In 2020, I became part of a group called Christians Against Trumpism and Political Extremism. Cofounded by Joel Searby — an influential figure in independent, centrist political organizing — the group brought together a number of anti-Trump Christian voices to speak against the “personal behavior, degrading policy proposals and poisonous rhetoric modeled by President Trump.”
We honestly did very little beyond an ad buy in The Washington Post and some initial public relations work. Life moved on. Joe Biden won the election. The group dissolved.
In 2024, amid Trump’s third presidential campaign and Joe Biden’s forced campaign succession to Kamala Harris, I began to wonder where the folks who were leading the anti-Trump charge in 2020 were still around. I Googled “Joel Searby” and what I found was shocking. Searby had been arrested for allegedly soliciting sex from a 15-year-old on Snapchat. After an investigation of Searby’s electronic devices, the Alachua County Sheriff’s Department added 12 charges of possession of child sexual abuse material. In June 2025, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
A familiar pattern
Searby isn’t the only anti-Trump voice to have been outed for sexual abuse. Mark Galli, the former head of Christianity Today, penned an op-ed for the organization in 2019 calling for Trump’s removal from office. Three years later, Christianity Today reported that over the course of more than a decade, several CT employees had internally reported Galli for sexual harassment.
In 2021, John Weaver — cofounder of The Lincoln Project, one of the most prominent anti-Trump organizations — was accused by 21 different men of making sexual advances, including offering personal and professional assistance in exchange for sex.
While there has rightfully been immense focus on sexual abuse and sex abuse coverup from Republican or otherwise right-wing figures — the president of the United States is an adjudicated rapist and serial sexual abuser with deep ties to pedophile sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, after all — sexual abuse also is a problem within Democratic and left-leaning organizations. Some more recent political examples include former Arizona state senator Otoniel Navarrate, former North Carolina state representative Cecil Brockman, former New Hampshire state representative Stacie-Marie Laughton and San Francisco political organizer Jon Jacobo.
“Sexual abuse is a problem across the political and ideological spectrum.”
Sexual abuse is a problem across the political and ideological spectrum. Right-wing, left-wing and centrist. Pro-Trump and anti-Trump. Republican and Democrat.
Cesar Chavez isn’t the first person to reveal this to us. It was recently revealed that famed left-wing intellectual Noam Chomsky had a close relationship with Epstein for years after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for child sex trafficking. A few years ago, it came to light that Jean Vanier — the founder of L’Arche, a collection of communities for people with development disabilities and their caregivers — sexually abused at least 25 women over a 70-year period.
American labor leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers (formerly known as the National Farm Workers Association) Cesar Chavez (1927 – 1993) (center, in dark turtleneck) links hands with unidentified others at a rally, mid to late 1970s. (Photo by Cathy Murphy/Getty Images)
Cesar Chavez
And then, of course, Cesar Chavez. A groundbreaking report by The New York Times revealed that Chavez — the civil rights leader who combined left-wing politics with Catholic social teaching — systematically groomed and abused girls who worked within the movement. The Times tells the stories of Ana Murguia and Debra Rojas, two young girls who Chavez began grooming at the ages of 8 or 9 with the abuse continuing into their early teens.
The Times also revealed that Chavez raped Dolores Huerta, his partner in activism and cofounder with Chavez of the National Farm Workers Association. Huerta, now 95 years old, spoke about the rape publicly for the first time, saying her silence was out of fear of harming the work of advancing farmworkers’ rights: “I saw him, again, as my boss, as my hero, as, you know, somebody that would do the impossible. I never talked about it to anybody and the reason I didn’t is because I just didn’t want to hurt the movement.”
Later in the interview, speaking of Chavez’s mindset about women, she said, “Women are not seen as human beings. We’re just seen as sex objects.”
(Photo by Martin BUREAU / AFP via Getty Images)
Sexual abuse as a power trip
The common thread in all these cases is not political leaning or sociological ideology but a throughline of powerful people utilizing their authority to control others. The Epstein Files have revealed with stunning clarity what psychologists have maintained for some time: Sexual abuse is often less about sexual gratification and more about gratifying a sense of power and control.
In the words of psychologist Juliet Darke, “All sexual assaults are perpetrated to satisfy the aggressor’s desire for, and to enhance feelings of, power.”
