Weary Purdue staffer Newman: ‘I just quit’

After several events following the allegation of posting a “rape threat” on an online forum, Jamie Newman, former accompanist and composer for the Purdue Division of Dance, left his job today.

“Yeah, I just quit. Tell the world.” Newman emailed the J&C.

A protest against Newman has been planned for today, Monday, February 15, and will still go on despite Newman’s resignation.

Garen Bragg, the student who organized the rally posted to the Facebook event, “The event will still go on, the university needs to know that we take this issue seriously.”

Some are now unsure of the purpose of the rally since Newman has resigned. Some believe there should be new focus  on receiving a statement from President Mitch Daniels regarding why Newman wasn’t fired in the first place.

Prior to his resignation, Newman emailed Anna Held, a Purdue alum and the Great Lakes Region Students for Life coordinator, in an effort to appeal to Held’s humanity:

“If you can sleep at night, and hug your own children, knowing that you’ve done this, then go to your demonstration.”

While the protest is technically not directly affiliated with the Purdue Students for Life or the greater Students for Life organization, Newman identifies their involvement in what he considers their defamation of his person.

Newman wrote: “You and your organization are pathologically dishonest and manipulative, you are attempting to make it appear as though the event is being sponsored, not by PSFL, but by an otherwise non-existent entity, ‘Purdue Stand For Accountability.’ Very clever.”

The full email to Held is as follows:

Dear Ms Held:

It has come to my attention that Purdue Students for Life is planning to hold a demonstration on the Purdue campus this afternoon largely for purposes of defaming me yet again. Because you and your organization are pathologically dishonest and manipulative, you are attempting to make it appear as though the event is being sponsored, not by PSFL, but by an otherwise non-existent entity, “Purdue Stand For Accountability.” Very clever. Cleverer still is your decision to conduct the event under the rubric of slogans that one might ordinarily expect to see at a left/liberal/feminist event: “Defend Free Speech” and “Fight Against Sexual Assault.” I’m wondering why you’d go to such lengths to create the impression that event is being sponsored by a left/liberal/feminist organization, and not your anti-abortion organization.

Before you proceed with this event, I’d like to remind you of what has happened in the past week:

(1) Your parent organization, Students For Life, fabricated an allegation that I’d threatened to rape pro-life Purdue students for purposes of impregnating them, and that my wife had agreed to assist me by holding my victims down. It disseminated this fabricated allegation via its web site, and probably through its email distribution list.

(2) In an effort to determine whether this allegation was credible, SLF was contacted by the Purdue University Police Department and asked to provide its sources for the allegation. SLF was unable to provide any sources. None. Which means that someone at SFL deliberately fabricated those allegations, and then disseminated them widely on the internet. That person did this for purposes of discrediting me after I criticized PSFL for its Black History Month activities. Let me repeat that: Because I criticized PSFL, SLF fabricated and disseminated the allegation that my wife and I had conspired to rape Purdue students. My wife is a professor at Purdue, and we have to small children. We’ve lived in West Lafayette for nearly 14 years. I’d like you to think about that as you prepare for your demonstration. I’d like you to think about what sort of a person, or organization, would do such a thing.

(2) Almost immediately after being contacted by the PUPD, SFL removed its original story from its web site. Its decision to scrub the story was, in essence, an admission that the story was false. Nowhere on its web site did the organization subsequently admit that the story was false. Nor did the organization apologize to me or my wife for disseminating false information about us that could have destroyed our lives, our careers and the lives of our children. I’d like you to think about that as you prepare for your demonstration.

(3) After removing its original defamatory story about me from its web site, SFL replaced it with a different, but still defamatory ,story, about me. The new story alleged that I had threatened to rape pro-life woman — not Purdue students in particular. The evidence put forward to support this claim was a message I’d posted in a comments thread on the web site of Live Action, another anti-abortion organization. The new story failed to disclose a few important points about that comments thread. First, it failed to note that the thread had been created sometime in January. Second, it failed to note that none of the participants in the thread, or anyone from Live Action, actually felt threatened by any of my messages in that thread at the time they were posted. We know they didn’t feel threatened because they were never reported to any law enforcement agency that might have been authorized to investigate or prosecute me for making them at the time I made them. Although one of the participants in the thread, identified as “PJ4” claimed — IN THE THREAD — that she was contemporaneously calling either the West Lafayette Police Department or the FBI, this appears to have been a lie. Neither SFL or Live Action has produced any record of a report having been made to either agency. And even if a report was made, no law enforcement action was even taken in response to it: I’ve never been investigated or questioned by the WLPD or the FBI about the incident.

No report to law enforcement was ever made because none of the participants in the thread felt threatened enough to make one. And they didn’t feel threatened because they knew that my remarks did not constitute a threat at all. At worst, they were a sarcastic effort to force “PJ4” to acknowledge that at no time earlier in the thread had I “threatened” to rape anyone. And they weren’t deemed “threatening” until a few days ago, when it became useful for SLS to claim that they were — for purposes of discrediting me for criticizing PSFL.

So, before your demonstration tomorrow, I’d like you to think about this: You and your organization have defamed me in the vilest, most atrocious way imaginable — falsely accusing me of threatening to rape Purdue students, and then, when that claim was proven to be a fabrication, falsely accusing me of threatening to rape other people who you haven’t even been able to identify by name. You’ve attempted to destroy me and my family by persistently, brazenly, and shamelessly lying about me, and broadcasting those lies all over the world. In the process, you’ve threatened to destroy the University whose integrity you shamelessly claim you are seeking to defend.

If you can sleep at night, and hug your own children, knowing that you’ve done this, then go to your demonstration. If you believe that you haven’t violated God’s commandment against bearing false witness, go to your demonstration. If you and your organization are prepared to risk incurring millions of dollars in damages for defaming me so deliberately and mercilessly, go to your demonstration. If you are comfortable attempting to destroy Purdue, go to you demonstration.

If you can’t sleep at night, or can’t look at yourself in the mirror, or are worried about incurring God’s wrath for violating his law, or are worried about losing everything you own, or destroying the institution that nurtured and educated you —don’t go. And don’t let the students you claim to care about go either.

Yours,

Jamie Newman