The Truth About Lorri Galloway and Her Libel Against Me.

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Since only Lorri Galloway and I know for sure – since only she and I CAN know for sure – that her allegations against me are completely false and nothing like what she describes ever happened, let me just start with a list of undeniable facts that should make any reasonable person doubt her story:

  • First off as many have mentioned, Lorri is and was a MANDATED REPORTER.  She runs a freaking BATTERED WOMEN’S SHELTER for Chrissakes.  It’s called the ELI HOME and ESCRI, and features a thrift store which provides much of its income.  Throughout 2012-13 – that is, FOR A LONG TIME after “5 years ago” (i.e. 2012) I spent a lot of time there.  UNSUPERVISED.  Sometimes I was writing stories, sometimes just killing time and talking to people.  Yes, me, the supposed rapist.  
  • According to Lorri, this alleged assault occurred sometime in 2012 – “5 years ago.”  It’s true that I didn’t have a car at that time, and whenever there was a political event she wanted me to cover, or I needed to get back from, or she just wanted to talk my ear off about Anaheim, she would give me a ride in her little red sports car.  AND SHE CONTINUED TO DO THAT WELL UNTIL LATE 2013 (when we sort of parted ways over my opposition to her running against Mayor Tait.)  That’s about a YEAR (depending on when in 2012 this supposedly happened.)  Yes, just me and Lorri in her little car.  Off the top of my head I remember her taking me to help the Perez family fight their unjust foreclosure in late 2012, and taking me to the DA’s “Victims Rally” in mid-2013, but there were many other times, as people can attest.  What sort of sense does this make of her terrifying story?
  • Throughout 2012-14 Joanne Sosa was Lorri’s closest friend and tireless right-hand woman. Lorri never told Joanne about this alleged assault. 
  • On top of that, whenever Lorri was too busy to give me a ride, she would send out the equally-frail Joanne to do it. WOW. How irresponsible of Lorri, if her story were true.
  • As Eli Home workers saw and remember, during that time I frequently had one-on-one meetings with Lorri in her Eli Home office, to discuss recent and upcoming political events. With the door closed. Well up into late 2013.
  • It was at this Eli Home, in April 2013, that I met my future wife Donna Acevedo, who was an Eli Home client, as well as a recently bereaved mother. I met Donna at the Eli Home’s 30-year anniversary celebration where I was playing piano at Lorri’s request. Lorri, Mayor Tait, Amin David, and many others attended.  Not long after, Donna and I began seeing each other. Did Lorri utter a word of warning to her vulnerable client about what an out-of-control wannabe rapist I am? No, not a word.
  • As Donna and many others remember, Lorri was nothing but friendly to me for that whole year and a half. Until of course I reacted negatively to her running against her old ally Mayor Tait in late 2013, and our friendship grew a little more distant and sporadic (though we still talked on the phone frequently.)...

I realize how hard it is to believe that Lorri Galloway would be capable of this, capable of inventing such a vicious lie against an old friend.  I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around it myself.  But she really did accuse me of assaulting and trying to rape her in her car five years ago.  A person in my situation can only ask “Why?”  And “Why me?”

I can only come up with a pair of motivations: 

  1. to get attention, sympathy and relevance in the Mayor’s race as Ashleigh Aitken quickly picks up all the Democratic and Labor support.  And… 
  2. to punish and hopefully silence me after I wrote, once more, gently critical of her Mayoral run. 

Let me back up a little…

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A couple months ago, while I was cleaning outside, I had a really nice 20-minute phone conversation with Lorri.  It had been a while since we chatted, and we had a lot of catching up to do.  She laughed a lot, said she loved me and Donna, and once again told me, “Vern, you bring so much light, love and laughter to Anaheim.”  

I don’t remember if I’d called her, or she’d returned my missed call, or she called me by coincidence.  Donna and I had been idly curious whether the rumors were true that she was gonna run for Mayor again.  She told me she was “still thinking about it.”  I’m sure I didn’t ask or urge her to, and I hope I didn’t give the impression that I thought it was a good idea or that I would support her.

Eventually a few weeks ago, she announced, sent me and Donna an invitation, we didn’t go,  but I read about it on another blog.  I’d had time to think about how disastrous her last, 2014, run was, how many people on all sides she had stabbed in the back, and how hard it would be for me to convince myself or anyone else to vote for her.  I still thought of her as a friend, but I couldn’t see how she’d have any chance beyond bleeding some Democrat votes from Ashleigh Aitken.

So when I got around, in a much larger Anaheim piece, to a little section about how we hadn’t yet seen an Anaheim candidate for Mayor this year that we could enthusiastically support, I wrote this carefully gentle paragraph about Lorri:

Sensing some of Ashleigh’s weaknesses, out comes our old friend Lorri “LoGal” Galloway, one more time.  I get very sad when I write about Lorri, who was one of my first friends in this town (when she first talked to me she scolded me “The Orange Juice is not a good OC blog because you hardly write anything about Anaheim;  let me tell you about all that’s happening here” – can you imagine that? – and the rest is history.)  She also did a lot of good things for my wife Donna when she needed help, and I won’t let people forget that she was a very good Councilwoman for eight years.  But in 2014-15 she set a world record for burning bridges.  And reading about her campaign announcement rally on another blog, she sounds like she’s trying to position herself to the RIGHT of Ashleigh.  Ashleigh Lite, a LITTLE bit less scary to the resort district and police than Ashleigh is, as though that was scary.

Then I get out of a week at rehab and see this.  It sure FELT like some kind of over-the-top revenge.  

A friend tells me, “Lorri thinks you’re worthless now that a lot of people think you’re just a drunk in rehab.  She thinks she can get away with using you to get sympathy and attention.  She thinks you won’t be able to defend yourself.”  We’ll see about that.

I won’t say any more for now.  Some time down the road when I’m less angry and hurt, I will write the full five-year saga of my friendship with Lorri Galloway now that it’s over – trust me, it’ll be good reading!  For now, I’m going to try to concentrate on other things…

Vern out.


About Vern Nelson

Greatest pianist/composer in Orange County, and official political troubadour of Anaheim and most other OC towns. Regularly makes solo performances, sometimes with his savage-jazz band The Vern Nelson Problem. Reach at vernpnelson@gmail.com, or 714-235-VERN.