50 MARCH 2020irritated when other women tried to join them. (Russell, mean-
while, said she was just trying to be “cordial” with Parker because
she “didn’t want to make a scene” in public.) At the time, Scott,
who is African American, thought Russell was white, which to her
put the physician at risk. In a country where black men have “his-
torically been fetishized by white women,” she wrote in an email
to me, “he could easily become ‘Native Son.’ ” Scott determined to
intervene, with a light touch. “Dr. Parker,” she recalled exclaiming
as she approached their table, “you are always holding court. The
girls know they love them some Willie Parker!” After Russell left
the table, Scott warned Parker to be careful—which at the time
he considered unnecessary, he told me, because he was confident
in his ability to handle himself with women.
Russell said she was finally moved to divulge her story by at
least two people who mentioned that they’d seen, or heard tales of,
Parker “sidling up” to unidentified young women at conferences.
She wouldn’t disclose the name of one of those people, however,
because the story was told to her in confidence. The second per-
son, a board member of a reproductive-rights group, told me that
while he believes and supports Russell, he didn’t remember telling
her this—he wouldn’t have firsthand knowledge of such behavior
anyway, he said, because he was never around Parker.
In Tuscaloosa, Russell showed me a video clip that someone
had forwarded to her before she wrote her letter. It showed Parker
dancing at a conference, “humping somebody to some stupid ’90s
slow jam,” as she described it—proof that he’d become “brazen,
emboldened,” and had to be stopped. The video is 15 seconds
long, and shot from a distance. In pink light, on a small platform
in the middle of a dance floor, Parker is dancing surrounded
by five women, maybe more; it’s hard to tell. He’s the outlier,
older than the rest and, well, male. With his shirtsleeves rolled
up and his bow tie undone, he looks exactly the way one activist
described him to me: “like your fun uncle,” right before last call
at a wedding.
At the eight-second mark, Russell jabbed a finger at the screen.
“Do you see that?” Revulsion was thick in her voice. “His hand,
it’s on her hip. He’s practically grinding on her.”
We replayed it, twice. I strained. I squinted. Did Parker’s hand
graze the woman’s hip? Maybe. Though to me, it looked like he
was worried she was about to fall off the platform and was reaching
out to catch her. I began to get the surreal sense that Russell and
I were watching two different videos: Mine was benign; hers was
evidence of predatory behavior.
Beyond trying to track down the leads Russell gave me, I con-
tacted numerous members of the reproductive-rights field to ask:
Was Parker’s bad behavior an open secret in their world? The over-
whelming majority of people I spoke with, many of them Russell’s
own allies, said they had never heard anything untoward about
Parker before her Medium piece. There were two exceptions. Lau-
rie Bertram Roberts, a co-founder of the Mississippi Reproductive
Freedom Fund, told me that a year before Russell posted her story,
another woman had disclosed that she’d had sex with Parker when
she was too drunk to consent and considered it rape. Parker denied
this, and Bertram Roberts would not ask the woman to speak with
me; doing so, she argued, would only retraumatize her. In addi-
tion, Bertram Roberts said four women have told her Parker made
comments that made them feel “uncomfortable,” along the lines
of what he said to Hernandez; Bertram Roberts would not share
their names or any specifics.
Separately, a former journalist who covers reproductive rights
(and asked not to be identified because he didn’t think it was his
place as a “cisgender man” to get too involved) said that before
Russell’s Medium post, two female activists had mentioned
to him that Parker “had a reputation” for taking advantage
of young women at conferences. Both of his sources declined
to be contacted, so it’s impossible to know whether they were
talking about what happened with the two women already on
the record— Russell and Hernandez— or other women. (Parker
said that none of this is true.)
Before Russell’s story went live, Bertram Roberts said a rumor
was widely circulating that an abortion provider had sexually
assaulted someone in the movement. Later, she realized the gos-
sip was about Russell. So again, were there many women with
stories to tell about Willie Parker? Or were the stories of Russell
and Hernandez gaining momentum as they reverberated in the
tight-knit community?
Even if that’s the case, Bertram Roberts told me that she
doesn’t think Parker should be let off the hook. Take Russell’sLeft: Parker outside the Supreme Court in March 2016. Right: Russell speaking at a reproductive-justice event at the Texas capitol building in 2015.
LEFT: DAWN PORTER; RIGHT: TRUST RESPECT ACCESS COALITION