A former aide to Washington Sen. Patty Murray alleged former Minnesota Sen. Al Franken grabbed her buttocks without consent at an event in 2006.
The woman, who was not named, is the ninth woman to accuse Franken of sexual misconduct.
“I was just out of college in my first job, working for U.S. Senator Patty Murray,” she told New York Magazine, which spoke to three people the woman confided in after other allegations emerged in 2017. She said she did not tell anyone after the alleged incident years earlier because she was embarrassed.
The woman said she was working a photo line when it was her turn to be photographed with Franken, who was at the time exploring a run for Senate and was the guest speaker at Murray’s event.
“He puts his hand on my ass. He’s telling the photographer, ‘Take another one. I think I blinked. Take another one.’ And I’m just frozen. It’s so violating. And then he gives me a little squeeze on my buttock, and I am bright red. I don’t say anything at the time, but I felt deeply, deeply uncomfortable,” she said.
The woman, a military veteran who now works at a major progressive organization, is the fourth woman to allege Franken grabbed her butt. Others have accused him of groping and forcibly kissing them.
She said when she first heard the news about other allegations against Franken in 2017, she cried.
“I really considered adding my voice,” she said, but another experience of unwanted attention from a former boss convinced her to stay silent. She said she had reported the later incident but ended up leaving her job when she felt ostracized.
She also worried what speaking out could do to future career prospects.
“I know that anything can be used as a flag to say, ‘Not this person.’ The idea that I would not get a job and would always wonder: Was it the article where I was the one who was raising my hand against a powerful man?” she said.
Franken has been making a comeback in recent months, giving an interview to the New Yorker, which published a controversial profile of the former senator and comedian that cast doubt on one woman’s allegations against him. SiriusXM announced last week Franken would be hosting a weekly radio show and helping cover the 2020 election.
“When this first happened, if you had asked me, ‘Have you ever made a woman feel uncomfortable by the way you put your arm around her or touched her or something like that,’ I would have said, ‘No,'” Franken told Conan O’Brien last week. “And after all of these allegations came in, I thought, ‘Oh, I must be doing something wrong.’ So, you know, ever since, I’ve been a lot more mindful in my interactions with pretty much everyone.
Franken, who resigned in 2018, said he regretted bowing to pressure to step down over the allegations, arguing that he was unfairly treated because he did not receive due process.
