The Daily Caller reports on another layer in the ongoing scandal involving former Executive Director of the North Carolina Democratic Party, Jay Parmley, alleging that he infected his former girlfriend with HIV.
The Democratic executive’s ex-girlfriend Rebecca Burgin told the Daily Caller that she met Parmley when he was her American Government professor at Oklahoma City Community College. According to Burgin, they dated for three years.
She explained that she felt obligated to come forward, saying "When Jay and I met, I was 20 and he was 32. To me, it seems to be a pattern, potentially. … The unnerving thing to me is that it looks like he uses his position of authority to prey on younger adults."
"And after Jay and I broke up, the biggest concern that I had was, ‘what if this happened to somebody else? Would he do this to someone else?’ … My biggest concern is for anybody else that has had a relationship with him that he did not tell," she told the Daily Caller.
Parmley has been in the news since the Daily Caller reported April 13 on allegations brought by former North Carolina Democratic Party communications staffer Adriadn Ortega. The former staffer accused Parmley in December of making unwanted sexual advances.
Burgin does not know how or when Parmley contracted HIV, only that after almost three years of dating, including 14 months of long-distance while Parmley worked in Mississippi for the DNC under Howard Dean, he became "debilitating[ly] sick." About a month later, Burgin told the Daily Caller that Parmley told her that he had tested positive for HIV. Burgin’s test was positive as well.
In the states where Parmley lived throughout their relationship, failure to notify a sexual partner of positive HIV status is a crime, ranging from a misdemeanor to a felony.
According to the story, Burgin had her lawyer contact Parmley’s attorney, Jim Frasier, currently one of 100 delegates to the Democratic National Committee.
Burgin told the Daily Caller that "Frasier came back and said, ‘what we will provide for her is that she can remain on the DNC’s health insurance and the DNC would pay for it’ for—I think that they said—as long as Jay’s employed there." She was already covered under Parmley’s DNC insurance plan.
After considering the offer, Burgin says she turned it down. She then considered the possibility that the offer could be insurance fraud. She explained, "I was not with him anymore, and if insurance companies found out, couldn’t they just immediately drop me? What if Blue Cross and Blue Shield comes in and does an audit and sees I am no longer with him, and don’t live in the same household as him? Then they’d go, ‘well, this doesn’t work,’ and I’d lose my health insurance."
Liberal media outlet TalkingPointsMemo has also reported Burgin’s story.
Parmley resigned last Sunday, writing in his resignation letter, "Even though I have not done anything wrong, it is clear to me that I need to move on."