Champion of progressive causes now accused of sexual abuse

Seattle mayor says man’s allegations ‘simply not true.’

Seattle Mayor Ed Murray, a nationally famous champion of gay rights and progressive causes, has been accused by three men of having sex with them as children.

An unnamed man filed a child sex abuse lawsuit against the mayor on Thursday, alleging Murray “repeatedly criminally raped and molested” him when he was a homeless 15-year-old in the 1980s.

The unnamed plaintiff and two other men subsequently gave interviews to the Seattle Times — all telling similar stories about a politico in his late 20s and 30s, who befriended street kids, paid them and had his way with them.

“I don’t necessarily think that he destroyed my life,” Jeff Simpson told the newspaper after describing years of molestation from age 13 on. “But I believe a lot of the problems I have stemmed from this.”

Murray, a gay rights pioneer-turned-leading opponent of President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, canceled a planned event after news of the lawsuit broke Thursday and held a brief news conference the next day.

The mayor, 61, took no questions, but dismissed the suit as accusations from a “troubled” man.

“These allegations, dating back to a period of more than 30 years, are simply not true,” he said, noting that he still plans to run for re-election later this year.

Raised in Seattle, Murray was a campaign manager for Washington’s first openly gay state senator in the 1980s, according to the Associated Press.

Toward the end of the decade, according to the lawsuit, he met a homeless, drug-addicted 15-year-old on a bus.

“Young and curious, D.H. encountered Ed Murray upon the bus and developed a friendly interaction,” reads the lawsuit.

This quickly turned into a regular negotiation, it reads, with the teen “willing to do whatever Mr. Murray asked for as little as $10 to $20.”

The plaintiff, now 46, was named only by initials in the lawsuit. But he gave an interview to the Seattle Times, recalling: “He’d be doing certain things, and I’d tell him to stop, and he wouldn’t stop.”

The lawsuit — filed because the statute of limitations precludes criminal charges after so many years — goes into explicit detail about the alleged sexual encounters between the two.

It describes the apartment’s floor plan. It also describes intimate physical descriptions of Murray that match the account of another accuser who did not sue: Lloyd Anderson.

AP Seattle Mayor Ed Murray (left) walks away with his husband, Michael Shiosaki, after a news conference Friday.