Widespread allegations of sexual harassment have in recent weeks rocked legislatures across Europe and North America. In London, harassment claims have brought down one cabinet minister and are threatening to bring parliamentary business to a standstill. In Brussels, the European parliament has come under intense fire for ignoring credible allegations of sexual harassment. Legislatures in Ottawa, Sacramento, and Edinburgh have been hit with media revelations about rampant harassment.
Now it’s come to Capitol Hill. On November 14, two female House members, Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) and Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), alleged the presence of sexual predators in Congress. “In fact,” Speier said to the House Administration Committee, “there are two members of Congress, Republican and Democrat, right now, who serve, who have been to review or have not been subject to review, but have engaged in sexual harassment.”
Comstock was vivid in her description of one instance. “Somebody who I trust told me the situation,” she said, and described a circumstance in which a male lawmaker asked a young female staffer to deliver papers to his home. He answered the door in nothing but a towel, then exposed himself. “She left. And then she quit her job.”
The congressman described here, Comstock emphasized, is currently a member of Congress. Neither Speier nor Comstock named names.
The ungovernable libido of powerful men is not new under the sun. One need not excuse the behavior to recognize it as common at all levels of political life. Male politicians, if we may be permitted to generalize, are frequently self-assured and assertive; the word arrogant describes a significant proportion of them. Legislating in capitals far from their families, encouraged by sycophants to inflate their own importance, and emboldened by the vulnerable position of young female subordinates, some of those politicians behave with immoral abandon.
In short, we don’t doubt these women’s stories for a moment.
What we do doubt is the likelihood that mandatory sexual harassment training seminars, as proposed by congressional leaders, will make any sort of change for the better. The problem is not that these men don’t know any better; the problem is that they believe they can act in reprehensible ways without consequence. And they face little accountability because it’s far easier for their victims to keep quiet than to risk reprisal and public disparagement by speaking openly about what they’ve experienced.
There is a small way to make a few of these members accountable. Under a law passed in 1995, a special congressional office is tasked with mediating sexual harassment claims on the Hill. If members or congressional staffers settle with their accusers, payment is made—confidentially—from a Treasury fund. According to a report in the Washington Post, this fund paid out $15.2 million between 1997 and 2017 in 235 settlements.
Rather than forcing congressmen and their staffers to undergo pointless “training,” a law could force perpetrators to pay these settlements out of their office funds. In cases decided in the plaintiff’s favor, moreover, the amounts paid and the nature of the offenses should be made public. Indeed, we would suggest requiring members to pay settlements out of their personal bank accounts (excluding campaign accounts). The settlements tallied by the Post average around $65,000—hardly a devastating sum.
There is no obvious and easy answer to these problems, in Congress and elsewhere. But the public shouldn’t have to foot the bill for congressmen’s restive appetites, and their precise offenses ought to be matters of public record. Hiding them only encourages the next round of sordid behavior.
