Legislator’s alleged abuses warrant removal
House leaders must deal responsibly with sexual abuse allegations leveled at state Rep. Nick Miccarelli.
A state House investigation found two women alleging physical and sexual abuse by state Rep. Nick Miccarelli to be “credible,” according to excerpts of the House investigation’s findings released Friday by one of the lawyers representing the women.
Attorney Terry Mutchler told Brad Bumsted of The Caucus — an LNP Media Group watchdog publication — and Angela Couloumbis of The Philadelphia Inquirer that she disclosed portions of the investigators’ findings to counter what she characterized as misleading statements by a lawyer for Miccarelli, a Republican from Delaware County.
As the Inquirer and The Caucus collaboratively reported, “Both women’s statements were corroborated by witnesses who were ‘contemporaneously aware’ of the alleged instances of abuse, according to the House report.” The allegations against Miccarelli are being investigated by the Dauphin County district attorney’s office.
Rep. Miccarelli appears to be living in a universe in which up is down, down is up and a court hearing that concludes with a three-year protection from abuse order being issued against him somehow leaves him feeling “vindicated.”
That’s the word he actually used after a judge affirmed Republican state Rep. Tarah Toohil’s request for a long-term protection order against him.
Echoing Miccarelli, his spokesman Frank Keel said the protection order “affirms his innocence.”
As The Caucus and the Inquirer reported, the House investigative counsel determined that the statements made by both Toohil and a second woman alleging harm by Miccarelli were “credible.”
Toohil told the House lawyers who interviewed her that Miccarelli had kicked, pinched and “verbally berated” her for talking. She also told investigators that he once held her by the neck against the wall of her Capitol office.
In her petition for the protection from abuse order, Toohil wrote that Miccarelli blackmailed her with photographs that she said he released after she ended their relationship. In 2012, Miccarelli pointed a gun at her head and drove his car at high speed, she wrote, “threatening to kill us both.”
Miccarelli has been stalking her, staring at her and “finding ways to physically intimidate” her on the House floor, Toohil wrote, noting that she now fears “for my safety at work.”
The second woman, a political consultant whose name has not been made public, alleges that when she tried to end her relationship with Miccarelli in late 2014, he forced her to have sex with him.
The two women dated Miccarelli at different times between 2012 and 2014.
House Republican leaders have called on Miccarelli to resign — as have House Democrats and Gov. Tom Wolf — but he’s shown no signs of acquiescing.
After the protection from abuse hearing Thursday, he said he looked “forward to going back to the Capitol.” (The temporary protection from abuse order obtained by Toohil had barred him from the Capitol; that restriction wasn’t included in the three-year order negotiated by lawyers for Toohil and Miccarelli.)
We urge the Republican House leadership to consider expelling Miccarelli. It would be a difficult process, and rightly so, because it shouldn’t be easy to unseat an elected official. On Monday, the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Rape and the Pennsylvania Coalition Against Domestic Violence issued a joint statement urging “all Pennsylvanians to demand that their elected officials uphold the laws” of this state.
“Victims of harassment, stalking and physical and sexual violence, and all people in the Commonwealth, must trust our leaders not only to promote public policies that protect victims, hold offenders accountable and enhance community safety, but also to conduct themselves in ways that demonstrate those values and commitments.”
We hope House leaders think carefully about what it will signify if Miccarelli continues to be allowed the dignity of his office, and about how it will look if he continues to cast votes in the same chamber as Toohil.
If he is allowed to remain in the House, Miccarelli indeed will have reason to feel “vindicated.”
And victims, not just the ones alleged to be his, but others, too, will feel further victimized by the seeming lack of concern of the people they send to Harrisburg to represent them. We’d define that as a disgrace.