Ginny Foat

Virginia "Ginny" Foat (born June 2, 1941) is an American politician who is a former member of the Palm Springs, California city council.

Life and career

Born to August ("Gus") and Virginia Galluzzo, Foat graduated from Grace Downs Academy and became a flight attendant. She married Danny Angelillo in 1961, but the marriage was annulled in 1963, at which time she learned that she was pregnant. She went to live at a home for unwed mothers, where she stayed until she had the baby, which was given up for adoption.

After her return home, she married bartender John "Jack" Sidote in 1965. In her 1985 autobiography, she describes enduring five years of domestic violence, receiving her first beating on their honeymoon. Sidote was eventually convicted of manslaughter in California in the 1967 slaying of Okeni Moe.

She married Ray Foat in 1971, attended her first National Organization for Women meeting in 1974, and quickly moved up the ranks within the organization.

In 1977, Foat was arrested after her former husband Sidote named her as an accomplice in a Nevada murder and the 1965 murder of New Orleans tourist Moises Chayo. She was released after three months when Sidote refused to testify against her in the Nevada case.

Foat campaigned for the national vice presidency of NOW in 1982, but NOW member Shelly Mandell alerted Louisiana authorities of Foat's identity, and she was arrested and put on trial in 1983 in Gretna, Louisiana.[1] Foat was acquitted, but the incident affected her political ambitions.[2] Foat wrote an autobiography and worked for several political causes throughout the 1980s and 1990s. One of the most notable was the years she spent as the executive director of a nonprofit organization in Culver City, California, called Caring for Babies with AIDS.[3] During that time she came out as lesbian.[4]

Foat was elected to fill an unexpired term on the Palm Springs City Council in 2003, then elected to a full four-year term the following year.

References
  1. Orth, Maureen (June 22, 1986). Sororcidal warfare. New York Times
  2. Marcus, Frances Frank (November 17, 1983). Ginny Foat, the Ex-NOW leader, acquitted of murder in California. New York Times
  3. Oasis of Love--for Clients and Staff. Abcarian, Robin. JAN. 3, 1996. Los Angeles Times.
  4. KESQ: Wedding of Same-Sex Couples Possible Following Ruling

Bibliography
  • Foat, Ginny (with Laura Foreman). Never Guilty, Never Free. Random House, 1985. ISBN 978-0-394-54141-9
  • Hawkes, Ellen. Feminism on Trial: The Ginny Foat Case and the Future of the Women's Movement. William Morrow & Co, 1986. ISBN 978-0-688-04850-1
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