SEATTLE _ A younger cousin of Seattle Mayor Ed Murray has become the fifth man to accuse the mayor of sexual abuse, saying Murray repeatedly molested him as a teenager in the 1970s.
Joseph Dyer, 54, a dialysis technician and Air Force veteran, says he was 13 when Murray forced him into sex for about a year while the two shared a bedroom in Dyer's mother's home in the Long Island town of Medford, N.Y.
"There would be times when I would fake sleeping because I didn't want him touching me," Dyer, a married father who now lives in another state, recalled during an interview with The Seattle Times.
"And that's when he would molest me. And my mother would be right there in the house, she'd be in the living room ... watching TV, at that time it was probably "MASH." And my sisters would be in their rooms, sleeping. And I would be in my room, and he would be in there, molesting me."
Murray on Tuesday morning denied the allegations, saying he did live with his cousin, Maryellen Sottile, and her children in New York but did not abuse Dyer. He said there has been a rift in the family for years, and this accusation is untrue.
"I did not sexually abuse any of her children," Murray said. "There's a larger backstory between the Murrays and the Sottiles ...
"There's been numerous fights between our two families for many years, and much ugliness. I guess they see me down and out, and they want to finish me off."
Murray added he has no plans to resign.
The molestation stopped, Dyer said, only after a boy in a Catholic group home where Murray worked accused Murray of abuse. According to Dyer, his uncle negotiated to get group home officials not to pursue charges as long as Murray left, Dyer said. After that, Murray left town, Dyer said, and he never saw or spoke to his cousin again.
"I have had no connection with that man _ I don't want any connection with that man whatsoever. I look at him and I get violently ill," Dyer said.
An official for the group home, which is still operating, confirmed that an Edward Murray worked there from 1975 to 1976, but had no records saying why he left.
Murray said he didn't abuse any children at the group home and left in good standing to attend college in Portland, Ore.
Dyer's mother _ Murray's first cousin _ said her son came to her several months after Murray moved out to say he had been abused.
"It's a painful thing for a parent to go through because I wanted to protect all my children," said Maryellen Sottile, 76. "And here this man came into my home, and he did these terrible things to my son."
Dyer and his mother said they are speaking out now after learning recently of the other men who have accused Murray _ and because they're outraged by the mayor's denials.
Dyer is the fifth man to publicly accuse Murray since April.
Murray, 62, a former Democratic state legislator, has repeatedly denied that he sexually abused anyone, contending the accusations are part of a political takedown targeting him for his progressive politics and record as a gay-rights champion.
He announced in May he would end his re-election bid and leave politics when his term expires at year's end. But he has refused to resign sooner, despite pressure from some mayoral candidates, the city's Human Rights Commission, LGBTQ Commission and two City Council members, among others.
Murray's other accusers _ four men with criminal pasts and drug histories _ all claim Murray abused them decades ago, when each was a troubled teenager.
Jeff Simpson says he was 13 when Murray began abusing him, after Murray was his counselor at a Portland children's center. The abuse continued, Simpson said, when he lived with Murray as his foster son for about a year, with Murray sometimes paying him for sex.
Simpson reported the alleged abuse in 1984, after being removed from Murray's home.
Murray was not criminally charged, but an Oregon Child Protective Services' investigator found Murray had sexually abused Simpson. That prompted Oregon child-welfare officials to conclude Murray should never again be a foster parent.
Lloyd Anderson, another man who met Murray in Portland as a boy, has backed Simpson's allegations, and said Murray also paid him for sex when Anderson was a teenager.
Their allegations surfaced in April, when Delvonn Heckard, 46, of Kent, filed a lawsuit saying Murray "raped and molested" him in the 1980s when Heckard was a drug-addicted teen. He later withdrew the lawsuit, but has filed a claim for damages against the city of Seattle.
A friend of Heckard's, Maurice Lavon Jones, 44, of Seattle, also claimed Murray paid him for sex when he was a crack-addicted teenage prostitute living on the streets in the 1980s.
Murray has denied all of their accusations.
Unlike the other men, Dyer _ now studying to be a nurse _ doesn't appear to have any criminal record and says he has never used drugs. Murray has used other accusers' pasts to attempt to discredit them.
Dyer's mother, Sottile, is Murray's first cousin (her mother and Murray's mother, Anne Murray, were sisters). In a separate interview, Sottile, a retired postal worker living in North Carolina, corroborated her son's account of how he told her what had happened to him in their New York home.
Over the years, Sottile said, she heard bits and pieces about Murray's political career, from his days as a Washington state legislator to his election in 2013 as Seattle's mayor.
But she said she didn't know about the recent allegations until a few weeks ago _ when her sister contacted her after coming across news reports online. Sottile, in turn, contacted Dyer, who started reading the stories, too.
Dyer said he got angry watching video of Murray appearing before the media to deny some of the other men's allegations. Dyer said that led him to contact Seattle lawyer Lincoln Beauregard, listed in the news accounts as representing Heckard. Dyer provided a signed declaration detailing his own allegations against Murray to Beauregard.
But the primary motivation for coming forward, Dyer said, is closure.
"I didn't know about any of these other people. I didn't know about this other gentleman that Mr. Beauregard is representing. I knew about none of that," Dyer said. "Because I saw ... clips of (Murray) denying what he did, that pissed me off to the point where I am like, 'That's it. I have had enough.' I have been carrying this around for 40-some years. Something has got to be done."
Murray and his siblings went to live with relatives in New York in 1975 after their mother died, Dyer and Sottile said. A newspaper obituary from the time shows 53-year-old Anne M. Murray died in Olympia in October 1974. It lists seven children, including son, Edward, then living in Belfast, Northern Ireland, among her survivors.
"We felt bad for the whole family because their mother had died," recalled Sottile, whose mother, Helen, is named in the obituary as Anne Murray's sister. "And one by one, they came and stayed with us for a while, every one of them."
Once in New York, the Murray siblings went to live with various relatives.
Murray lived at Sottile's house, a three-bedroom rental on Redpine Drive, in Medford, she recalled. Sottile, then a divorced mother of four, took the smallest bedroom, while her three daughters shared the master bedroom.
Murray, in his early 20s, shared the third bedroom with Dyer, then 13. Dyer said he and Murray slept in a trundle bed _ a bed with a second mattress stored under it that can be pulled out.
After Murray had moved out, Dyer told his mother he had been abused, they said.
"I immediately got a hold of a doctor, and we sent him to somebody to talk to," Sottile recalled.
Dyer said he resisted therapy, and mostly suppressed memories of abuse. Over the years, his sisters and other relatives became aware of what happened, but kept it within the family, he said.
After that, Sottile said she and her children largely severed ties with the Murray family.
"We didn't want to have anything to do with them anymore," Sottile said.
Murray said the bad blood is rooted in a common-law marriage between his sister and Sottile's brother.
Murray questioned the timing of the accusation and The Seattle Times' continuing coverage.
"You've never been willing to portray anything but one side of the story," he said. "But on this one, this is bizarre beyond belief."
Both Dyer and his mother said they're willing to travel to Seattle and publicly testify to their accounts.
"I want to see him disgraced," Sottile said. "I don't want him walking around thinking, 'Ha ha, I got away with this all these years.' No, you didn't. Your chickens have come home to roost. And I want closure for my son."
