Felix Stoll
News
1/19/2022
Lee Chatfield is an American politician affiliated with the Republican party. He was the speaker pro tempore from 2017 to 2019 and was eventually elected to be speaker of the Michigan House of Representatives in 2019.
During Chatfield’s time in the political system, he became well known for clashing with other House and Senate politicians. Some of the plans he went on record as opposing were the Medicaid Expansion plans in 2014, the extension of Michigan’s Elliott-Larsen Civil Rights Act along with Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s state budget, road funding, auto-insurance and COVID-19 plans.
Other records of Lee Chatfield’s time in office include fines from 2018 when he attempted to bring a loaded, unregistered handgun onto a commercial flight at Pellston Regional Airport. The fines for this incident included $250 for failure to have a license for the firearm he purchased in December of 2015 as well as $1,960 from the Transportation Security Administration. This occurred after Chatfield had introduced a bill to make handgun registration voluntary[WJB1] .
Additionally, Chatfield became one of many politicians associated with former President Donald Trump during the 2020 election. His association with the former president was most noted during the legal battles regarding the vote count in Michigan.
In January of 2022, Okemos attorney Jamie White came forward with allegations for sexual abuse against Lee Chatfield. White is the attorney who represented multiple women in the case against Larry Nassar the former Michigan State University gymnastics trainer as well as victims currently suing the University of Michigan.
The allegations state that Chatfield sexually abused a girl beginning eleven years ago when she was fifteen and Chatfield was 21 and that said abuse only recently came to an end. The duration of the allegations come from when Chatfield was a teacher at the Northern Michigan Christian Academy as well as during his time as a member at the Northern Michigan Baptist Bible Church, both of which Chatfield’s father maintained strong influence over.
Rebekah Chatfield, who married the younger brother Aaron Chatfield at nineteen, alleges that the abuse took place beginning when she began to date Aaron and that it continued after their marriage. She states that Lee used his position, her relationship to his brother and her vulnerability due to poor home life to keep her under his control.
“He destroyed me, and has controlled my life since I was 15-16, the past 10-11 years and I know the only way to get justice for this is to come forward and file a (criminal) complaint against him,” said Rebekah.
Chatfield has gone on record to deny the allegations made against him by his now twenty-seven year old sister in law. His lawyer has made a statement in which he says that Chatfield has had extramarital affairs, but that he and the alleged victim were both consenting adults. Chatfield says that he will continue to fight the claims brought against him and that he plans to work through this difficult time with his wife and family.
Additional people have come forward since the initial allegations to aid in providing credibility for Rebekah. Former classmate Alexis Prince has made statements regarding both the school and church run by the Chatfields. She referred to the institutions as “cult-like” with rules and stipulations regarding how young girls ought to present and act around the boys as well as physical discipline such as spankings.
She continued by saying that the church is like its own little bubble of people who knew and followed the rules. The rules were described by Alexis as being “over the top, abusive and manipulative.”
[WJB1]ok Chatfield, buddy, moral insubordinate…let’s slam on those brakes
