Kansas Rep. Aaron Coleman wants his victim to join his anti-bullying coalition

Admitted abuser and cyberbully state Rep. Aaron Coleman of Wyandotte County, already a Kansas legislator, now wants to be an anti-cyberbullying warrior — and is brazenly asking at least one of his own victims to join him.

“I was a cyberbully of the worst kind. There is no line that I did not cross,” he wrote in an apology to one victim on his House of Representatives letterhead. “And as a fellow victim of cyberbullying, I know I will never be able to undo the damage that I did.”

Coleman explains to his victim that he was recently “part of a conversation with some community leaders discussing cyberbullying and ways to implement restorative justice. … We would love it if you would share your perspective on this issue. We are working to find solutions to this deep problem affecting our society’s people.”

He closes the letter with, “I’m sorry. — Rep. Aaron Coleman.”

We’re glad to hear he’s sorry, and restorative justice is great.

But former girlfriend Taylor Passow says he told her, “I hope you get abducted, raped, chopped up and have ya pieces scattered around and burnt in different locations” if she risked hitchhiking to come see him. Passow also said Coleman choked and slapped her in a hot tub, and became controlling about what she ate and drank.

So not surprisingly, “I find his reaching out to other victims very disrespectful,” Passow says. “He’s putting fear into our minds, no matter how he’s trying to spin it. He doesn’t care about cyberbullying. He was cyberbullying me the whole time he was running for office. He’s still managing to break us down.”

Passow said because of his election to office, and the voters’ disregard of his past actions, “I still have panic attacks and am still struggling with everything he put me through, every day. Our trauma and pain doesn’t just go away.”

She’s not alone in her outrage.

“Reaching out to the survivors of his own bullying to participate in an anti-cyber-bullying project is a gross misuse of his power that has the potential to retraumatize those he has already hurt,” says state Rep. Lindsay Vaughn, Democrat of Overland Park. “As long as Rep. Coleman maintains a position of power, no matter what progressive policies or projects he supports, he will never be able to make amends. His survivors have been clear: If Rep. Coleman wants to be accountable for his actions, he should resign. Anything else is just prioritizing his own self-interests.“

Trying to contact women he abused revives their torment

“The fact Kansas Rep. Aaron Coleman has no regard for his victims’ boundaries is very concerning to me,” says Wyandotte County activist and Coleman critic Faith Rivera, who has announced she’s running for his seat next year. She said some of his victims “have left his district and even the county because of his power. They are afraid of his reach. What he does not understand is that his victims are still that, victims. They are working every day to survive his abuse and torment. When he reaches out, it hinders their growth and survival.”

It feels like “he is still a predator, poking at his prey,” Rivera says. “What the victims want is no contact.”

Here’s hoping that his conversion is real. But he declined to even say whether he’s getting counseling. And Passow’s claim that he was cyberbullying her during his run for office last year is proof enough that it’s too soon for him to be seeking the mantle of anti-cyberbully champion. It may never be time for that.

“Obviously he probably feels he has something to gain by doing this, to try to show a moving forward from his past, that type of thing. It probably makes good politics,” says state Sen. Cindy Holscher, Democrat of Overland Park. “I’m sure to the general public, it certainly does not seem appropriate that he would be leading that.”

Neither Holscher nor Vaughn knows what “community leaders” or anti-bullying coalition Coleman is talking about.

If he’s truly seeking redemption, he can do that in private. And he need not approach his victims in the process, further traumatizing them.

He seems to understand that, at least on some level, after our reaching out to him, saying, “Now that I know they don’t want to make amends with me, I will send no additional apologies if It will make them happy.”

Make them happy? This is someone who admitted to bullying, revenge porn and blackmail while while in middle school. One young woman recalls having Coleman in sixth grade “calling me fat, telling me to kill myself, like I’m never going to find anyone, like I’m worthless, just downgrading me every day. I tried to end my life.”

“F--- you you f--- ratchet fat s---,” she says he told her in a message back then. “F--- off whale. Go on a diet and get some braces.”

He still seems not to fathom that it’s not for them to make amends with him.

This story was originally published July 9, 2021 at 5:00 AM.