Wesley Lowery, a media darling of the Left who made a name for himself talking about race after George Floyd, has been accused of habitually sexually assaulting female journalists.
A number of female journalists claim the Pulitzer Prize winner plied them with alcohol at bars until they left with him and then sexually assaulted them, according to a Wednesday report from the Columbia Journalism Review.
Lowery, 34, is a best-selling author and has reported for the Washington Post, CNN, and “60 Minutes.” He was also a tenured professor at American University and executive editor of American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop before he resigned in March amid the sexual harassment allegations.
The alleged encounters happened between 2018 and 2024.
Olivia Messer, now the editor-in-chief of Texas outlet The Barbed Wire, claims that in January 2020, Lowery kept ordering her alcohol at a bar and then pressured her into performing oral sex on him at her apartment. Years later, in 2023, she was again at a bar with Lowery when he was in a supervisory position over her, and the next morning she woke up to find him in bed with her. She said she could not remember having sex with him, but he told her they had.
“Whatever you do, do not tell Cara,” Messer said Lowery told her, referring to American University adjunct professor Cara Kelly, who ended up filing multiple Title IX complaints against Lowery.
Ironically, Lowery also helped Messer with a reporting project about failure to address alleged sexual harassment in the Texas Senate.
Imani Moise, a Wall Street Journal reporter, said she met up with Lowery in December, 2018 at a Washington, D.C., bar where he bought her drinks until she was “sloppy drunk,” and then ordered an Uber and took her back to his apartment where he perpetrated a “full-blown assault” on her.
They had talked about the #MeToo movement beforehand at the bar.
Moise said that when she was assaulted by a different man as a teenager, she refused to give the police the man’s name because “I did not want to see another black man go to jail,” but she now says, “I am done with that.”
Another unnamed journalist, who matched with Lowery on Bumble, said he pressured her to drink more during a spring 2022 date. She woke up in his bed, and “he was inside of me.” She was half-conscious for a few moments, and then things went dark again, she said.
Later, she noticed that she had bruises on her body and a cut on her foot. She hooked up with Lowery a number of times afterwards, and a therapist told her, “Oh, you didn’t have control the first time, so you went back on your terms,” she said.
An unnamed writer-researcher who worked with Lowery claims that during a February 2024 encounter at a Washington, D.C., hotel, Lowery had a drink waiting for her whenever she came back from the bathroom.
They split an Uber, but when the car dropped her off, the female writer said Lowery pressured her to let him up to her apartment, even accusing her of “using him” for a job and saying she “hadn’t done anything for him,” according to a Title IX complaint. She felt her job was on the line and allowed him to come up, where he allegedly tried to get her into the bedroom and pull off her clothes, even when she asked him to go home. She said she pretended to fall asleep, and then he left.
At least three female students at American University said Lowery made them uncomfortable as well.
One student said she went into Lowery’s office during a journalism internship to ask him for advice about how to avoid alarming subjects of a story. He told her to close the door and said, “Well, Sophia, when you go on a date, you don’t just ask ‘Do you want to f—?’ You build up to it.”
Another female student had a similar complaint, claiming Lowery compared making interview subjects comfortable with asking for consent during sex, “Can I do this, can I do that, is this okay?”
A third student said he lit a candle and sat next to her on the couch in his office, which made her uncomfortable.
Lowery sent messages expressing regret to some of the women, but he has also pushed back on the allegations.
“CJR’s portrayal of these periods in my personal life is incomplete and includes false insinuations about complicated dynamics,” Lowery said in a statement to the Columbia Journalism Review.
“Still, I respect the women who have shared their experiences and take their perspectives seriously. As a young professional, I did not always recognize the power imbalances that surfaced as personal relationships evolved into professional ones, and vice versa. I should have better upheld boundaries that would have protected myself and others, particularly during interactions impaired by mutual intoxication. I have committed to sobriety, now approaching one year, and continue to work with professionals on my understanding of the power dynamics that accompany race, gender, and my professional success.”
In 2014, Lowery was named the National Association of Black Journalists’ emerging journalist of the year.
He wrote a book, “They Can’t Kill Us All,” which dealt with racism, police killings, and civil unrest. At one point on Twitter, Lowery said the Tea Party was “essentially a hysterical grassroots tantrum about the fact that a Black guy was president.”
Over the last decade, Lowery has zeroed in on racism and the police, reporting extensively on Black Lives Matter and winning a Pulitzer for a Washington Post database of police shootings called “Fatal Force.”
Lowery really rose to prominence after George Floyd’s death when he published an opinion article titled “A Reckoning over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists” that criticized news outlets for not “telling hard truths.”
After that, Lowery was in demand and began receiving invitations to serve on nonprofit boards and speak at events.
