Chris Simcox: Minuteman & Monster

The anti-immigration hero of conservatives has been arrested for sexual molestation

News outlets are reporting that Minuteman leader Chris Simcox has been arrested on charges of molestation of a child, sexual conduct with a minor and attempted child molestation, all with girls under the age of 10. This is not the first time Simcox has been accused of sexual molestation: in 1998, his daughter reported to neighbors that Simcox tried to molest her. She was 14.

Chris Simcox has been interviewed by CNN, Sean Hannity and others, has testified before Congress, and given speeches to numerous groups including the California Coalition on Immigration Reform. The Southern Poverty Law Center has labeled CCIR as a hate group, primarily due to statements given by leader Barbara Coe who calls Mexicans “savages.” During his speech, Simcox spoke about what he believed were Chinese troops, helping Mexicans cross the border into America.

Court documents reveal that Simcox’s second wife, Kim Dunbar feared Simcox, especially in relation to their son. Ms. Dunbar’s statements reveal a violent man prone to physical abuse against children. According to those documents, Simcox once slapped his son so hard the child had a mark on his face for two days. Simcox also threw furniture, grabbed knives and threatened to kill himself, then would spiral downward into despondency, sitting and staring at the walls.

Eventually, Ms. Dunbar had no choice but to file for divorce. Simcox and Dunbar initially shared custody of their son, however the court awarded Kim Dunbar sole custody of the couple’s son after the attacks of September 11th, 2001, when again according to court documents, Chris Simcox began leaving long, bizarre voice mail messages on Dunbar’s phone.

Chris Simcox has stated in interviews that his entire outlook changed after a solo camping trip in October of 2011. He claims to have seen “platoons” of drug dealers and immigrants, and realized his true calling. Simcox is the co-founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a volunteer group of vigilantes who patrol the borders in Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona. These men and women are virulently anti-immigration, they patrol armed and some are hard-core white nationalists. Not surprisingly, this isn’t the first time Minutemen have run afoul of the law.

In 2012, Minuteman and neo-Nazi J. T. Ready killed an entire family including a 15-month old girl before taking his own life. And in 2009, Shawna Forde led a group of Minutemen in the slaying of Raul Flores, Jr. and his 9-year old daughter, Brisenia. Simcox himself was arrested in 2003 for illegally carrying a .45-caliber semi-automatic handgun in a national park.

What’s most disturbing about Chris Simcox’s arrest is that he spent over a decade teaching at a private school. In fact, Simcox was employed by Wildwood when he allegedly tried to molest his own teenage daughter. According to a report by SPLC, he helped his daughter secure a job babysitting for a Wildwood School employee, and one evening, she appeared at their door, claiming her father had tried to molest her. Chris Simcox has never directly addressed that allegation, often accusing anyone who asks him about the event of being on a “witch hunt.”

Chris Simcox wants to be the big kahuna Minuteman and if you ask him, he will tell you he already is. What he won’t tell you is why his own daughter claimed he tried to sexually molest her or why Kim Dunbar fought for and won sole custody of their son. Simcox’s rivals don’t buy his story either.

Jim Chase, leader of the California Minutemen, a group described by SPLC as more “hard core” than Simcox’s organization said “Simcox knows how to put on a good showpiece, and he looks pretty on TV, but he’s all talk and no walk. He’s more concerned with finding himself a sugar mama than anything else. I expect that if the bullets ever really start flying or if the going really gets tough, he’ll abandon what he started. Until then, he’ll go on pretending he’s king shit of the Minutemen.”

What are all those pundits, all those right wing politicians who clamored to Chris Simcox like moths to a flame doing right now? Are they desperately trying to distance themselves from him or are they planning to rally around their hateful hero? It’s fine to most conservatives to be anti-immigration, it’s fine to be a little (or a lot) violent, it’s even fine to hit your kid once in awhile. But I wonder what the “party of family values” will do with allegations of child molestation?

I have to thank the Southern Poverty Law Center for contributions to this article. They are the go-to site for detailed information on groups like the Minutemen and individuals like Chris Simcox. It is because of their tireless work that writers are able to expose hate and continue shining a light on the darkness.