Sen. Blunt may be right on reporting harassment

“In the current law, if you report harassment, you’re the one that has to go into 20 hours of counseling before you can decide whether you were really harassed.” — Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., on Nov. 19 in an interview on “Meet the Press”

That seemed like an uncommon rule, so we wanted to dig into Blunt’s claim.

Any member or employee of Congress who reports a violation of the Congres- sional Accountability Act (including sexual harassment) must go through man- datory steps to file a claim. This is known as the Dispute Resolution Process.

Blunt’s statement addresses the first step: coun- seling. The person report

ing sexual harassment must request counseling with the Office of Compliance within 180 days of the alleged harassment.

Blunt said the counsel

ing process takes 20 hours. We were unable to confirm the number of counseling hours each person receives during the 30-day period.

Our ruling

According to the Office of Compliance, any employee or member of Congress must go through coun- seling for a 30-day period before they can continue with further steps of reporting the harassment. However, we were unable to find evidence detailing how many hours the 30-day period

includes.

Blunt’s statement is on the right track but needs further clarification with the “hours” claim.

We rate it Half True.

ZACH GIBSON / THE NEW YORK TIMES Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., is on the right track about sexual harassment counseling, but more clarification is needed about his “hours” claim.