Forum

NEW: Wesley Lowery, the black WaPo journalist who lionized Michael Brown and George Floyd and propagated BLM before winning a Pulitzer for demonizing police, is accused of Bill Cosby-style serial sexual assault of multiple victims who say they blacked outhttps://t.co/osrVlK5Had

— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) May 26, 2025

Wesley Lowery—the winner of a Pulitzer Prize and a George Polk Award, and whose work in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014, chronicled the organizing power of Black Lives Matter—is, at thirty-four, one of the most recognized journalists in America. He has reported for the Washington Post and CBS News. He is the author of two books: They Can’t Kill Us All (2016), about unarmed Black men killed by police, and American Whitelash (2023), a history of violent white resistance to people of color. Among young reporters, he is perhaps best known for questioning traditional journalistic objectivity, noting its failures to reckon with racism.

But for some women in journalism, his standing is more complicated. Imani Moise, a Wall Street Journal reporter, remembers that when she met up with him at a bar, in December of 2018, for what she thought would be a professional conversation, he’d ordered her a cocktail before she arrived. Olivia Messer—a journalist who is now the editor in chief of the Barbed Wire, an independent outlet focused on Texas—recalled that, in January of 2020, at a happy hour with Lowery, he was ready with more alcohol every time she returned to the table. In the spring of 2022, after two drinks, a journalist with whom Lowery matched on Bumble said that she had reached her limit, and he entreated her to get a third. (This journalist spoke on the condition of anonymity, because even a first name would make her easily identifiable, and she feared how her family would react.) A writer and researcher noticed that, in February of 2024, when she and Lowery went to a bar, he had a drink waiting for her whenever she got up to use the bathroom. (This woman, too, did not want to be named, because of the toll she said the experience has taken on her mental health.) In each case, these women wound up leaving with Lowery, who they said then sexually assaulted them.

Messer recalled that she tried to educate Lowery about consent. On another occasion, she said, she woke up unsure of what had happened, and he told her that he remembered they’d had sex. The woman from Bumble also blacked out; Moise felt powerless to stop him. The fourth—the writer-researcher—remained conscious; she felt pressure from Lowery to let him up to her apartment, where he tried to pull off her clothes, she said, until she pretended to fall asleep, and eventually, he left.

At the time of these encounters—which spanned from 2018 to 2024, when he had reached the height of his media stardom—each of these women viewed Lowery as a professional contact, someone they knew socially and looked up to, not as a romantic partner with whom they were engaging in consensual sex. Until now, some had feared making noise about Lowery, beyond telling a few confidants. “He was the golden boy, held up on this pedestal,” Moise said. She deeply felt his importance to journalism, to American culture, to so much. “He was Mr. BLM.” When these women confronted Lowery about his actions, he would be nice, and apologetic.

more:

https://www.cjr.org/feature-2/wesley-lowery-sexual-assault-journalists-attest-experiences.php