#metoo strikes in Harrisburg
Ex-staffers: State Sen. Daylin Leach crossed line with sex talk and inappropriate touching
On a bitterly cold night in February 2016, a woman named Emily met state Sen. Daylin Leach at a political fundraiser in Harrisburg.
In the course of her conversation with Mr. Leach, a well-known Montgomery County progressive and longtime advocate for women’s rights, the 27-year-old temporary Senate Democratic Campaign Committee employee mentioned she knew how to speak Arabic.
She recalled that during the conversation Mr. Leach held onto her upper arm “for an uncomfortable amount of time,” maybe 10 seconds or so. Later that evening, an email from Mr. Leach arrived in her inbox.
“Hey there,” read the subject line. Below was a short passage written in Arabic. “How wonderful it was to talk to you today,” it began, according to a translation, before making a reference to some petitions.
The following morning, as Emily sat at a table registering attendees at an SDCC breakfast in the lobby of the Harrisburg Hilton,
Mr. Leach approached. She said Mr. Leach sat next to her, discussed his history of fighting for women and suggested that he might be able to help her find a job.
And then “he grabbed my thigh, almost to punctuate his point with a cruel irony,” said Emily, who spoke on the condition that her last name not be used. In the moments that followed, Emily said she felt “frozen in fear and humiliation. I wrapped up the fundraiser and went back to my hotelroom and sobbed.”
Two members of the state Democratic Party confirmed that Emily sent them distraught text messages describing the encounter in the hours after it occurred.
The episode was among the starkest cited by former campaign and legislative staffers and advisers who say Mr. Leach, a legislator since 2003, for years has engaged in questionable behavior with young female staffers and volunteers, from highly sexualized jokes and comments to touching they deemed inappropriate. The behavior was all the more jarring, they said, given his reputation as a stalwart defender of women’s rights.
Mr. Leach, 56, who is now running for Congress, declined to be interviewed for this story and did not respond specifically to written questions. Instead, he provided a lengthy statement in which he blamed the accusations on an unnamed political opponent and denied ever inappropriately touching women.
Mr. Leach, who is married and has children, referred specific questions to Philadelphia lawyer George Bochetto, who in an interview last week added: “He’s not a predator. He’s not a hound dog. He is a very, very conscientious and decent public official.”
After being alerted to concerns regarding Mr. Leach’s behavior, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Philadelphia Daily News interviewed nearly two dozen people about the senator’s conduct. Some women described him as a good boss, one who gave them wide latitude to make political and policy decisions in an office where hierarchy and job titles mattered little. They acknowledged that he often made sophomoric comments and had a bawdy sense of humor, but said they were notbothered by it.
But eight women and three men recounted instances when Mr. Leach either put his hands on women or steered conversations with young, female subordinates into sexual territory.
Aubrey Montgomery, a former finance director for Mr. Leach’s first campaign for Senate in 2008, said Mr. Leach has consistently supported policies that help women.
“But,” she said, “as great as his legislative record is for women globally, he can be awful to women individually.”
Accusations and a denial
Ms. Montgomery, a wellknown fundraiser who has worked for Mr. Leach and others, was among the few witnesses to his behavior willing to be publicly identified or quoted. Others spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Among the incidents they described:
• A woman who worked for Senate Democrats in 2015 said Mr. Leach inappropriately touched her in a Senate office. At least one eyewitness reported the encounter and a human resources officer for the Senate interviewed the woman.
• On the opening night of the 2012 Democratic National Convention in Charlotte, N.C., Mr. Leach allegedly made inappropriate sexualized comments to a female intern in the Pennsylvania delegation, according to two delegation officials at the event. They said they were concerned and responded by directing interns to travel in pairs for the remainder of the convention.
• A woman who worked as a fundraiser for Mr. Leach several years ago said he was prone to “inappropriate” touching.
•Two women who worked on Mr. Leach’s 2008 Senate campaign said he repeatedly discussed sex in front of young female staffers, including references to famous “women I’d like to [expletive].” They said they tried to limit his time around interns and volunteers.
None of the women who described seeing or hearing questionable conduct by Mr. Leach said they had been assaulted, denied promotions or had their careers threatened. Each claimed he created and promoted a culture in his office that objectified women, often framing his comments as harmless jokes.
“It did not happen,” Mr. Leach said in his statement of the two alleged touching incidents. He also said, however: “I recall one not at all and one only vaguely.”
Senate Democratic officials declined to publicly discuss Mr. Leach and whether they knew of any complaints against him. Privately, one Senate officer acknowledged that Democratic leaders had fielded a 2015 complaint from a then-23-year-old staffer who claimed Mr. Leach inappropriately put his hands on her.
In an interview this month, the former Senate staffer, who spoke on condition that she not be named, said she first met Mr. Leach at an after-party for the Pennsylvania Progressive Summit at the Federal Taphouse in Harrisburg in February 2015. At the time, she was working for the Senate Democratic Campaign Committee, the fundraising arm that Mr. Leach then chaired.
The woman said Mr. Leach asked her about the work she was doing for the committee and then slid his hand down her back and “touched my butt.” She yelled at Mr. Leach, she said, only to be told by one of his top campaign aides that her response was inappropriate.
She said she encountered Mr. Leach again a month later, after she had taken a job with the Senate. This time, she said, he approached her from behind and tickled her torso while she sat at her desk during a budget hearing luncheon in a Senate office, leaving her stunned.
