Another former staffer for Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., has come forward with allegations he sexually harassed her, though the congressman is continuing to aggressively cast doubt on his accusers.
Deena Maher, his former deputy chief of staff, told the Detroit News that Conyers made unwanted advances on three occasions. Her accounts are similar to those made in a lawsuit Conyers settled in 2015, reported by Buzzfeed News last week, including an invitation from the congressman to stay in his hotel room and two times in which he inappropriately rubbed her legs. At a meeting, Maher claims, Conyers “put his hand up my dress and whispered in my ear, ‘I didn’t know you had such great legs.'”
Buzzfeed’s report on the settlement said signed affidavits included testimony that Conyers had a habit of rubbing women inappropriately, a claim that was also made by another woman who filed a lawsuit against the top Democrat this year before voluntarily withdrawing it when the court refused to seal the records. The woman who settled with Conyers also claimed he “often asked her to join him in a hotel room.”
Two current and former Detroit News reporters confirmed Maher brought her allegations to them in past years but did not want to go on the record. “She told me about the sexual harassment claims, but at the time she didn’t feel confident she wouldn’t be hung out to dry and retaliated against,” one former reporter explained.
Maher detailed her account of a 1998 trip to the airport with Conyers to the Detroit News. She said she sat in the passenger seat while the congressman drove and tried to “feel [her] up with his right hand.”
“I kept pushing his hand away. Then he put his hand on my neck and started trying to tickle me. We were on I-75, and he was driving erratically. I was saved by the bell because we got pulled over by the police for the way he was driving,” Maher recalled.
Conyers’ attorney Arnold Reed had an absurd response to that story in particular.
“At best, they are uncorroborated. At worst, they’re just not believable,” he said, speaking more of the allegations in general before specifically tackling the airport account. “When you consider that they’re flying down I-75, he is driving and has time to do all of that, they get pulled over by a police officer, and she doesn’t tell him what’s going on?”
Seriously? With him sitting next to her, Maher was supposed to lean over and tell the cop her extremely powerful, “iconic” boss was harassing her? It’s unbelievable she didn’t choose that course of action?
No, what’s unbelievable is that Reed is either desperate or clueless enough to even put that thought into words.
He added, “Any female or male that comes forward and says anybody harasses them, that is serious. Those things are not to be taken lightly. But we have to be able to at least have some corroboration if we’re going to be saying my client did something wrong.”
This is in the same story where two reporters confirmed Maher brought her account to them long before this week. According to Buzzfeed, the lawsuit Conyers settled without admission of guilt included corroboration in the form of four signed affidavits from former staff members.
The Detroit News reported, Reed “questioned why Maher would continue to work for Conyers for so many years after the alleged incidents.”
“I needed to earn a living, and I was 57,” Maher said. “How many people are going to hire you at that age?”
“I didn’t report the harassment because it was clear nobody wanted to take it seriously,” she explained. “John Conyers is a powerful man in Washington, and nobody wanted to cross him.”
Given how people like House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have been strangely willing to defend him, and how Conyers has so far only voluntarily stepped down from his post on the House Judiciary Committee, even in this moment of outrage over sexual misconduct, Maher seems to be right about the congressman’s power shielding him from consequences to some extent. At least so far.
With specific and credible allegations mounting against Conyers, his legal team should probably devise a better strategy than suggesting an accuser is lying because she did not inform authorities of her victimization on the side of an interstate with the congressman sitting inches away.
