2018.05.22 Paige Patterson
The left (and WaPo) hate Conservative Christians, especially their leaders. And they love flocking to a good lynching: so they did a #metoo hit-piece on Paige Patterson (head of the Southern Baptist Convention) claiming he slut-shamed/blamed and urged a former seminary student (Megan Lively) not to report a rape. But the facts hint strongly at a different story, and it was a journalists responsibility to report all the facts.
Mitigating facts are:
- (a) he never met with Lively
- (b) Patterson had reported a suspected rape (in another circumstance) to authorities, when it was reported to him. He not only reported it immediately to the authorities, expelled the accused rapist, he urged criminal charges be pressed. So there's no reason to believe he wouldn't have in this case, had he known.
- (c) Correspondence between Patterson and Lively (from 2003) seem to show a cordial relationship: no indications of pressure or friction or any secrets/hostility.
The allegations may or may not be true, but WaPo owed it to Patterson and their readers to give them the whole story (that he'd behaved differently on at least one other occasion), so they can make up their own minds. Omitting that was either journalistic incompetence, or a one-sided hatchet job at worst. No apology or correction has been offered.