Neal Summers And Darrell Cloud -- Questionable Facts Exploited

I am writing in response to your lead story Feb. 6, "A single bullet, a thousand questions." While I certainly think Neal Summers' murder is a newsworthy story, exploiting the questionable facts about the story and Summers' character is not.

As the story reported, "Exactly how a friendship developed between Summers and Darrell Cloud is not clear." So leave it at that. If Summers coerced Cloud into a sexual relationship by using threats, that would be molestation. However, from what has been reported, this was a relationship that lasted several years, which, despite Cloud's young age, puts it more in the realm of a lovers' quarrel that turned to murder.

You seem to be confused about some details you reported. Reporting that Summers as a youth wanted to "masturbate together" with another boy his age to cast aspersions on his character is ridiculous. Most boys go through this sort of thing as teens and don't, to paraphrase the myth, "turn into" gays or pederasts. In fact, they are not even "confused adolescents," as you reported. (Ask your local high school's guidance counselor.)

Also, you report that a woman said that "eighth grade marked a change in the 14-year-old Darrell." Tell me, for whom does that not apply? Also, if Cloud had violent tendencies, what better time than puberty for these to become evident? Again, you are trying to pin too much value on Cloud's relationship with Summers and too little on the fact that Cloud was troubled, period. Yes, Summers took advantage of a vulnerable person, but apparently the liaison was not too troubling because Cloud continued the relationship "throughout high school."

Another stereotype that you have played into is the myth that athletes somehow do not have homosexual experiences or tendencies. All this reporting that Cloud was an athlete - apparently to make his liaison with Summers seem all the more bizarre - tells me that you somehow think athletes are all heterosexual. If your reporters read a couple of books on homosexuality, they would realize that most are not limp-wristed poufs and some can, indeed, throw a basketball.

Details about Summers' "school spirit" and his promising "special surprises" to students are, I suppose, your way of snickering at his perfectly honorable (for all we know) intentions. And what is your implication in reporting that students called Summers a pervert? Kids can be cruel. Are you saying that this incident, recalled by one student, had anything to do with these latest events?

Until you can prove to me that this relationship abused any more than age-of-consent laws, I will not believe it was a "sexually abusive relationship." For sexual abuse to happen, there has to be coercion of some sort, and you have no proof of that. So stop your character assassination of Neal Summers.

Your eagerness to report this as a simplified, predatory molestation is telling of your need to sell papers - this time by reducing a complicated, volatile, years-long relationship to the equivalent of a blurb in the National Enquirer. Alan Reade Seattle