Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., said Sunday she doesn’t know of a women who doesn’t have her own sexual harassment story.
“There are women across the country — restaurant workers, tip waitresses, factory floors, law firms, corporations — so I don’t know a woman that doesn’t have a story, Andrea, in all places all across the country,” Dingell told Andrea Mitchell on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.
In an interview with CNN on Friday, she said a prominent historical person tried to put his hand up her skirt during an event in Washington decades ago despite the fact that she was married.
Dingell also revealed a senator had made an aggressive sexual advance toward her.
“Let’s really make this a watershed moment. That men and women across the country work together to look forward to changing the culture,” Dingell said Sunday alongside Rep. Barbara Comstock, R-Va.
Dingell and Comstock, along with other female lawmakers, have moved to take action against sexual assault and harrassment.
“I got together with Congresswoman Jackie Speier and Congressman [Bradley] Byrne. And we both went through all of the items in Congresswoman Speier’s bill and additional things that we want to put in the bill. And we’re on the same page,” Comstock said Sunday, adding, “And we’re going to get mandatory training, universal, uniform anti-harassment, zero tolerance policies in place.”
On Wednesday, Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-NY., introduced bipartisan legislation to “prevent and respond to sexual harassment in Congress.”
The wave of sexual assault allegations that hit Hollywood has now made its way into Washington politics. Alabama’s Republican Senate candidate, Roy Moore, has been accused by nine women of assault and inappropriate advances, and on Thursday, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., accused of misconduct that were accompanied by a picture of him reaching for a woman’s chest as she slept.
