Thank you very much. Indeed, I was wondering, "Where was her family?" I think the reasons are now evident. The Register Guard continues to be the state's best paper, quite odd in this instance.

It's true that if the facts alleged in this story are true, the girl was already victimized when Neil came along. Girls who are sexually precocious are very often earlier abuse victims. By taking advantage of this fact, Goldschmidt was like someone who sees a traffic accident and instead of calling for help, backs up and runs over the victim again.

This story in no way reduces his culpability in this case.

It makes it worse.

Agreed

It makes the whole story sadder and more complicated. (Though my personal pop psychology analysis would run differently than Evil_Dave's. The girl went on to have no children, by the way, Dave, as reported everywhere.)

And it expands the culpability, even greatly.

I ran that newspaper article through some private investigators' email lists a couple of forensics experts' email lists I'm on and the general consensus is that the cousin's story won't stand up under any kind of scrutiny.

"Won't stand up to any kind of scrutiny?"

Say what? It is a first-hand account from someone related to the victim... how does that not stand up?

Unless of course the cousin is a liar but otherwise who are supposed to believe? Goldschmidt and the people who benefitted from his political patronage?