Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick has distanced himself from a controversial statement about sexual assault made on the state’s official twitter account. On Wednesday night, a tweet from Mass.gov went out in support of sexual assault awareness month that said,”Sexual assault is always avoidable.” Some of the website’s 36,000 Twitter followers charged that the phrasing implied victims of sexual assault are to blame for crimes against them. Governor Patrick did not make excuses for the tweet.
“It was a stupid comment that certainly does not reflect the views of this administration or my own, or frankly the director of the organization that floated them,” Patrick says.
The tweet was removed Thursday morning, and Mass.gov director Geoff Kula later apologized via Twitter, saying the website did not intend to blame the victims. In a statement on the website, he wrote that the state’s regular editorial review policies were not followed.