It is now clear beyond all reasonable doubt that right-wing columnist and filmmaker John Ziegler has stalked and harassed a number of Jerry Sandusky’s victims, as well as their families, since at least 2013. Unfortunately, there is presently no way to haul this bottom-feeder before a judge. Due to a loophole in Pennsylvania’s rape shield law, the victims would have to drop their anonymity in order to press charges or seek a restraining order. The victims are not nearly healed enough to take that risk without assurances that they will be safe.
But there is someone who can do something about this and hasn’t yet. Since the summer of 2016, Ziegler has been a columnist for Mediaite. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence that he has indeed stalked and harassed victims, Mediaite founder and publisher Dan Abrams has yet to take action against this bottom-feeder. Sign this petition telling Abrams to fire Ziegler immediately.
Last week, Ziegler adamantly denied that he had ever harassed anyone. But that claim is belied by his own Twitter feed. Fellow Kossack Roxine of Tree Climbers found no fewer than 10 instances where Ziegler either named victims, tweeted about taking pictures of their property, or trolled victims’ relatives.
Now what could make Ziegler pull such a stunt? Well, apparently he thinks that women aren’t qualified to determine whether a boy has been molested. No, I’m not kidding.
Apparently Ziegler forgets that the psychologist who worked with Aaron Fisher (Victim 1) is a man, Mike Gillum. But even without that to consider, why should we care about a therapist’s gender? There is no difference between this mentality and the Islamist view that a woman’s testimony is only worth half that of a man.
So apparently we now know why anyone would find it acceptable to harass and stalk sexual assault victims. To hear Ziegler talk, the testimony from any female therapists who worked on the Sandusky case isn’t valid—so therefore, the victims perjured themselves. And by that “logic,” they deserve to be harassed and stalked.
At the very least, this breaches every standard of decency that is known. At worst, it’s criminal. No responsible media organization would keep someone on the payroll who acted this way, or would have even hired that person had it become known that he’d engaged in this behavior in the past. That makes Ziegler’s continued presence at Mediaite incomprehensible.
Mediaite’s inaction stands in marked contrast to how SB Nation handled the Daniel Holtzclaw fiasco. For those who missed it, last year SB Nation ran a story focused almost entirely on Holtzclaw’s football career, and gave short shrift to the women he raped over the years. It triggered a firestorm of criticism so intense that SB Nation deleted it within five hours of going live and issued an unreserved apology for what it called “a complete failure” of its editorial process. Within 24 hours of the story being published, SB Nation shuttered its longform vertical, cut ties with the story’s author, and initiated an internal review of how this story managed to get past its editorial safeguards.
By comparison, it’s been over a week, and Mediaite has been silent about Ziegler. Abrams has a decision to make. Does he want to be seen as condoning stalking and harassment? And is he willing to still stand by Ziegler in the face of overwhelming evidence that he blatantly lied to Mediaite’s readers and management?
We know what the answer to those questions ought to be. But perhaps Abrams needs a reminder. Sign this petition to give it to him.