Democrat senator faces harassment inquiry
UNITED STATES: US Senator Al Franken apologised yesterday amid a blizzard of criticism after a Los Angeles radio show host said he forcibly kissed her and later groped her on a 2006 USO tour. He also said he would ‘‘gladly cooperate’’ with a Senate Ethics Committee investigation into his actions.
‘‘I respect women. I don’t respect men who don’t,’’ said Franken, a Minnesota Democrat who joined the Senate in 2009 after a career as a comedian. ‘‘And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.’’
Leeann Tweeden, a news host on KABC’s
show, said in a post on the station’s website and in interviews that Franken had written a skit for the USO tour in which they kissed, and he demanded that they rehearse the scene.
After Franken aggressively kissed her, Tweeden wrote, ‘‘I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again, I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time ... I felt disgusted and violated’’.
Tweeden said she found out later, from a CD of photographs taken of the tour, that Franken had groped her while she was sleeping on the flight home from the Middle East to the US. It is not clear from the photo whether Franken touched her, but Tweeden said he had.
Franken first issued an apology to Tweeden, in which he said that the photo ‘‘was clearly intended to be funny but wasn’t. I shouldn’t have done it’’.
After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the ethics committee should review the matter, and several prominent Democratic senators joined that call, Franken issued a second statement in which he agreed.
For Democrats, the swift requests for an investigation into Franken were necessary to avoid the suggestion of hypocrisy, since most of them have condemned Roy Moore, the Republican Senate candidate from Alabama who has been accused of making advances to teenagers when he was a local prosecutor in his 30s.
The spiralling national conversation about sexual harassment has spread in the weeks since movie producer Harvey Weinstein was forced out of his company after accusations of sexual abuse and rape surfaced.
On Capitol Hill, women have recounted numerous incidents of groping and unwanted advances from men, including office holders, and have said that Congress does not sufficiently protect them.