By Bob Norman
Machelle Chisum is a 60-year-old Christian and Republican — “I love God, my family, and my country,” she writes on social media — who said she always tries to do the right thing.
The Alva resident and Lee County native said that’s why she’s now speaking out about Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson. She said she’s kept a friend’s terrible secret about Anderson private for years, but came forward after learning this week of the growing number of sexual misconduct allegations made against the mayor.
Chisum originally knew the now 68-year-old Anderson not as a politician but as a cop — he was Fort Myers High School’s school resource officer while she attended the school in the early 1980s. Anderson, who retired in 2004 after 24 years with FMPD, was in his mid-20s at the time.
“He loved to be hanging around us and acting like he was so cool,” said the former cheerleader. “I have that sixth sense. I never buddied up to him. He tried to be one of us, and I never liked that.”
But she didn’t think of him as a predator until ten years ago. It was when she began dating a fellow 1984 graduate and friend who she said told her a story about Anderson that disturbed her to her core. Chisum’s account:
The friend said he needed to tell her something and asked her if she remembered the police officer who worked at FMHS. She immediately said yes; she remembered Kevin Anderson. One day after school, Anderson offered him a ride home from school; he told her. On the way, Anderson asked the boy if he wanted to come by his house. He said okay.
Once there, he told her that Anderson, still in uniform, gave him a beer and began playing a pornographic movie on the VCR. Then came an alleged specific sexual proposition similar to allegations made by other men who have accused the 68-year-old Anderson — a request by him to perform oral sex on the younger male.
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“He said Kevin asked him, and I don’t even like to say this, ‘You want me to give you a blow job?’” she recounted.
Her friend told her he was terrified.
“I was scared to death, I’m in his house, and he’s in a cop’s uniform. What was I supposed to do?’” Chisum said he told her. “My friend claims he said no, but I have a feeling bad things happened.”
She said she later witnessed her friend’s still raw trauma in a place that’s supposed to be a haven: church, where Anderson, by sheer chance, sat behind him.