Political Caution Against Taking Sides in Sexual Assault Cases

Political Caution Against Taking Sides in Sexual Assault Cases is a political rule of risk management: a politician should not pronounce on guilt or innocence when the facts may change, but may speak for fairness, justice, individual rights, and civic calm. Wes Jordan applies that distinction to the controversy surrounding Fareek Fanon. The distinction lets him publicly defend Fareek without claiming to know what happened, yet the episode also exposes how a carefully limited principle can become an instrument of electoral advantage.

The Rule and Its Limits

Wes explains the rule to Roger White after describing the danger of taking a definitive position in a sexual-assault case. Facts may emerge later and make a politician’s earlier declaration politically damaging. He therefore separates the question of whether Fareek is guilty from the question of whether Fareek is receiving fair treatment. On the latter ground, Wes says a politician can speak strongly for the accused’s rights and for peace in the city. His position is not neutrality in every sense: it avoids a verdict on the allegation while openly taking a side on the conditions under which the case is discussed and handled.

That distinction also marks the rule’s limit. It offers political cover, not an answer to the underlying allegation. Wes’s account does not establish Fareek’s guilt or innocence. Instead, it shows a politician choosing which claim he can safely make in public and which question he must leave unresolved.

Campaign Politics Behind the Caution

Wes’s account of citywide campaigning gives the rule a material setting. He recalls receiving a stack of campaign letters, each paired with a check and a proposed policy commitment. One organization offered $20,000 in exchange for support for its agenda. Wes rejected the money, then saw himself denounced in The Five Pointer as an opponent of gay rights. The episode taught him, in his account, that a candidate could lose support even after declining a donation on principle; as a campaign consumed money, the rejected checks began to look less easily dismissed.

He also describes get-out-the-vote payments as cash transactions with neighborhood operators, made through intermediaries and without reliable control over what happened to the money. He says candidates needed people who knew which local organizers could deliver voters, and that a politician might need half a million dollars reserved for voter mobilization; a million, he claims, would increase the odds of success by 50 percent. These details are Wes’s description of the political system, not an independent verification of every transaction. They clarify why he treats public positions as choices with electoral costs, and why he is alert to the difference between a defensible public principle and a declaration that could alienate a constituency.

The Fanon Controversy and Wes’s Public Position

Wes calls his decision to hold a State of the City press conference a borderline call. He says he feared that the controversy might become ugly, but also notes that public anger had not reached a high level: polls showed that African Americans in Atlanta believed Fareek was being railroaded, while the unrest had amounted to one partial riot. Fareek was admired in South Atlanta as someone from the community who had become prominent, though Wes does not portray him as broadly beloved or personally generous toward the community.

The press conference gave Wes what he describes as his one opportunity to speak for Roger’s client. By concentrating on fairness and individual rights rather than guilt or innocence, he could defend Fareek in public without making the kind of factual claim that might later collapse. When Charlie Croker then turned against Fareek, Wes interpreted Croker’s action as appearing to confirm his argument that powerful business interests were being unfair. Wes consequently emerged, in his own telling, as Fareek’s conspicuous defender in public life and as a politician positioned on a major Black political issue.

Electoral Consequences and Moral Cost

Wes’s account connects the controversy to Andre Fleet’s campaign. Fleet remained nearly silent, Wes says, because openly backing Elizabeth Armholster risked the South Atlanta vote Fleet was counting on, while supporting Fareek would have required a different public commitment. Inman Armholster, angered that Fleet did not attack Fareek, cut off Fleet’s get-out-the-vote money. Wes concludes that Roger’s role in bringing Croker to the press conference helped him win the election; in that sense, a rule framed as caution in a volatile case also became part of a successful political maneuver.

Roger refuses to celebrate the result without qualification. He points out that the outcome may have been good for Wes but not for Fareek, whose name had been dragged through the mud for a long time. That response supplies the rule’s human counterweight: political restraint can limit a politician’s exposure and still leave the person at the center of the allegation enduring public damage. The episode therefore presents the rule not as a guarantee of justice, but as a boundary politicians draw between a verdict they will not give and a public position they can use.