What resurgent molestation allegations mean for Kevin Johnson’s political future
Deadspin hounds K.J., sexual-assault allegations re-emerge, ESPN dumps Johnson's national-spotlight moment
If Kevin Johnson was bummed, he suredidn’t let on this past Monday night at the Crest Theatre. SN&R wasn’t invited to the premiere of his ESPN “30 for 30” documentary, Down in the Valley, but by all accounts the mayor was in full-on fête mode: high-fiving fans, posing for pictures, smiling. Which was odd, because just hours earlier, K.J. received some of the worst news of his political career: ESPN was canceling his big movie because of resurgent sexual-molestation allegations.
ESPN didn’t soften the blow: “I think the most important thing here is to make sure it’s clear that we are not tone deaf and we’re aware of a renewed focus on certain issues,” is how ESPN vice president John Dahl explained to Sports Illustrated the reasoning for shelving the film.
By “certain issues,” the ESPN boss means sex crimes allegedly committed by the mayor while an NBA player in Phoenix during the ’90s. Dave McKenna, a former weekly-paper scribe in Washington, D.C., and now staff reporter for Deadspin, has hounded Johnson for years, covering everything from the mayor’s repeated sexual-misconduct accusations to his forays into education reform to his lawsuit with this paper.
But last month, McKenna published an interview with K.J. accuser Amanda “Mandi” Koba. Now 35 and living in Virginia, this was the first time Koba had ever spoken to media about Johnson, who she claims molested her during the ages of 15 and 16, when she was just a 95-pound high-school girl in Phoenix.
Both Deadspin and The Sacramento Bee have reported in the past that Johnson paid Koba $230,000 to keep quiet. But 19 years later, Koba told McKenna that, after years of subsequent allegations against K.J., she couldn’t stay silent. “I just felt like I wasn’t doing anything but protecting him,” Koba told Deadspin.
Accusations against Johnson grabbed even more media attention last Thursday, when Deadspin published police video of a teenaged Koba describing K.J.’s sexual abuse. A transcript of this interview with police already existed, but seeing the actual video proved unsettling: At its conclusion, the detective interviewing Koba tells her that he thinks Johnson “is probably taking advantage of other young people.”
At Monday’s movie premiere, which could be the final time the ESPN film screens for the public, the mayor dismissed Koba’s claims. “There’s no there, there,” he told media outside the theater before the screening.
After decades of accusations, however, there is at least something.
‘I’ve been afraid to speak’Mandi Koba was 15 years old in 1995 when she met Kevin Johnson, who was then 29 and one of the biggest stars in the NBA. A year later, in a Phoenix police report, she’d describe their relationship as Sacramento News & Review - What resurgent molestation allegations mean for Kevin Johnson’s political future - News - Local Stories - October 15, 2015:
