The Four Color Media Monitor

Some time ago, I'd written about the allegations of sexual abuse made against the now ex-comics writer Jai Nitz, who's been mostly blackballed by the industry after at least 3 women made their accusations against him for assaulting them. Now, the Kansas City Star's reporting that, although several more women may have made additional accusations against Nitz, no serious effort's been made by the local police officials to investigate or arrest him:

Strader’s account is one of several that have emerged in the past year accusing Nitz of sexual violence. A Kansas City woman told police Nitz raped her in a parking lot. A woman in Lawrence said Nitz routinely coerced her into sex.

Nitz has spent a lot of time on the KU campus in recent years. He was hired to lecture on creative writing and graphic novels, and returned at the invitation of professors and campus organizations, according to university documents and officials.

But despite a “pattern of predatory behavior towards female students” dating back to 2014, including Strader’s complaint in 2017, KU did not ban Nitz from campus until this year, according to a letter from the provost’s office.

In all, four women have filed police reports this year accusing Nitz of sex crimes. The Star spoke with three of them and one agreed to be named. The Star generally does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission.

Nitz has not been arrested or charged in any criminal case.

Strader and the two women said police let them down, putting the burden on them to solve their own assaults.

“It’s harmful to everyone to be told that the responsibility for your own protection is up to you, and that when something does happen, you’re not going to get help in the way that you need it,” Strader said.

“It puts the victims through a lot more trauma, and I don’t think that’s fair.”

Absolutely not. But this eyebrow-raising news does suggest Nitz's status as somebody who worked in entertainment could be what's all but protected him from the law until now. Or maybe worse, that if he's a leftist, he enjoys a privileged status. At the very least, it does illustrate what's wrong with law enforcement - passive, ignorant and lazy officials in charge, with no interest in justice unless applied selectively.

KCTV5 has more:

Some of Nitz's alleged victims who spoke with KCTV5 News requested their identity not be revealed because they are afraid of the man they say attacked them.

Just this spring, one of his alleged victims, Hannah Strader, spoke out about what happened, and since then, she’s heard from dozens of others who say the same man sexually assaulted them.

“My number one concern coming forward with this story was finding other girls,” Strader told KCTV5 News. [...]

She posted nearly two years after her assault, naming him for the first time publicly, because she knew he was coming to the Planet Comiccon event in Kansas City.

“I feel privileged that I had a, quote unquote, mild experience that I can talk about when so many of the other girls don’t and feel like they can’t,” Strader said.

Within 24 hours of posting, Strader said she heard from ten other women who said Nitz had also sexually assaulted them. She said she’s heard from nearly 30 women now and continues to communicate with a group of 20 women with similar experiences.

KCTV5 News interviewed three of those women who asked to keep their identity private.

One of those women filed a police report with the Kansas City Police Department concerning her assault. That case is now under review by the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office.

The woman in that case said she met Nitz in a Kansas City, Missouri, bar, and while walking to her car to leave, he forced her into his vehicle, drove off, and raped and sodomized her for 45 minutes before leaving her in an empty parking lot.

“In the time during and after, you’re just kind of in survival mode," the woman told KCTV5 News. "If I fight, does it get worse? If I’m going to die, I have to make peace. Toward the end, I had a moment of like, if I’m going to die, this is the moment it’s going to happen."

KCTV5 News also interviewed a woman who said she was raped by Nitz four years ago. Another woman said she was sexually assaulted eight years ago.

“When anybody puts their body or their limbs on you in order to restrain you, it’s terrifying,” she said, adding that she wished she had spoken out sooner.

“I personally don’t feel empowered by this. I feel guilty I hadn’t said something sooner,” she explained. “I think when you’re in a profession or community like comics, and your interaction is with a lot of different people with a lot of them being sometimes younger, female and impressionable, looking to potentially move into a career like that, if you have somebody being predatory, somebody should be taking action within the convention to restrict somebody being predatory.”

Multiple women are now considering taking civil action against Nitz. Attorney Lauren Sierra is representing some of Nitz's alleged victims.

“In these types of situations where it’s someone who has some celebrity status, they are often associated with businesses, well-known companies, comic books and Comic-Con. Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of people aware of this behavior, but they for whatever reason look the other way," Sierra told KCTV5 News. "So if we can go forward with a civil case, we’re hoping that we can hold these companies, the universities, etc. accountable, so they will stop facilitating this person to be able to act against these women."

A civil case is probably the best way to deal with these predators. That aside, Nitz represents the kind of scum that have to be removed from the entertainment industry, along with the upper echelons who enable them. Indeed, those top brass have to be thrown out of the companies they manage first.

If this latest news on Nitz is factual, he's finished, and a lot of the comic stories he wrote for 2 decades likely won't be reprinted in trades for a long time.

Labels: misogyny and racism, moonbat writers, violence