{"id":132252,"date":"2017-11-18T21:42:56","date_gmt":"2017-11-19T02:42:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=132252"},"modified":"2017-11-18T21:42:56","modified_gmt":"2017-11-19T02:42:56","slug":"ohio-candidate-doesnt-regret-sexual-conquest-facebook-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2017\/11\/18\/ohio-candidate-doesnt-regret-sexual-conquest-facebook-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohio candidate doesn’t regret sexual conquest Facebook post"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"FILE:<\/a>
FILE: William M. O’Neill (Photo by Ohio Progressive – Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

CLEVELAND \u2014 An Ohio Supreme Court justice and Democratic gubernatorial candidate said on Facebook that people should \u201clighten up\u201d after deleting a previous post outlining his sexual history with women that drew widespread criticism for trivializing sexual harassment and sexual assault.<\/p>\n

William O’Neill’s original post on Friday criticized \u201cthe dogs of war\u201d calling for Democratic Sen. Al Franken to resign after being accused of groping a woman during a USO Tour in 2006. O’Neill wrote that he had been \u201csexually intimate with approximately 50 very attractive females\u201d during his life and mentioned several encounters, including one in a hayloft of her parents’ barn.<\/p>\n

O’Neill added another post Saturday afternoon that said he apologized if he offended anyone, \u201cparticularly the wonderful women in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics from both parties were swift to condemn the 70-year-old O’Neill, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Maureen O’Connor, a Republican, after Friday’s post. Some called for his immediate ouster from the court.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo words can convey my shock,\u201d O’Connor said in a statement on Friday. \u201cThis gross disrespect for women shakes the public’s confidence in the integrity of the judiciary.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview Saturday with The Associated Press, O’Neill said he doesn’t regret what he wrote and that he edited the original post and then deleted it after an online commenter called him insensitive for including information that could identify some of the women.<\/p>\n

\u201cI agreed with them and took it down,\u201d O’Neill said. \u201cI’m a gentleman after all.\u201d<\/p>\n

After deleting the Facebook post, he wrote another one that doesn’t discuss his sexual past but again references \u201cthe dogs of war\u201d hounding Franken. That post says \u201csanctimonious judges\u201d calling for him to quit should note his history as an Ohio assistant attorney general prosecuting sexual harassment cases.<\/p>\n

\u201cLighten up folks,\u201d the post concludes. \u201cThis is how Democrats remain in the minority.\u201d<\/p>\n

O’Neill said during Saturday’s interview that his message was misunderstood and that his civil rights history shows he’s not an \u201cinsensitive misogynist.\u201d He said he wrote the original post because \u201cthe sensitive subject of sexual harassment\u201d has led people to treat Franken and Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, a Republican, \u201cin the exact same fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moore has been accused of sexually assaulting teen girls in Alabama when he was a prosecutor in his 30s. Moore has denied the allegations.<\/p>\n

Asked if he thought the furor would harm him politically, O’Neill said, \u201cI think it’s clear it’s not going to help me. But sometimes when you’re right, you do have to stand alone. And I am right here.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s uncertain whether O’Neill has a political future in Ohio. He has maintained that he would quit his nascent gubernatorial bid if fellow Democrat Richard Cordray decides to run.<\/p>\n

Cordray announced his resignation as head of the federal Consumer Financial Protection Bureau earlier this week, an expected prelude to him entering the race.<\/p>\n

O’Neill said he has spoken with Cordray in the last several days, but claimed they did not discuss the race. O’Neill is required to step down from the bench when his current term ends in January 2019 because of state age limits for judges.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CLEVELAND \u2014 An Ohio Supreme Court justice and Democratic gubernatorial candidate said on Facebook that people should \u201clighten up\u201d after …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":132167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24157,16],"tags":[33921],"class_list":["post-132252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-american-news","category-news","tag-william-oneill","mauthors-mark-gillispie","mauthors-the-associated-press"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132252"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132252\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}