[[UPDATED]] HRC’s Terry Bean And Ex-BF Cleared of Sexual Abuse Charges

[[Updated: September 12, 2015]]

A Washington County jury acquitted Kiah Lawson of sex abuse charges Friday. Lawson’s defense team tried to shift the blame to to Terry Bean. They essentially attempted to re-litigate the case in which charges were dismissed for reason discussed in the original article below.

Lawson was accused of having a sexual encounter with a 17-year-old boy in June 2013. Bean was subpoenaed to testify at the trial but Circuit Judge Janelle Factora Wipper ruled Thursday that Bean did not have to appear.

“There were a lot of accusations thrown around in court,” Derek Ashton, Bean’s attorney said. “It is important to keep in mind that it was Kiah Lawson on trial here, not Terry.”

In the end, both Lawson and Bean were fully exonerated.

(h/t Oregon Live)

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Original Story: September 2, 2015

Finally, for the Human Rights Coalitions’ Terry Bean, case dismissed. Terry Bean has done a lot of things. Sex with a minor is not one of them. Finally, charges that should have never been brought in the first place have been dropped. You may not know his name or heard about the charges. That’s a very good thing.

Bean is a 67 year-old Oregonian real estate mogul whose political, financial, and logistical support of President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign garnered him and 26 year-old then boyfriend Kiah Lawson a trip on Air Force One and a visit to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

On the social front, Bean helped found two of the most influential gay rights groups: the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) and the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund.

Last November, smack dab as the fight for marriage equality was reaching its pre-SCOTUS apex, charges were brought against Bean and Lawson for allegedly setting up a hotel tryst with a 15 year-old boy they met on Grindr. Before the month ended, Bean had pleaded “not guilty” and also resigned from the HRC just as their work was reaching critical mass.

Full-time conservative mouth-piece and mercenary nit-wit Michelle Malkin led the right wing out-cry with a syndicated “Nothing on Bean” tirade accusing the liberal media of burying the story due to his powerful connections and publicly popular “deviant sympathies.” She found the absence of “media satellite trucks” in front of his house a national outrage. It wasn’t the absence of media trucks that proved to be the problem. It was the absence of facts.

While Bean did the rent the hotel room, witnesses place him elsewhere when the alleged encounter occurred.

By this summer, Lawson was an ex-boyfriend with a current meth habit. Arrested on drug charges, he tried to arrange a plea by offering up knowledge of previous “bad acts” of Bean that went back to the 1970’s. Seems those prior acts never actually occured.

In July, the alleged victim through his lawyers asked Bean for a settlement. Bean offered $200,000. The offer was denied by the Judge who wanted the case to go to trial.

By August, something was missing though: the alleged victim. He now refuses to testify. In fact, he went underground – and took the case with him. Yesterday, the charges were dismissed.

While the prosecutor decries the $200,000 settlement offer as admission of Bean’s guilt, Bean actually did have an admission of his own. He was diagnosed was prostate cancer and wanted to concentrate on beating the disease, not beating a bum rap.

On his way out of court, Bean was served with a subpoena to appear at Lawson’s trial next week. But he will make that appearance as a free man. And soon, I hope, a healthy one too.

“I take some measure of comfort that the world now knows what I have always known – that I was falsely accused and completely innocent of every accusation that was made,” ~Terry Bean

Terry Bean, Case Dismissed.

Tags: HRC, lawsuits, Terry Bean