Seattle official REFUSES to resign after outburst defending pedophile

A Seattle public official who angrily shouted down opposition to a convicted pedophile’s nomination to a taxpayer-funded role is refusing to resign, despite a request that she step down from her agency’s head.On May 3, Shanee Colston was co-chairing a Zoom meeting of a subcommittee of the King County Regional Authority (KCRHA) to hear nominations to fill an open spot on the board.The meeting erupted in chaos when a fellow board member spoke in opposition to the nomination of registered sex offender Thomas Whitaker, prompting an outburst from Colston, who defended Whitaker and berated the member who opposed him. Des, funded by state taxpayers and federal grants.In 2010, when Whitaker was 25, he was convicted of harboring a minor, a 13-year-old runaway with whom he had a sexual relationship, according to court records obtained by independent Seattle news site.In 2012, Whitaker was charged with raping a minor in a case involving a 15-year-old girl. Sawyckyj, a wheelchair-bound mother, retreated He pled guilty to communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, a felony sex crime.And in 2018, Seattle police found him living in a tent near the Seattle waterfront with a 17-year-old girl, whose mother picked her up and Government funding took her home, according to Seattle court records obtained by the site.Sawyckyj, a 53-year-old former Marine, was so severely injured in a sexual assault while in the armed forces that she ended up in a wheelchair, she told in 2017.She joined the U.S.

Navy in 1987 and served as a hospital corpsman until 1992.She said she was raped while in the service and suffers from chronic physical injuries that put her in a wheelchair, she told .
She then spent many years homeless, living in her van. The day afor the next three years.The Early-stage funding would be spent on projects ‘that focus on investing in programs that reduce unsheltered homelessness, improve service engagement, health outcomes, and housing stability by using coordinated Housing First and Public Health Principles to serve unsheltered individuals and families.’KCRHA is also funded by local taxpayers.On Tuesday, Early-stage funding the group announced that its founding CEO, Marc Dones, appointed in April 2021, was stepping down.His resignation was not linked to the row about Colston’s actions but rather what some classed as an impossible task.In a letter to members of the authority’s implementation board and governing committee, obtained by , Dones cited burnout as the reason for resignation.’After five years I am tired,’ Dones wrote, including the creation of the authority in the timeline.’I believe the time has come for me to pass the baton.’The KCRHA said the agency’s purpose and function to ‘unify and coordinate policy and funding across all of King County for a regional approach to bringing more people inside’ will remain the same after Dones steps down.