A very in-depth interview of all parties involved around the sexual assault of a young female wolf activist while working in Montana and Wisconsin. This article delves into the role of how.
“People that have been persecuted by the state are martyrized and lionized in ways that survivors aren’t,” Anderson told The Intercept. “The way the movement takes more seriously state repression versus political violence against women allows people like Rod — not to milk it, but to use it as a shield.”
“…It’s incredibly damaging to the movement to have an elder be harassing women.”
Yet this article clearly demonstrates the courage of the young woman, as she refuses to harm the movement by answering the FBI questions. She wouldn’t inform on the movement.
I’m a Wisconsin wolf advocate, so when this story first came out, refused to continue working with Coronado and his Wolf Patrol, because he clearly refused to be accountable for this kind of predatory behavior towards woman. The article makes it clear Julie wasn’t alone or the only victim of this predatory behavior. Julie wasn’t his first victim.
“But for all those who questioned Henry, there were at least as many who supported her.”
I became involved because I supported Julie and the following is my story.
In 2014 Julie, a Wolf Patrol member in her mid 20s, was one of his victims and as the leader of Wolf Patrol in Wisconsin and Yellowstone he thinks he got away with it. Coronado was in his mid 40s at the time.
Julie, now a survivor, told her story so that other women would be aware. It’s important to know that Julie wasn’t his first victim, that this was a pattern of his. Earthfirst activists tried to do an accountability process with Coronado which he ignored way before he preyed upon Julie in 2014. There were extensive news articles on it! In 2018 the Intercept newspaper did an extensive article about what happened to Julie: along with an article from Earth Island Journal https: https://theintercept.com/2018/
My Story: Why I’m a Victim Too
In 2014 Rod Coronado approached me and asked if he could work with me and based on his past animal activism I thought I’d give it a try. I met with him and his wolf patrol members at their camp in October 2014 (I had no idea that just before I got there Hunt Saboteurs had angrily left the camp because Rod refused to remove wolves from hunter’s traps and had cameras on him for publicity) I met Julie Henry and immediately liked her spirit. She reminded me of a young Jane Goodall. This was in Wisconsin while the 2014 wolf hunt was taking place.
Later Coronado took Wolf Patrol crew out to patrol Yellowstone where Julie said assaulted her. She was 20 and he was 45.
I also had no idea that before he arrived in Wisconsin that EarthFirst activists had tried to hold an accountability process with Coronado for preying on young women.
I was completely unaware but I did begin to see misogynistic behavior from him. Such as he only communicated with me when wanted something. I had the attention of the press when Coronado approached me and asked if he could work with me. After the fact I realize why he wanted to work with me. He was after publicity. I hosted his crew at a friend’s home and I had two young girls working as writers on my blog. And one of them had a crush on Coronado. I also was approached by another young woman telling me that one of my young volunteers looked good with Coronado and they could make a good couple. I let them know the young woman was married which didn’t seem to matter. I thought this behavior was immature just like a school crush. Also that December 2014 when I hosted Wolf Patrol Julie was missing from the crew and I asked if she would be joining and got a weird vibe from their response.
Meanwhile, sometime between October through December Wolf Patrol was in Yellowstone and that’s where Julie said Coronado assaulted her.
Then in 2015 I received a Facebook message from Hunt Sabs that Coronado assaulted Julie. I immediately backed off from working with him until I could learn more.
But the two young volunteer girls tried to tell me, “Oh he’s famous and there’s bound to be women that will say that about him.”
So I took both of them off my social media and that angered them. I had forgotten that one girl had the passwords to my Twitter account.
One day I saw a photo of Coronado and myself together posted on my Twitter account but I did not post it! Then I checked my following and it was full of pornography profiles. At that time it freaked me out, because I didn’t know it was the young volunteer. I finally was able to stop her by removing her IPhone off of my Twitter account.
