Did Rachel Dolezal’s parents out her for supporting brother’s accuser?
Did Rachel Dolezal’s parents out her for supporting brother’s accuser?
New details in the bizarre case of Washington NAACP leader outed by her parents as a white woman, Rachel Dolezal, suggest a family rift had deepened in recent years over sexual assault charges.
Those charges, filed against Dolezal’s white biological brother, Joshua Dolezal, in Colorado in 2013, involve a person who was a minor at the time of the alleged incident – possibly even a member of his own family.
Rachel Dolezal, who’s accused her parents of abuse for years, has now sided with her brother’s accuser, reports the New York Daily News, thus widening the rift between parents and daughter.
Rachel Dolezal has made ongoing assertions that her parents have outed her as white in order to discredit her claims of abuse in the family.
Dolezal noted to the Spokesman-Review that her parents have chosen to reveal her ethnicity ‘as the Colorado lawsuit filed by her sister against their brother nears a key juncture.’
Joshua Dolezal, a 39-year-old writer based in Iowa, faces four felony sexual assault charges, reports NYDN. The case has a trial date set for this summer.
Rachel’s parents Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal briefly addressed the allegations in a sit down with KHQ on Saturday, during which a reporter said:
‘Our reporter in Spokane spoke with Rachel earlier and he told me she mentioned someone in the family potentially being assaulted?’
‘It is not something we can comment on,’ replied Mrs. Dolezal.
The reporter pushed forward: ‘Do you know what she’s alleging?’
‘We will not comment on that,’ Mrs. Dolezal said, to which her husband added, ‘It’s better if we don’t, it’s a separate matter.’
Like his sister, Joshua Dolezal teaches at the university level.
A website for Central College in Pella, Iowa lists him as an associate professor of English who earned a Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Dolezal has taught at the school since 2005, according to a bio on the site.
‘A former wilderness ranger and firefighter, he also enjoys running, songwriting and cycling,’ reads Dolezal’s bio, which lists several highly regarded publications to which he’s contributed work.
While Larry and Ruthanne Dolezal have not made any mention of their son, they suggested to KHQ that they made public their daughter’s deceptions after being contacted about her allegations against them.
‘The shocking thing is what she’s saying and what’s she’s claiming–as far as her family goes,’ said Ruthanne.
But after learning that she was claiming to be African American, they did not take the initiative to say anything until they were recently contacted, presumably about her claims of abuse.
Some of those claims involve Rachel directly and range from shocking to just plain bizarre.
She told Eastern Online in February that she and her siblings were punished ‘by skin complexion’ using a ‘baboon whip’ that she said was ‘pretty similar to what was used as whips during slavery.’
Her father, after lifting the curtain on his daughter’s racial dishonesty, said ‘We’ve never been asked these questions until now.’
The couple shared images of Dolezal as a child. While today the 37-year-old divorcee sports tight, dark curls, thephotos show a fair and freckled blonde girl.
One of her adopted brothers, 21-year-old Zach, backed up his parents’ story by telling the Washington Post that when he visited his sister in Spokane, he was told not to speak of Larry and Ruthanne as their parents.
Another adopted brother, Ezra Dolezal, 22, compared their sister’s decision to blackface.
‘Back in the early 1900s, what she did would be considered highly racist,’ he said. ‘You really should not do that. It’s completely opposite – she’s basically creating more racism.’
Despite their hurt, her parents said that any decision about Dolezal’s future at the NAACP should be left up to the organization.
‘It’s very sad that Rachel has not just been herself,’ Ruthanne Dolezal told the Spokesman-Review. ‘Her effectiveness in the causes of the African-American community would have been so much more viable, and she would have been more effective if she had just been honest with everybody.’
Dolezal had a meeting scheduled with the NAACP on Monday, but it has since been canceled ‘due to the need to continue discussion with regional and national NAACP leaders’.
