Cynthia Mirella Ore (born 1970s) is a Maryland woman who gained brief notoriety in the second half of 2005 and during the 2006 midterm election, as a result of her widely publicized extramarital affair with Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district Representative Don Sherwood. [1] She subsequently accused Sherwood of abusing her during their relationship.
In court documents [2] and press interviews, [3] Ore said she met Congressman Sherwood at a Young Republicans meeting in September 1999. [4] Ore was 23 years old and Sherwood was 58 when they began a "close romantic and intimate personal relationship", according to a 2005 filing by Ore's attorney. [5] Their five-year extramarital affair ended after Ore described several instances of physical abuse by the congressman.
On the afternoon of September 15, 2004, Ore locked herself inside the bathroom of Sherwood's Washington, D.C. apartment. She used her cell phone to make an emergency call to police. When authorities arrived, Ore reported that she had been choked by Sherwood. The congressman told police he was only giving her a backrub. Initially, no charges were filed. Their relationship soon ended—though Ore has stated that Sherwood remained in contact with her.[ citation needed ]
Sherwood initially denied the affair, stating that Ore was merely a "casual acquaintance". After a police report [6] was leaked to the press in 2005, Sherwood publicly admitted his lengthy affair with Ore, but denied her reports of abuse. Ore filed a $5.5 million lawsuit against Sherwood in June 2005. The suit was settled out of court on November 8, 2005, but the terms of the monetary settlement have never been made public. [7]
In an interview with a Wilkes-Barre newspaper, [8] Ore said she was born to a wealthy family and grew up in Peru. Various news stories in 2005 and 2006 gave her age as 29 and mentioned in passing that, in 2001, she had been an intern for U.S. Representative Bill Shuster, another Pennsylvania Republican, but left after two days. Newspapers also reported that she was said to be taking business classes at Johns Hopkins University and, in 2006, had changed her name.
Wilkes-Barre is a city in and the county seat of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, United States. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. It is the second-largest city, after Scranton, in the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a population of 567,559 as of the 2020 census, making it the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania after the Delaware Valley, Greater Pittsburgh, the Lehigh Valley, and Greater Harrisburg.
Mary Katherine "Mary Kay" Fualaau, was an American sex offender and teacher who pleaded guilty in 1997 to two counts of felony second-degree rape of a child. Letourneau was 34, and the child, Vili Fualaau, was 12 years old when she initiated the sexual abuse. He was her sixth-grade student at an elementary school in Burien, Washington. While awaiting sentencing, she gave birth to Fualaau's daughter. With the state seeking a seven and a half year prison sentence, she reached a plea agreement calling for six months in jail with three months suspended and no contact with Fualaau for life, among other terms. The case received national attention.
Donald Lewis Sherwood is an American politician. He served as a Republican member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Pennsylvania's 10th congressional district, from 1999 to 2007. He was defeated for reelection by Democrat Chris Carney in November 2006.
The 2006 Republican Party scandals resulted in four resignations and three election losses for Republican politicians during the first two years of George W. Bush's second term as President and leading up to the 2006 midterm elections.
The Diocese of Scranton is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in northeastern Pennsylvania in the United States. It is a suffragan see of Archdiocese of Philadelphia, established on March 3, 1868.
WSWB is a television station licensed to Scranton, Pennsylvania, United States, serving as the CW affiliate for Northeastern Pennsylvania. It is owned by MPS Media, which maintains a local marketing agreement (LMA) with New Age Media, owner of Hazleton-licensed Fox affiliate and company flagship WOLF-TV and Williamsport-licensed MyNetworkTV affiliate WQMY, for the provision of certain services. All three stations, in turn, are operated under a master service agreement by the Sinclair Broadcast Group. The stations share studios on PA 315 in the Fox Hill section of Plains Township; WSWB's transmitter is located on Bald Mountain, northwest of Scranton and I-476. However, newscasts have originated from the facilities of sister station and CBS affiliate WSBT-TV in South Bend, Indiana, since January 2017.
The Diocese of Allentown is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction, or diocese, of the Catholic Church in the Lehigh Valley region of Pennsylvania in the United States. It is a suffragan diocese in the ecclesiastical province of the metropolitan Archdiocese of Philadelphia.
Thomas M. Tigue was a United States Marine Corps Officer and combat veteran, an American politician, a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives.
WQMY is a television station licensed to Williamsport, Pennsylvania, United States, serving Northeastern Pennsylvania as an affiliate of MyNetworkTV. It is owned by locally based New Age Media, LLC, alongside Hazleton-licensed Fox affiliate and company flagship WOLF-TV ; New Age also provides certain services to Scranton-licensed CW affiliate WSWB under a local marketing agreement (LMA) with MPS Media. All three stations, in turn, are operated under a master service agreement by Sinclair Broadcast Group. The stations share studios on PA 315 in the Fox Hill section of Plains Township; WQMY's transmitter is located on Bald Eagle Mountain. However, newscasts have originated from the facilities of sister station and CBS affiliate WSBT-TV in South Bend, Indiana, since January 2017. There is no separate website for WQMY; instead, it is integrated with that of sister station WOLF-TV.
Daniel John Flood was an American attorney and politician, a flamboyant and long-serving Democratic United States Representative from Pennsylvania. First elected to the US House in 1944, he served continuously from 1955 to 1980. Flood was credited with leading the effort to help the Wilkes-Barre area recover after the 1972 effects of the Agnes Flood.
The Wilkes-Barre and Eastern Railroad (WB&E) was a railroad that operated in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in the United States from 1892 to 1939.
The 2006 United States House elections in Pennsylvania was an election for Pennsylvania's delegation to the United States House of Representatives, which occurred as part of the general election of the House of Representatives on November 7, 2006.
Joshua David Shapiro is an American politician and attorney who has served as the 48th governor of Pennsylvania since 2023. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the 50th Pennsylvania attorney general from 2017 to 2023 and as a member of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners from 2012 to 2017.
Eugene Paul Stilp is a Pennsylvania State Government reformer and activist, former congressional candidate and current Democratic candidate for Pennsylvania's 125th State House of Representatives district. Stilp is well known for opposing the 2005 Pennsylvania General Assembly pay raise and his combined use of targeted legal action and creative media-generating props to achieve political change in Pennsylvania. He was born in Wilkes-Barre.
Mauree A. Gingrich is an American politician who served as a Republican member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for the 101st District.
Kevin J. Blaum is a former American politician who was a Democratic member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives from Wilkes-Barre and the surrounding area for nearly three decades.
The Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton Railway was an electric railway in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania connecting the cities of Wilkes-Barre and Hazleton. It operated from 1903 to 1933 using a third rail and had no grade crossings. It was approximately thirty miles long and had one tunnel between Warrior Run and Nuangola through Penobscot Knob which Interstate 81 now crosses.
The Danville, Hazleton and Wilkes-Barre Railroad, also called the D.H. & W.B. Railroad, was a railroad in northeastern Pennsylvania. It ran from Sunbury to Tomhicken, a total of 43.44 miles plus 10.1 miles of branch lines, making the whole railroad 53.54 miles long. The railroad was completed in 1870. As of 2010, the Danville, Hazleton and Willkes-Barre Railroad tracks belong to the Pennsylvania Railroad. The railroad's gauge was 4 ft 9 in.
A grand jury investigation of Catholic Church sexual abuse in Pennsylvania lasted from 2016 to 2018, and investigated the history of clerical sexual abuse in six Pennsylvania dioceses.