A woman who accused Maine Democratic Senate hopeful Graham Platner of physical abuse in a New York Times story published Thursday rounded on the Gray Lady early Friday, claiming the paper’s reporters “methodically delayed and twisted” the account into “a gift to the Platner campaign.”
Lyndsey Fifield described her interaction with Times journalists Lisa Lerer and Katie Glueck in a pair of lengthy social media posts Friday morning, saying she had “bucked all advice from my friends (and resisted my conservative bias) and decided to fully trust the Times journalists.”
“They connected me to two of the other victims so we wouldn’t feel so alone,” she wrote. “I insisted to each of them that I trusted the NYT journalists and that we were doing the right thing despite their (sadly very accurate) sense that something was wrong.”
Between being interviewed and the publication of the story online Thursday, Fifield claimed, the reporters “kept coming back to us saying the editors needed more. I needed to go on the record (okay). We need more screenshots (okay). I met every bench mark they set, eager to provide more sources or evidence as needed.
“After the story went up I began to ask them … wait, where are the stories from the other women? Where are their accusations of sexual assault? Why am I the focus? Why are there 11 paragraphs dedicated to detailing my work history (more than has been published about Graham’s by far)?
“Why does it say ‘nobody could corroborate’ when I offered them sources that COULD corroborate? … Where were the screenshots they’d said they would use? … The editors said it was too much, they explained.”
Fifield, who dated Platner from approximately 2013 to 2015, told the Times that the Marine veteran “regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.”
On one occasion, she said, “he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was ‘calm.’”
“The Times also failed to include any mention that I DID confide in multiple friends through the years that Graham had been abusive — long before he was running for office. Those friends confirm they told the Times so,” Fifield wrote.
Platner, now 41, was also prone to displays of misogyny, according to Fifield, referring to women as “hatchet wounds” in tasteless reference to their anatomy.
“It dawned on me that this really was a set up all along. The journalists I trusted who convinced me to share a story I never wanted to tell methodically delayed and twisted this into a gift to the Platner campaign. Violating the trust of his victims. Shattering the trust I placed in them with the most vulnerable story of my life.”
A Times spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