It seemed obvious Coronado wanted to silence me at any cost. I received a lot of press for trying to stop the use of dogs in the wolf hunt and so the hunters watched my blog. Then, when I posted why I wouldn’t work with Coronado the hunters used my name to denounce Coronado. Because of that everyone called me a traitor to the cause.
I felt assaulted (emotionally) by Coronado right along with Julie. To this day I’m a comrade with Julie! She had courage and faught to expose him to protect other women.
Julie is a biologist and very beautiful inside and out and Coronado used his status as a famous animal activist to prey on her. Only she resisted his advances making it very clear she did not want a relationship, only a working one. Because of all of this she ended up leaving behind the work she loved, saving wolves. She left the animal activism network.
I can identify with her on that because I too have become disillusioned with the greater wolf advocacy networks because of this misogynistic behavior that is so prevalent. I’ve disassociated myself with these advocacy networks. They are not only misogynistic, it’s become less about the animals they claim to care about and more about attention seeking to gain donations and prestige. For example; one lied, claiming in 2013 to be a co-writer on a Wisconsin state Senator’s bill that would remove dogs from the wolf hunt, and everyone knew about the deception. But instead of asking for accountability and checking this behavior they backed them. One destroyed a charity event that would raise money to pay Attorneys fees for a lawsuit to stop the dogs in the hunt. Then, Coronado arrived on scene, and there has never been any accountability within the Wisconsin wolf advocacy networks to check this behavior. I’m the only one who spoke out when Julie accused Coronado of sexually assaulting her. Instead of doing the right thing, these organizations backed the bad behavior and continue to do so to this day. It’s about donations and not the animals.
The following is the article from the intercept.
The FBI used the #MeToo movement to pressure and environmental activist into becoming an informant by Allen Brown and John Knefel from The Intercept
JULIE HENRY WAS jogging when she got the call from the FBI. She didn’t recognize the number, which had a Washington state area code, but she answered anyway. The FBI agent identified herself as Kera O’Reilly, and said that Henry wasn’t in any trouble. O’Reilly was there to help.
“People can’t fathom that someone could both be a nice person in a meeting and hit their girlfriend or sexually assault someone,” said (Brian) Frank (an organizer with Earth First!). “For some people, it’s so unbelievable they think it must be a conspiracy.”
The phone call, which Henry received on February 22, 2018, brought her back to an internal conflict that she thought she’d finished wrestling with two years earlier. O’Reilly wanted to talk to Henry about her online account of sexual assault, which was strange if you consider that the offense is a crime over which federal agents rarely have jurisdiction. But it made perfect sense considering the person she wanted to discuss: Rod Coronado.
To his supporters in the animal rights community, Coronado is a folk hero who has lived his convictions. People have even written songs celebrating him. To the FBI, Coronado is an eco-terrorist, an arsonist, and a criminal. Although the agency has already managed to put him in prison four separate times, including for setting fire to a mink research facility and dismantling a mountain lion trap, law enforcement apparently still isn’t finished with the 52-year-old activist, who publicly denounced sabotage as a tactic more than a decade ago.
Yet for all of his public accolades and detractors, Henry knew a different side of him.
Nearly four years ago, Henry says, in the midst of a campaign to monitor a state-sanctioned wolf hunt with Coronado’s organization Wolf Patrol, in a remote area outside Yellowstone National Park, Coronado sexually assaulted her. Henry says she didn’t even think about calling law enforcement. Activists aren’t supposed to talk to cops, and definitely not to FBI agents. For months, she stayed silent. But then, after agonizing over the decision, she participated in an alternative attempt at accountability — she described Coronado’s assault in an email posted to a closed activist listserv and later published the details publicly in the activist Earth First! Journal.
Henry doesn’t regret her decision, but the process was painful and disappointing. Coronado denied that anything nonconsensual happened. Although many supported her, others — including some she’d considered friends and allies — didn’t believe her. Some went so far as to label her a snitch and a federal operative, smears often directed at someone perceived to have weakened the movement by talking publicly about internal divisions that law enforcement can exploit. Read more here.