A former employee of the police department of Gainesville, Florida (GPD), was recently found guilty of having a sexual affair with a subordinate in violation of department policy, which he attempted to cover up by pressuring her to have an abortion.
According to the Alachua Chronicle, Caleb Young, a civilian program coordinator of community relations at the GPD, was using his position as the woman’s superior to threaten her employment if she didn’t get an abortion. Young, a married man with at least one child, was also charged earlier in October of 2023 with assault and battery of a police officer after an altercation at his son’s football game.
When a GPD lieutenant called the woman in June 2022 to investigate the situation, she at first denied any wrongdoing on Young’s part. Later, in August of 2023, she contacted the GPD and retracted her earlier statement, which she told the lieutenant she made because at the time she feared for her and her preborn baby’s safety. Now that her child had been born and she had no association with Young, she felt freer to pursue the matter.
An investigation revealed that the woman and Young began an affair in October of 2020. She became pregnant in March of 2022, and when she informed Young, he demanded she abort their child. Text messages revealed as a result of department investigation showed that she requested Young “do you self [sic] a favor and sign your rights over,” as she did not want to abort her baby. Young continued to insist on an abortion and on her resignation, and the subsequent investigation report noted “multiple texts from [the woman] during this time frame to both Young and others that refer to being forced to resign or have an abortion.”
The woman continued to refuse until he made a chilling comment: “You can go missing.”
Feeling threatened, she handed in her letter of resignation, which he crumpled and discarded and told her to write another as he deemed the hand-written letter “unprofessional.” When she did so, he terminated her at the end of the pay period rather than the end of the month as she requested. The investigation pointed out that Young had no authority to terminate her employment at the time, only to recommend her termination.
Men pressuring women into abortion as a means of control and to absolve themselves of the consequences of their choices is, tragically, nothing new. In fact, as Live Action News has reported, one study reports as many as 64% of post-abortive women felt pressured into the procedure that ended their babies’ lives.
Rather than being an easy way out, abortion is frequently used as a tool to oppress women, including by human traffickers and other predators who wish to avoid accountability. As Live Action News has demonstrated, the abortion industry enables this victimization of women to pad their bottom lines, as Planned Parenthood has repeatedly been caught covering for suspected sex traffickers.
As a result of the investigation, Caleb Young was found to have violated a city rule, that he acted with “immoral, unlawful, or improper conduct or indecency, whether on or off the job which would tend to affect the employee’s relationship to his/her job, fellow workers’ reputations or goodwill in the community.” According to the Chronicle, rather than being fired, he was allowed to resign.
