From what I read, it sounds more like he is ‘sticking it’ to the women.
washingtonpos.com
How a congressional harassment claim led to a secret $220,000 payment
By Kimberly Kindy and Michelle Ye Hee Lee
January 14, 2018
(Black female) Winsome Packer had a plum overseas assignment, an apartment in Vienna and a six-figure salary as an adviser to a Washington congressman when it all came crashing down.
Her boss, Rep. Alcee L. Hastings (D-Fla.), suggested that he should stay with her when he was visiting Austria, she claimed. He made comments she considered sexually suggestive and hugged her in a way she felt inappropriate.
Hastings denies that he harassed her, and one of his attorneys claims Packer created “a fiction” with her accusations, which were made under a process Congress set up to handle sexual harassment claims against its members.
The contentious case dragged on for four years, and in the end Packer was awarded $220,000 in one of the largest secret settlements paid out in recent years by the congressional Office of Compliance.
But both sides say the process is unfair and abusive to the accuser and the accused. Packer said she has not recovered from the harrowing legal fight, and Hastings said his reputation was damaged. As lawmakers prepare to unveil bipartisan legislation as early as this week that would alter the current system for handling such claims, both Packer and Hastings said their dispute reveals a broken law that must be fixed.
Packer lost her job and is unemployed. She had to agree not to discuss her case, but she recently broke the pledge, calling it “a license to abuse and demoralize the victim completely.”
Packer: ‘Members of Congress are not induced to change their behavior’
Winsome Packer explains why she believes members of Congress accused of sexual misconduct will never change their behavior. (Video: Ashleigh Joplin/Photo: Melina Mara/The Washington Post)
Hastings believes Packer should never have received a settlement, which he said he played no role in negotiating.
“The way it is being framed is I participated in something secret,” Hastings said in a recent interview. “I wasn’t in the mediation session. I wasn’t part of the settlement negotiations. I secreted nothing. We need greater transparency. I personally have no objections to releasing any and all information.”
House Employment Counsel lawyers, who represented Hastings, declined to discuss the case because of the confidentiality agreement. However, a June 12, 2014, memo from that office shows the lead attorney on the case believed the system allowed for “manufactured legal extortion.”
The attorney said Packer took a “kernel of truth” about Hastings’s sexually tinged comments but “grossly distorted events and circumstances in order to create a fiction that she experienced sexual harassment and intimidation,” the document says. For example, the attorney alluded to an incident in which Hastings told Packer he had trouble sleeping after sex, which Hastings said he shared only because he believed they were friends, not because he was pursuing her sexually.
In the end, Packer’s doggedness played an outsized role in her securing a larger-than-average settlement, documents and interviews show. She refused to settle early, pressed forward with a lawsuit and represented herself when she could no longer afford an attorney.
A flawed process
Settling sexual harassment cases on Capitol Hill is risky for members, whose careers can derail if allegations become public, and for accusers confronting a system that victims’ advocates argue protects the powerful.
The process may run up tens of thousands of dollars in private legal bills for both parties and consume months or years of staff time.
And there is no accountability for the use of taxpayer funds to settle cases. Strict confidentiality required under the law keeps secret the names of members and terms of settlement agreements.
Congress is now considering amending the 1995 Congressional Accountability Act, the law governing how harassment cases are handled on Capitol Hill, after seven members have either resigned or said they would not seek reelection in the wake of sexual harassment allegations. Attorneys who handle these cases say most staffers take no action because they fear it could hurt their careers.
The claim Packer brought against Hastings in 2010 illustrates flaws in the process and the bitter aftereffects it can have on both the accuser and the accused.