Rachel Dolezal's Mother: Claim of Child Sex Abuse In the Family Is a Lie
Rachel Dolezal, the former Spokane, Wash. NAACP leader who lied for years about being black, came forward on The Today Show this morning to address her racial identity (“I identify as black,” she said.) What she did not mention was her previous assertion that her parents went to the media about her racial obfuscation because she supports a sibling who was allegedly sexually abused by her brother.
According to court documents obtained by People, Rachel’s brother Joshua Dolezal will go on trial in August for allegedly “sexually abusing a female sibling in 2001 or 2002 when the child was six or seven years old.” Joshua, who is now a college professor in Idaho, was charged in 2013 with four felony counts of sexual assault on a child.
Rachel’s mother, Ruthanne, told People of the charges against Joshua,“That is all a malicious false lie. [Rachel] is the one who initiated it. We know it is not true.” Per People:
Ruthanne says the victim suffers from reactive attachment disorder, a condition in which a child can’t bond with a parent or caregiver, and “seeks to cause trouble in the family.”
“The aligning with Rachel on this is a very bad combination,” she says. “Our son wasn’t even home a lot of the time it was alleged it was happening,” she says, “and I was a stay-at-home mother and very attentive to the kids because of her disorder. I never left her at home with our son or anything like that.”
According to a 2o13 police report obtained by People, the alleged victim told Ruthanne that Josh was abusing her, but Ruthanne “did not believe [victim] and told [victim] to stop telling lies.”
Police then contacted Rachel about the allegations in September 2013, according to the report. It states that Rachel “said that [victim] told her what had happened to [victim] with Joshua Dolezal in Colorado and [Rachel] had promised to help [victim] seek closure.”
Ruthanne denies that she told the press about Rachel’s racial identity because Rachel supports the alleged victim. “We did not initiate it but when we were asked we were honest,” she told People.