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[[{“value”:”
Wesley Lowery, a media darling of the Left who made a name for himself talking about race after George Floyd, has been accused of habitually sexually assaulting female journalists.
A number of female journalists claim the Pulitzer Prize winner plied them with alcohol at bars until they left with him and then sexually assaulted them, according to a Wednesday report from the Columbia Journalism Review.
Lowery, 34, is a best-selling author and has reported for the Washington Post, CNN, and “60 Minutes.” He was also a tenured professor at American University and executive editor of American University’s Investigative Reporting Workshop before he resigned in March amid the sexual harassment allegations.
The alleged encounters happened between 2018 and 2024.
Olivia Messer, now the editor-in-chief of Texas outlet The Barbed Wire, claims that in January 2020, Lowery kept ordering her alcohol at a bar and then pressured her into performing oral sex on him at her apartment. Years later, in 2023, she was again at a bar with Lowery when he was in a supervisory position over her, and the next morning she woke up to find him in bed with her. She said she could not remember having sex with him, but he told her they had.
“Whatever you do, do not tell Cara,” Messer said Lowery told her, referring to American University adjunct professor Cara Kelly, who ended up filing multiple Title IX complaints against Lowery.
Ironically, Lowery also helped Messer with a reporting project about failure to address alleged sexual harassment in the Texas Senate.
Imani Moise, a Wall Street Journal reporter, said she met up with Lowery in December, 2018 at a Washington, D.C., bar where he bought her drinks until she was “sloppy drunk,” and then ordered an Uber and took her back to his apartment where he perpetrated a “full-blown assault” on her.
They had talked about the #MeToo movement beforehand at the bar.
Moise said that when she was assaulted by a different man as a teenager, she refused to give the police the man’s name because “I did not want to see another black man go to jail,” but she now says, “I am done with that.”
Another unnamed journalist, who matched with Lowery on Bumble, said he pressured her to drink more during a spring 2022 date. She woke up in his bed, and “he was inside of me.” She was half-conscious for a few moments, and then things went dark again, she said.
Later, she noticed that she had bruises on her body and a cut on her foot. She hooked up with Lowery a number of times afterwards, and a therapist told her, “Oh, you didn’t have control the first time, so you went back on your terms,” she said.
An unnamed writer-researcher who worked with Lowery claims that during a February 2024 encounter at a Washington, D.C., hotel, Lowery had a drink waiting for her whenever she came back from the bathroom.
They split an Uber, but when the car dropped her off, the female writer said Lowery pressured her to let him up to her apartment, even accusing her of “using him” for a job and saying she “hadn’t done anything for him,” according to a Title IX complaint. She felt her job was on the line and allowed him to come up, where he allegedly tried to get her into the bedroom and pull off her clothes, even when she asked him to go home. She said she pretended to fall asleep, and then he left.
At least three female students at American University said Lowery made them uncomfortable as well.
One student said she went into Lowery’s office during a journalism internship to ask him for advice about how to avoid alarming subjects of a story. He told her to close the door and said, “Well, Sophia, when you go on a date, you don’t just ask ‘Do you want to f—?’ You build up to it.”
Another female student had a similar complaint, claiming Lowery compared making interview subjects comfortable with asking for consent during sex, “Can I do this, can I do that, is this okay?”
A third student said he lit a candle and sat next to her on the couch in his office, which made her uncomfortable.
Lowery sent messages expressing regret to some of the women, but he has also pushed back on the allegations.
“CJR’s portrayal of these periods in my personal life is incomplete and includes false insinuations about complicated dynamics,” Lowery said in a statement to the Columbia Journalism Review.
“Still, I respect the women who have shared their experiences and take their perspectives seriously. As a young professional, I did not always recognize the power imbalances that surfaced as personal relationships evolved into professional ones, and vice versa. I should have better upheld boundaries that would have protected myself and others, particularly during interactions impaired by mutual intoxication. I have committed to sobriety, now approaching one year, and continue to work with professionals on my understanding of the power dynamics that accompany race, gender, and my professional success.”
In 2014, Lowery was named the National Association of Black Journalists’ emerging journalist of the year.
He wrote a book, “They Can’t Kill Us All,” which dealt with racism, police killings, and civil unrest. At one point on Twitter, Lowery said the Tea Party was “essentially a hysterical grassroots tantrum about the fact that a Black guy was president.”
Over the last decade, Lowery has zeroed in on racism and the police, reporting extensively on Black Lives Matter and winning a Pulitzer for a Washington Post database of police shootings called “Fatal Force.”
Lowery really rose to prominence after George Floyd’s death when he published an opinion article titled “A Reckoning over Objectivity, Led by Black Journalists” that criticized news outlets for not “telling hard truths.”
After that, Lowery was in demand and began receiving invitations to serve on nonprofit boards and speak at events.
“}]]
