SEVEN YEARS AGO, Aaron Coleman, who is currently twenty and a candidate for the Kansas state legislature, attempted to extort nude photos from a thirteen-year-old. When she refused, he circulated another nude photo of her in retaliation. Around the same time, he started bullying another girl, and persisted until she attempted suicide. Last December, months before he came to national attention, he hit and threatened a third woman, then his girlfriend, choking and slapping her in a hot tub after she joked about breaking up with him. After two of the women made their stories public, Coleman found defenders in the national media, who espoused the moral high-mindedness of forgiveness and compassion. The Intercept’s Glenn Greenwald invited Coleman to sit down for a sympathetic thirty-minute interview. “It has long been a staple of liberal philosophy that humans can and should be rehabilitated, not eternally condemned for bad acts, particularly those committed when very young,” Greenwald wrote in an accompanying essay. For his part, the candidate seemed annoyed that anyone was bringing this up. “I’ve moved on,” he told a relative of one of his victims. Left out of this discussion were the women Coleman had hurt. One said: “I feel good about speaking my truth, but I’m still very upset because he’s going to have some form of power. And I don’t think he has a right to have any kind of power.”