It is this desire to exert power and control over others that underlies most sexual violence. Psychologist Eileen Zurbriggen theorized that power-based motives and mental links between power and sex would predict sexually aggressive behavior. Her study revealed that, for men especially, sex and power are not separate motives in sexual abuse but psychologically linked systems.
“It is this desire to exert power and control over others that underlies most sexual violence.”
Individuals who are strongly motivated by power or used to having authority over others may increasingly seek opportunities to exert that power and authority in ways that transcend appropriate boundaries, sometimes escalating toward more intense or novel expressions of that power that are abusive.
There’s the doctor whose control over an Olympic team’s health and ability to compete escalates to abusing teen gymnasts in front of their parents. The youth pastor whose spiritual authority over his students escalates to sexual abuse. The CEO whose control over a fashion brand escalated to the assault and trafficking of the brand’s fashion models. The 147 lawmakers in 44 states who have been accused of sexual harassment or misconduct since 2017. The president who, as the most powerful person in the world, used that power to coerce a young intern into a sexual relationship.
The list is endless. Sexual abuse will be prevalent wherever there is an authoritarian hierarchy.
Bill O’Reilly
Who we punish and who we protect
The primary distinction, then, is how sexual abuse is handled. In the wake of the New York Times article about Chavez, I saw immediate condemnation from left-leaning activists and progressive Christians. There was lament and mourning, but none of them tried to justify the abuse or deny its reality. Conversely, conservative ideology is more likely to excuse or downplay sexual misconduct, particularly if it is perpetrated by someone with similar ideology.
For example, a 2019 study called “The O’Reilly Factor: An Ideological Bias in Judgments about Sexual Harassment” contrasted liberal and conservative responses to the sexual abuse perpetrated by conservative political commentator Bill O’Reilly and liberal Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein. Psychologist Sander van der Linden and political scientist Costas Panagopoulos randomly assigned 1,000 participants to evaluate the sexual abuse allegations against either O’Reilly or Weinstein. Participants were reminded that sexual harassment is illegal, then asked how serious a problem such harassment was and whether the accused figure should go to jail if the allegations were proved true. They also were asked to report their own political ideology.
“The study found liberal respondents rated sexual harassment as much more serious than conservatives did.”
The study found liberal respondents rated sexual harassment as much more serious than conservatives did. On a 10-point scale, the mean rating for conservatives was 6.13 compared to 8.28 for liberals.
Specifically, researchers found conservatives were willing to be much more lenient with O’Reilly than Weinstein when it came to punishment. While there was a slight difference among liberals about whether or not the men should see jail time — 90% for O’Reilly and 94% for Weinstein — the difference among conservatives was stark. While 90% believed Weinstein should go to jail, only 50% said the same about O’Reilly.
While both sides show some tendency to protect their own, conservatives show a stronger, more consistent tendency to do so when it comes to projecting blame and enacting punishment. Perhaps something of note, Harvey Weinstein is currently incarcerated at Rikers Island in New York while O’Reilly hosts a top-ranked news podcast with millions of listeners.
Van der Linden and Panagopoulos theorize this difference in evaluation comes from conservatives’ greater sense of in-group loyalty. They write that, on the whole, conservatives “are more likely to display unconditional loyalty to one’s in-group, engage in system justification, and show much greater opposition to social justice and change.”
While liberal and left-leaning groups are more likely to be loyal to the group as a whole and preserve the integrity of the group by disavowing and removing abusers, conservative and right-leaning groups are more likely to be loyal to individuals within the group and preserve the integrity of the group by justifying, downplaying or covering-up abuse.
Cesar Chavez is only the latest cautionary tale in an unending series of cautionary tales about the inherent dangers of authoritarian leadership. Given the sheer volume of sexual abuse instances on the right, it can be tempting for those on the center or left to believe sexual abuse by authority figures is a conservative problem. It is not.
Sexual abuse follows power wherever it is concentrated. Justice depends on whether we are willing to challenge that power, even when it belongs to our own. The dividing line is not between left and right, but between those who protect the vulnerable and those who protect the powerful.
If we are serious about confronting and minimizing abuse, then our commitment to truth must be stronger than our loyalty to any leader, movement, or ideology — especially our own.
Josh Olds
Josh Olds is a public theologian and pastor for those disillusioned with institutional church. He is the creator of the small-group video series “Year on the Mountaintop” and a featured contributor to Fostering Hope: A Prayerbook for Fostering and Adoptive Parents. Follow his work on Facebook or at JoshOlds.com.