She Said A Powerful Congressman Harassed Her. Here’s Why You Didn’t Hear Her Story.

[Dashinka 24,828]

So the Congress Office of Compliance paid out $17 million in 264 settlements (not sure how many of those are for sexual harassment) in the past 20 years.  I guess playing around with other people's money is easy.  In my opinion, forcing the accuser to sign a confidentiality agreement when it involves paying settlements using taxpayer money is just wrong.  Much like the Lois Lerner issue, the taxpayers have a right to know what the idiots in congress are doing to waste money that doesn't belong to them.

 

In the case on Conyers, he may get a pass since his wife was in jail for political corruption (i.e. bribery).

 

Posted on November 20, 2017, at 9:45 p.m.

Paul McLeod

BuzzFeed News Reporter

Lissandra Villa

BuzzFeed News Reporter

 

Michigan Rep. John Conyers, a Democrat and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives, settled a wrongful dismissal complaint in 2015 with a former employee who alleged she was fired because she would not “succumb to [his] sexual advances.”

Documents from the complaint obtained by BuzzFeed News include four signed affidavits, three of which are notarized, from former staff members who allege that Conyers, the ranking Democrat on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, repeatedly made sexual advances to female staff that included requests for sexual favors, contacting and transporting other women with whom they believed Conyers was having affairs, caressing their hands sexually, and rubbing their legs and backs in public. Four people involved with the case verified the documents are authentic.

 

And the documents also reveal the secret mechanism by which Congress has kept an unknown number of sexual harassment allegations secret: a grinding, closely held process that left the alleged victim feeling, she told BuzzFeed News, that she had no option other than to stay quiet and accept a settlement offered to her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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"I was basically blackballed. There was nowhere I could go,” she said in a phone interview. BuzzFeed News is withholding the woman’s name at her request because she said she fears retribution.

Last week the Washington Post reported that Congress’s Office of Compliance paid out $17 million for 264 settlements with federal employees over 20 years for various violations, including sexual harassment. The Conyers documents, however, give a glimpse into the inner workings of the office, which has for decades concealed episodes of sexual abuse by powerful political figures.

 

https://www.buzzfeed.com/paulmcleod/she-complained-that-a-powerful-congressman-harassed-her?utm_term=.ihe3EBwBX#.pckNZ1k10