Oregon governor's fiancée admits to illegally marrying immigrant
By Courtney Sherwood PORTLAND Ore. (Reuters) - The fiancée of Oregon Governor John Kitzhaber said on Thursday she had once married a 18-year-old immigrant student in exchange for some $5,000 she used to pay her school tuition and buy a laptop. Cylvia Hayes said the 1997 marriage took place when she was 30 and the man, identified by local media as being from Ethiopia, was 18, and both were attending Evergreen State College in Washington state. "It was a marriage of convenience; he needed help and I needed support," Hayes told reporters late on Thursday, wiping tears from her eyes as she spoke from downtown Portland. "I made a serious mistake by committing an illegal act." She said that Kitzhaber, a Democrat seeking re-election in November, did not know about the marriage until Wednesday. He was not present at Hayes' announcement at her request, she said. Hayes, the founder of an environmental consulting firm, did not name the man, but the Willamette Week newspaper has identified him as Abraham B. Abraham from Ethiopia. Hayes said she accepted about $5,000 for the marriage, but never lived with the man and met only a handful of times, adding she had not seen him since they divorced in 2002. On Thursday, she apologized to Kitzhaber and to Oregonians and said she deeply regrets her actions. In August, Hayes, who had already disclosed two previous divorces, announced plans to marry Kitzhaber, who has also been married and divorced twice before. "John Kitzhaber deserved to know the history of the person he was forming a relationship with," she said, adding that upon learning of the earlier marriage, "He was stunned and he was hurt. I will be eternally grateful for the beautiful, loving way he has supported me." She said that she had hired an attorney and planned to step back from civic engagement on environmental issues while facing the legal consequences of the illegal marriage. (Reporting by Courtney Sherwood in Portland, Oregon; Editing by Eric M. Johnson and Eric Walsh)
