To: Alex MG who wrote (255780 ) 10/30/2022 1:58:51 PM From: Alex MG Respond to of 357995 Also in August, Lucas “Luke” Bowen, the political director of Texas Right to Life was arrested and charged with soliciting sex from a minor online. Part of Bowen’s job at Texas Right to Life was to defend Texas’ controversial SB8 law that argues, in effect, that rapists and incest perpetrators should be allowed to choose the mothers of their children.
Bowen is not the first pedophile and would-be child rapist to use his anti-choice activism as cover for his perversions. Ruben Verastigui , who later worked for the Trump campaign and, famously, got so close to GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel that he was entrusted to take the media headshot she used before, during and after his conviction on child porn offenses, first came the GOP’s notice as an anti-choice activist. When arrested, as Law & Crime reported , Verastigui had “162 videos and more than 50 images of child pornography on his phone, admitting that he called material depicting the sexual abuse of babies his ‘absolute favorite.’” Verastigui was sentenced earlier this year to 151 months in prison. Meanwhile, Lucas Bowen is out on $50,000 bond an expected to appear in court again in September. A Sexual Assault in Alabama Also in August, Perry Oliver Hooper Jr., 67, was charged with first-degree sex abuse in Montgomery, Alabama. Hooper is a former AL state representative and was the cochair of Trump’s 2016 Alabama campaign. He is alleged to have groped a woman in public, in a restaurant, “while shoving his pelvis against the victim’s backside.” carol robinson @RobinsonCarol Perry Hooper allegedly groped woman from behind at restaurant, records state. “The suspect grabbed the victim’s breasts and waist while shoving his pelvis against the victim’s backside,’’ the affidavit states. al.comPerry Hooper allegedly groped woman from behind at restaurant, records state“The suspect grabbed the victim’s breasts and waist while shoving his pelvis against the victim’s backside,’’ the affidavit states. Hooper then began kissing the victim’s neck before she was able to break free. 6:42 PM · Aug 24, 2022 5Likes6Retweets Hooper’s M.O. is, of course, reminiscent of Trump’s own technique for assaulting women , which has been inspiring MAGA Republicans to assault, threaten and harass women for the past six years. In November 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center issued a report detailing “900 reports of harassment and intimidation” in the 10 days following the 2016 election in which “many harassers invoked Trump’s name during assaults, making it clear that the outbreak of hate stemmed in large part from his electoral success.” In 2018, Bruce Alexander, a 49-year-old Southwest Airlines passenger who physically assaulted a female passenger on his flight told arresting officers that “the president of the United States says it’s OK to grab women by their private parts.” To give them some credit, on August 25 the Alabama Republican Party, where Perry Hooper is a member of the Executive Committee, issued a statement saying it, “strongly condemns all forms sexual abuse and sexual assault” and “will be monitoring this situation closely as it makes its way through the judicial process.” Why give the Alabama GOP any credit, you might ask, for issuing a statement that does the bare minimum in a situation like this? Because at the national level the GOP has been so corrupted—and has become so pro-sex criminal—that such a statement doesn’t even get made when the worst crimes against children are committed. Case in point: I am unable to find a similar statement anywhere online from Ronna McDaniel about her former GOP portrait photographer and now-convicted baby-rape enthusiast Ruben Verastigui.