A witness reported the incident to the woman’s boss, she said. During a subsequent meeting with a human resources administrator in the Senate, the woman said, she felt like she had been discouraged from filing a formal written complaint about Mr. Leach’s conduct. Instead, she was assured that such behavior wouldn’t happen again.
“I’m more mad at the Senate for not doing anything,” she said of the episode. “It’s the culture up there that’s the problem.”
In a statement, Senate Democratic officials said they could neither acknowledge nor discuss any such incidents, citing confidentiality rules to protect victims of sexual harassment.
A high-ranking Senate Democrat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a party leader did speak to Mr. Leach after the woman described their contact, and warned the legislator to watch his behavior. Asked if he had been given any such warning, Mr. Leach did not respond.
When a joke goes too far
Throughout his nearly 15 years in public office, Mr. Leach has been known as an unflinchingly liberal Democrat who sometimes aims an edgy, often-skewering sense of humor at staffers, fellow legislators and even himself. President Donald Trump, whom Mr. Leach called a “fascist, loofah-faced [expletive] gibbon” in a tweet that went viral earlier this year, is also a frequent target.
Mr. Leach is now seeking to unseat U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan, a Delaware County Republican, as Capitol Hill reels from a wave of sexual-harassment accusations against some prominent male politicians, leading to the recent announced resignations of U.S. Sen. Al Franken and U.S. Reps. John Conyers and Trent Franks.
Mr. Leach’s supporters have argued that allegations about his conduct are politically motivated, and aimed at derailing his congressional run. They have taken issue with reporting done by the Inquirer and Daily News.
Earlier this month, Mr. Bochetto, Mr. Leach’s attorney, sent reporters a letter demanding that they “cease and desist this fishing expedition.”
“You’ve undertaken a witch hunt,” Mr. Bochetto elaborated in an interview last week at his Philadelphia office. “And I think what you’ve done is come up with Easter eggs, for the most part.”
The women who spoke to the Inquirer and Daily News about Mr. Leach said they were all struck by the irony of feeling harassed by a man they believed was their ally.
In his tenure in the Capitol, the senator from Wayne in Delaware County has championed legislation to legalize medical marijuana, ban the shackling of female prisoners, increase the minimum wage, expand access to health care and extend antidiscrimination protections to Pennsylvania’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community. He has also been a fierce and vocal opponent of measures that seek to roll back women’s rights, including a recent bill that would ban abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
Aubrey Montgomery was 24 when she joined Mr. Leach’s 2008 Senate campaign. She said she was offended by his sexualized tone in the office. Ms. Montgomery said she called him on his comments, but felt like the move backfired.
Ms. Montgomery said she continued to support Mr. Leach because she backed his policy positions.
Meanwhile, another woman who worked on Mr. Leach’s 2008 campaign said he would talk about actresses he wanted to sleep with, and referenced wanting to hire a “full set” of secretaries: a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead — followed by a “bald chick.” He also referenced wanting to have his own “Charlie’s Angels.”
Political campaigns, unlike government, have no human resources departments. They also often have no written policies guiding employee behavior.
The woman who worked as a fundraiser for Ms. Leach and claimed he had grazed her behind with his hand several times said the senator is “very friendly, which you don’t mind. But as an elected official, you know where your hands should be.”
She added that she sometimes offered a simple warning to young women who were going to work with Mr. Leach: Don’t be alone with him in an elevator.
Emily, the temporary SDCC worker who encountered Mr. Leach last year in the Harrisburg Hilton, said she was among the women who had been given that exact warning from the fundraiser.
An imperfect process
The Legislature has sexual harassment policies in place, but the process for reporting such conduct is not clear cut, and can be fraught with politics.
The Senate, for instance, has a “workplace harassment” policy that generally defines such harassment as “any repeated, deliberate, unwelcome comments, gesture, conduct or physical conduct of any nature.”
Employees who believe they have been harassed can make a complaint verbally, but the policy recommends following that up with a written statement that documents the nature, date and time of the offense.
Violating the policy could lead to suspension, terminationor other sanctions, it says.
Though the policy states that complaints can be filed with an employee’s supervisor, or with the Senate’s chief clerk or secretary, there is no central clearinghouse. Nor does the policy state how to investigate and resolve them.
Instead, Democrat and Republican leaders in the chamber each select someone to investigate and manage personnel issues. That person could decide to handle it in-house or farm it out to an outside attorney, according to Senate lawyers.
Such protocols have led a number of Pennsylvania legislators in recent weeks to propose measures to tighten the rules and prohibit confidential payouts and settlements.
Though bills aimed at cracking down on sexual harassment have been introduced, there has been no commitment to moving any quickly to a vote.
A harsher climate
The allegations against Mr. Leach have surfaced at a moment when elected officials in Harrisburg and beyond are demonstrating that they have little interest in defending male colleagues accused of inappropriate behavior.
“We have to rid the Capitol of those who seek to take advantage of their position and power,” Gov. Tom Wolf wrote in an editorial earlier this month about the #MeToo movement.
Last month, the House held a sexual harassment awareness session for all of its members. A group of female lawmakers in both the House and Senate has proposed measures that include banning non-disclosure agreements in sexual harassment cases to shield the names of legislators and prohibiting the Legislature from using taxpayer money to pay settlement costs.
No such policies were being mulled back in 2015, when the former Senate staffer said Mr. Leach twice put his hands on her in the space of two months. At that time, she said she felt the process could leave future female employees vulnerable.
She worried it “would just happen again to the next 20something-year-old woman,” she said. “That shouldn’t happen. Harrisburg should bea great place to work.”