Jimmy Carter's Pardon

[George K]

The dirty story of Peter Yarrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary)

https://apple.news/A6rUx0JPhQa2-ZtK0mZs26Q

No one from the government notified Barbara Winter about the pardon. Not the White House, not the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, not the prosecutor who handled her case.

She found out from her mother, who read in the newspaper that one of the country’s most famous folk singers, who had admitted to and been convicted of molesting her when she was barely 14, had been pardoned by President Jimmy Carter on his final full day in office in 1981.

It felt, Winter says now, “like you got sucker-punched in the gut. It’s telling him, ‘It’s okay what you did, just don’t get caught next time,’ if that makes sense.”

But this pardon by Carter — perhaps the only one in U.S. history wiping away a conviction for a sexual offense against a child — escaped scrutiny when it happened. It was granted just hours before the American hostages in Iran were freed, which captured headlines for weeks.

The Washington Post didn’t write about the pardon until Feb. 7, 1981. Even then, it was buried in the back of the Metro section, and only seemed notable because of who the recipient was: renowned folk singer Peter Yarrow of the group Peter, Paul and Mary, who co-wrote the beloved children’s song, “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

By the time of the incident with Winter, Yarrow was engaged to Mary Beth McCarthy, the niece of Democratic Sen. Eugene McCarthy. They’d met while both were campaigning for the senator’s 1968 presidential bid. Yarrow was 31. McCarthy was 20.

While Winter, now 66, has lived with the aftermath of the 1969 incident for decades, Yarrow’s crime was mostly forgotten after he served less than three months in jail.

Then, 40 years after Carter’s pardon, another woman stepped forward with an accusation of her own. In a lawsuit filed in New York on Feb. 24, 2021, she alleged that Yarrow lured her to a Manhattan hotel when she was a minor in 1969 and raped her.

In the sworn statement she gave to police more than 50 years ago, the 14-year-old Winter said that when she and her sister arrived at his hotel room door, he was nude. Within minutes, she told police, Yarrow made her masturbate him until he ejaculated while her sister watched — an allegation her sister denies.

“I can’t say for sure [what happened]," Winter’s sister, Kathie Berkel, said in a phone interview, “because I wasn’t in the room ... she was in the room by herself with him for five minutes, and I was right outside.”

The judge sentenced him to one-to-three years in prison but suspended all of it save for three months. On Nov. 25, 1970, Yarrow was released three days early so he could be home in time for Thanksgiving.

[brenda]

I wonder if many people are aware of his history in this regard. I was not.

In one of his 'apologies', he first says that he hurt himself. Next he says he hurt his family. The apology quoted never indicates he says he hurt the kids he molested. To list yourself as first in that line speaks volumes.

[Mik]

Gobsmacked. Here's a person still revered in folk circles and PBS, NPR.

[Jolly]

The Right Politics.