were living in Rome then, and according to the application, Susan was "unable to manage her property effectively without assistance." More important, she was expecting soon to be getting a large sum of money from Goldschmidt. "The appointment of a conservator is necessary because [Susan] is filing a personal injury lawsuit in relation to her claim for injuries sustained from 1975-1978," Margolin wrote. The lawsuit, which would have placed Goldschmidt's sexual abuse in the public record, was never filed. Instead, within three months, Goldschmidt and his attorneys had agreed to pay Susan a settlement of approximately $250,000. After attorneys' fees, she received $30,000 in cash and an annuity that pays her $1,500 per month for 10 years, beginning in March 1995. In addition, she will also receive lump-sum payments of $50,000 in 2005, 2010 and 2015, according to Foote. The money came with one large string attached: Payment of the annuity was "contingent on confidentiality agreement," according to court records. That agreement binds Susan, her family and all of the others involved in the settlement. |

After the settlement, Susan moved to Nevada, where she got married and, she says, worked occasionally as a waitress, at the restaurant Spago. Goldschmidt, meanwhile, carved out a career as this state's most influential power broker, taking on clients as varied as Bechtel, PacifiCorp and Weyerhaeuser. He prospered from lucrative retainers and friendships with powerful people, advising lumber barons Peter Stott and Aaron Jones, plus a host of other corporate leaders

In 1999, his friend Irving Levin sold a credit company to Household Finance, making Goldschmidt's stake worth $8 million. The former mayor represented developer Tom Moyer in Moyer's attempt to extend the Park Blocks greenway and was part of a partnership that bought the Woodlark Building in 2002 for $4.2 million. The network Goldschmidt built while in office has added to his power. His former staffers run numerous organizations, including the Portland Development Commission, the gas utility NW Natural and the state itself--Goldschmidt rescued current Gov. Ted Kulongoski from Oregon's political graveyard in 1986 and has been his mentor ever since. With Susan and Goldschmidt separated by 1,100 miles, their secret might have remained buried forever had Goldschmidt not boldly returned to the public stage. In November 2003, he led a highly visible and successful campaign opposing the public purchase of Portland General Electric. Two weeks after the campaign concluded, Goldschmidt announced that he was heading a group that itself would buy PGE with backing from the Texas Pacific Group, a private investment firm. 

In February 2004, WW began reporting on Goldschmidt's consulting firm, Goldschmidt Imeson Carter, and the extraordinary degree of influence it exercised in the gray space between business and politics. During the reporting, WW kept encountering whispers about Goldschmidt's past. Most involved affairs with adult women, but a few sources said there was also a young girl. 

Public-records searches identified court documents in Washington County and Seattle that described his sexual abuse of Susan in great detail, without actually naming Goldschmidt. In late March, WW began to talk to people, eventually speaking with more than a dozen who told a remarkably consistent story about what happened from 1975 through 1978. 

On April 7, two WW reporters interviewed Susan in Nevada. 

She arrived at a meeting at a sports bar near her home with a Wall Street Journal under her arm--she says she's been a faithful reader of the paper since fifth grade--and a copy of a library book, Tomorrow's God, by Neale Donald Walsch, author of the bestselling Conversations with God. 

Before the interview, Susan, a slight, deeply tanned woman with wavy, shoulder-length brown hair, spoke fondly about her Dalmatians, Zoe and Harley, and her love of horseback riding with her stepdaughter. She mentioned that she had recently finished a paralegal course and hoped to find work in that field. 

When the interview began, Susan produced a tape recorder and said she was concerned about being misquoted. When reporters showed her court documents and summarized interviews with people who said she had told them about Goldschmidt, the tone of the interview changed. Susan's hands shook so badly she could barely light her Winston cigarette. 

Susan acknowledged having been abused in her teens and alluded to earlier molestation by a family member (whom a cousin, in an interview with the Eugene Register-Guard last week, identified as her grandfather). But Susan repeatedly denied that Goldschmidt was the man who began abusing her when she was 14. 

Instead, she sang the former governor's praises and mentioned how she appreciated his giving her the novel Cry, the Beloved Country when she was a teenager. 

At the end of a 50-minute interview, Susan said she would consider a request to provide documents that would prove that the man who abused her as a teenager was someone other than Goldschmidt. 

She later declined to provide such proof. 

By the end of April, WW had enough documentation to publish its story. It also learned that Tribune columnist Phil Stanford had interviewed Susan in February and confirmed a portion of the story. 

On May 3, Rabbi Emanuel Rose, the leader of Congregation Beth Israel, where Goldschmidt worships, called WW Publisher Richard Meeker, whose family belongs to the temple. 

Meeker agreed in advance not to disclose the details of their conversation. Rose did not return WW's telephone calls. 

On May 5, Goldschmidt refused the last of many interview requests. 

On May 6, he confessed. 

In retrospect, it appears that for more than six weeks Goldschmidt was not only aware of WW's investigation but resigned to exposure of his secret. 

During the two-month investigation, this paper talked to Goldschmidt only once. That occurred on April 5, after Goldschmidt called WW, inviting Meeker and Editor Mark Zusman to lunch. 

In his message, Goldschmidt said, "I really have no agenda. I'm in the news a lot, you guys are interested in a lot of things, and I just think it would be fun." 

The April 5 lunch was held at Carafe, a downtown restaurant that serves wine from Goldschmidt's vineyard in Dundee. Goldschmidt's business partner, Tom Imeson, also attended. 

At the time, WW was not ready to confront Goldschmidt with its findings. And Goldschmidt never referred to Susan during the lunch. 

Instead, Goldschmidt talked about higher ed, the development along the South Waterfront and the job that Gov. Ted Kulongoski was doing. 

As they parted after lunch, Goldschmidt pulled Zusman aside, grabbed his hand and said, "Go get 'em." |