Newly
elected Portland, Ore., mayor Sam Adams,
inaugurated earlier this month, has admitted to a
sexual affair with an 18-year-old, after previously
denying it. Adams, the city's first openly gay chief
executive, formerly said his relationship with Beau
Breedlove was platonic, Willamette Week reports.
"I want to
publicly acknowledge I made a mistake and apologize for
it," Adams told the paper on Monday from Washington, D.C.,
where he was attending inaugural events. "In the past,
I've characterized my relationship with Beau Breedlove
as purely nonsexual and that is not true."
Breedlove was a
17-year-old high school senior in Salem when he met
Adams, then 42, in the spring of 2005, when Adams visited
Salem, according to Willamette Week. They
got together a few more times in Portland before Breedlove's
18th birthday on June 25. Adams and a friend attended
the young man's birthday party in Salem, the paper
reports.
The relationship
would later come up in 2007 during Adams's mayoral
campaign, and at the time he insisted his connection with
Breedlove was platonic. But on Monday he apologized
for not being truthful then.
"I should have
been honest at the time when this first surfaced in
2007. But I didn't believe that given the way that rumors
were being spread -- about whether I had broken the
law by having sex with a minor -- that people would
believe me," Adams told Willamette Week.
Adams, who served
as chief of staff to former Portland mayor Vera Katz
from 1992 to 2003, insists that his relationship with
Breedlove did not become sexual until the young man
turned 18.
A
Website dedicated to the recall of mayor Adams has
already popped up online. Adams has said he would
consider resigning if he could not win back the
support of voters. Adult Website Unzipped.net published photos
lifted from Breedlove's MySpace page before he made it
private on Tuesday. (Advocate.com)
