Immigrant children, a man accused of sex crimes, and Republican hypocrisy: a short story
Back in 2014, when Paul Davis was the Democratic nominee in the race for Kansas governor, he made a campaign video. One of the actors in it was Jeff Montague, a stage performer in Topeka.
As it turned out, Montague had a troubled past. Shortly after the video was released, the Kansas Republican Party released to the media a variety of documents showing that Montague had been suspended from Seaman High School, in Topeka, for making sexual advances toward a male exchange student. He was later banned from the Boy Scouts of America for his behavior.
As campaign scandals go, this was pretty small beer. It’s not like Montague was a member of Davis’s staff. He appeared in a cheap-ass campaign ad filled with local actors. Still, Davis pulled the ad and apologized for his campaign unknowingly using an actor with “serious issues” in his background.
The Kansas Republican Party, led by executive director Clay Barker, tried to get a day of headlines out of the deal and succeeded.
“The use of an actor with this sort of background raises serious questions about Paul Davis’ judgment and what kind of people he would surround himself with if elected,” Barker told the Topeka Capital-Journal. “Sex crimes, particularly those with children and students, are a serious matter and associating a campaign with someone of this background raises doubts about Paul Davis’ fitness for office.”
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Today, we have different news about Montague. It turns out that he is now the human resources manager at The Villages, a Topeka nonprofit that has contracted with the Department of Health and Human Services to house unaccompanied migrant children. The Villages has taken in roughly 190 children since February 2017, about 40 of whom ended up there due to the Trump Administration’s recent “zero tolerance” policy of separating children from their parents at the border.
Think Progress spoke to multiple former employees at The Villages, one of whom, Myra Gillum, told the outlet, “The kids literally have to walk past his [Montague’s] office to get to the counselors.
“He has direct contact with them all the time,” Gillum added.
Gillum was a case manager at The Villages. When she learned of Montague’s past sex crimes (he was also arrested for solicitation at a Topeka park, in 2007), she reported concerns, in August 2017, to the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Homeland Security as well as superiors at The Villages. Nobody did anything. Still, nobody has done anything.
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Meanwhile, Clay Barker — the former head of the Kansas Republican Party who was so outraged that Paul Davis accidentally hired an actor once accused of a sex crime — is now a “special assistant” to Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer’s gubernatorial campaign. Colyer toured The Villages recently, but other than that his administration hasn’t acknowledged any of the responsibility the state now has over their welfare.
House Minority Leader Jim Ward (D-Wichita) toured The Villages at the same time Colyer did. He and others have been speaking up about the lack of answers from Colyer and the Trump Administration regarding this topic.
“We appreciated the opportunity to see the living facilities and learn more about the care provided to the children,” Ward said last week. “What troubled me, however, was the lack of information the director could provide about the children in custody. We do not know how many of the fifty children in the facility are here because of forced separations from their families.”
If Clay Barker was so upset that a man with Montague’s past appeared in a campaign video for Paul Davis, surely he must be extremely concerned about Montague working with immigrant children at The Villages? Or maybe Barker is just a hypocritical partisan hack? We’ve reached out to both Barker and the Kansas Republican Party for comment.
No word back. Maybe tweet at them?
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