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This went by registered mail yesterday to each board member.
Board of Directors, Sirrius XM Holdings, Inc.
c/o Corporate Secretary
1221 Avenue of the Americas, 35th Floor
New York, NY 10020
To the Board of Sirius XM:
I’m writing to hold you accountable for Megyn Kelly’s recent comments minimizing the sexual abuse of adolescents—comments made on your platform, distributed through your channels, and bankrolled with your money.
Let me be clear: you are responsible for the emotional harm caused by Ms. Kelly to thousands of Americans, your listeners, through your platform.
You pay Ms. Kelly millions of dollars. You give her a national microphone. You benefit from her content. And when she uses that platform—YOUR platform—to establish a hierarchy of acceptable child rape, suggesting that sexually violating a 15-year-old is somehow “less bad” than violating an 8-year-old, you own that. Every word. Every bit of harm it causes.
I’m 71 years old. I survived sexual abuse as both a child and an adolescent. And I can tell you with absolute certainty: there is no difference in the trauma, the violation, or the lifelong damage. What there IS a difference in is how people like Ms. Kelly—and corporations like yours—respond to it.
When you broadcast content that minimizes adolescent sexual abuse, you’re not just giving airtime to a controversial opinion. You’re enabling predators. You’re instilling shame in survivors. You’re telling every teenager who’s been violated that their abuse wasn’t “as bad,” and you’re informing every predator targeting high schoolers that there’s a moral and legal gray area they can exploit.
This isn’t about free speech. You can choose not to broadcast content. You can choose not to compensate people who use your platform to harm vulnerable populations. You make those choices every day about what merits your microphone and your money.
You chose Megyn Kelly. You keep choosing her, and that makes you responsible for the significant harm her words cause.
Do you realize what you’ve done by staying silent? Every teenage survivor who heard those comments on your platform just learned their abuse wasn’t severe enough to matter. Every parent of an adolescent victim just received permission to downplay what happened to their child. Every predator targeting teenagers just heard that public figures—amplified by major media outlets—will draw distinctions that might shield them from full accountability.
The adolescent victim already faces something more insidious than the younger child: society’s assumption that they somehow participated, that they were “almost adults,” that it wasn’t “really” abuse. This is the lie that keeps survivors silent for decades. This is the lie that protects predators. And you just spread that lie to millions of subscribers who pay you for content.
You’re not just a passive platform. You’re an active participant. You hired her. You pay her. You broadcast her. You profit from her. When she causes harm, you share in that harm.
I’m calling on SiriusXM to:
Issue a public statement acknowledging that no sexual abuse of a minor is less serious than another, and that Ms. Kelly’s comments were harmful to survivors.
Clarify your criteria for content about child sexual abuse and vulnerable populations.
Take tangible steps that show you understand the harm your platform just amplified.
You built a business around providing people with content they want to hear. But with that business, you also take on responsibility for what you broadcast and who you influence with it. You can’t have profits without accountability.
Ms. Kelly’s comments disgust me. But your complicity in amplifying them—your willingness to profit from content that harms thousands of survivors—makes you culpable and even legally responsible for Ms. Kelly’s verbal attack on thousands of CSA survivors.
I’m a paying subscriber, a survivor, and I demand that you take responsibility for the harm you’ve caused.
Respectfully,
Keith Bumgarner
