The shocking charge against Gore

I’ve just read the first 14 pages of the 67 page pdf transcription of the police interview with the massage therapist who said that Al Gore sexually attacked her in a Portland, Oregon hotel suite in 2006. I am shocked out of my mind. Her account is extremely detailed and believable. At page 14, she is still being grabbed by him, trying to find ways to distract him and get out of the hotel suite rather than resist him and make him angrier. I haven’t followed this story and I don’t know how such a credible and serious complaint could have been dismissed and swept under the table for four years.

My very first thought about this story had been dismissive—isn’t a female masseuse going to a man’s hotel room late at night inherently a sexually charged act that carries the implications of possible sex for money? However, as her story unfolds, it becomes clear that the massage field has become professional and legitimate, that it draws careful boundaries between massage and sex, and that it is not just an obvious cover for prostitution.

There’s a long and interesting discussion about the story at Lucianne.com. Not everyone believes the complainant. Some think the story is true, but that she was trying to get money from Gore to hush it up, and when he refused, she went public. One commenter asks, why didn’t she just walk out the door? As for the widespread impression that a female masseuse providing services to male clients in a hotel must be a prostitute, a commenter writes:

Reply 54 - Posted by: MindMadeUp, 6/25/2010 12:36:18 PM

Portland has at least two large massage schools (I graduated from one) and there are literally hundreds of trained legitimate massage therapists in the city. The emphasis in the schools is on professionalism and ethical behavior. If a licensed massage therapist is even suspected of offering sexual favors he/she is investigated and may lose their license. There are still, of course, lots of women offering such services fairly openly, but they are *not* licensed, cannot even call their service “massage”, and would never be hired or allowed to work in a hotel like the one Gore was in. Fat Albert apparently didn’t understand just who he had ordered up on room service.

The police interview was done not in 2006 (the alleged incident occurred on October 24, 2006), but on January 8, 2009. But I thought that she had made out a complaint in 2006. Was January 2009 the first time she went to the authorities? A concise account of the basic time line is needed.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 25, 2010 05:51 PM | Send