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The first thing that pops up when you Google “KUOW Joe Fain,” is the station’s headline from 2018.

“‘You raped me.’ Former Seattle official accuses Washington state Sen. Joe Fain of rape.”

Now he’s a candidate for KUOW’s board.

According to an email obtained by The Stranger, new KUOW CEO Tina Pamintuan wrote to staff last night, stating that station leadership only learned about Fain’s candidacy in “the past day” and is now in talks with the board’s governance committee.

The KUOW/Puget Sound Public Radio (PSPR) board recruits its own members and votes on a slate of candidates every September. KUOW staff do not vote, though Pamintuan is a non-voting member of the board and told staff she will be included in future discussions of each candidate.

“We will keep you updated as our conversations progress on this most recent slate of board candidates and former Sen. Fain’s candidacy.”

Andy McGovern, the KUOW/PSPR Board Chair wrote in an email to The Stranger that the next vote for board candidates will take place on September 18, 2025. He confirmed Fain is currently on the slate of candidates to be considered.

In 2018, KUOW reported on the allegations after Candace Faber, the city’s former “civic technology advocate,” an intermediary between Seattle and the tech industry, publicly accused Fain, a former Republican state senator, of rape. She told the station that he raped her when she was 23 years old, the night she graduated from Georgetown in 2007. She came forward after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford said it was her civic duty to tell the Senate, and the country, about Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh allegedly sexually assaulting her.

Fain denied Faber’s allegations. He lost his reelection campaign that year, but lawmakers committed to continuing the investigation into the allegations, with a plan to complete it by the time his term ended. The investigation was suspended that December, after GOP legislators fought it. 

Fain was later appointed by GOP leaders to serve on the state’s redistricting commission, at the same time as Brady Walkinshaw, the owner of Noisy Creek, The Stranger’s parent company. Fain’s appointment was met with anger. The National Women’s Political Caucus of Washington called on him to resign, as did state Democratic Chair Tina Podlodowski, Walkinshaw, and his fellow Democratic commission appointee, April Sims. 

The commission was found to have violated the state’s Open Meetings Act. The commission settled after government transparency watchdogs sued. It agreed to pay $135,000 to cover the plaintiffs’ legal expenses and fees. Each member paid a $500 fine and received training on open meetings law. 

Fain’s candidacy for the KUOW board comes up as his wife, Steffanie Fain, is running for a seat on the King County Council. 

Faber told KUOW that she first met Fain while taking her parents on a tour of congressional buildings on Capitol Hill in Washington DC. Faber had come out as a lesbian in 2017, but was still wrestling with her sexuality at the time. At the graduation after-party, her father Matt Faber asked if she’d contacted that “nice young man.” She texted him an invite to the bar. 

They kissed on the dance floor. But later, he was drunk enough that she had to hold him up, she said. He was much larger. She repeatedly asked him to leave, but he insisted she walk him to his hotel. He was too drunk to get there alone, he told her. Fain, struggling to walk, “draped” his body over hers on the way there. Faber told KUOW that she felt like she needed to “deposit” him in his hotel room before she went back to the party with her friends. When they got inside, he found his strength, she told KUOW.

“Suddenly, he wasn’t fucking weak anymore and he had no problem throwing me on the bed and ripping my dress off,” Faber told KUOW.

It was her favorite dress, she told KUOW. He broke the straps. From KUOW:

Faber became emotional in speaking about what she said happened next. She said Fain pushed her on the bed and started performing cunnilingus on her while she tried to push him away with her foot. Faber said Fain said this was “hot” while she said “no.” Faber said she repeatedly told Fain to stop, but that he stood up and asked if she had a condom. According to Faber, she said she didn’t, but he raped her anyway.

“I remember that that was when I just decided to look out the window,” Faber said.

Faber said she didn’t remember how that part of the night ended, but she said she did remember Fain later throwing up in the bathroom. He then asked her to pack for him, she said, because he was too sick. She said she did. Faber said she also agreed to FedEx Fain his lost jacket.

The next day, Faber asked her mother to mend the dress, but wouldn’t tell her how they’d been broken, or why later, she broke down and cried. Faber told her mother about the rape in 2009, but didn’t name Fain until 2016.
“When Trump got elected, she broke,” her mother Laura Lee Faber told KUOW. “The emotions just … so that’s when she told us his name.”

Faber also told her story to Julie Pham, the then vice president of community engagement and marketing at the Washington Technology Association, in 2016 and her friend, Sol Villarreal, the year prior. In 2012, she wrote about the experience and sent a draft to her former Georgetown professor in 2013. In 2017, while on medical leave of absence following a mental breakdown, Faber told colleagues at University of Washington’s Information School about the rape. She showed KUOW the emails, and one of her colleagues, Frank Martinez, confirmed that he’d received them. He said the first email shocked him, but he believed it to be credible.

Fain told The Stranger in an email that he was contacted about whether he’d be interested in the role, but has not been offered it (elections are not until the 18th). 

“I have a strong desire to preserve public radio in our region, particularly as it comes under attack by a hostile administration in Washington, D.C.  The board rightly has no influence or oversight of the news division, nor should it. As I understand it, the mission of the board is to further the viability of public media, which is a goal I share. At this time, I have only expressed my interest but have not been offered the role.”

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