Report sexual misconduct? It's not that simple, staffers say

WASHINGTON — Almost a decade after a workplace harassment overhaul on Capitol Hill, staffers aren’t fully comfortable reporting misconduct — that is, if they even know where to turn, a range of lawmakers and aides told Roll Call.

Congress should finish the job it started during the #MeToo era, several said, especially after the recent resignations of two lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct. But they added a caveat: Any rule change is only as good as the culture surrounding it.

“The problem is that people don’t come to us,” said Rep. Deborah K. Ross, D-N.C., a member of the House Ethics Committee and former congressional aide. “We need to have a culture where people who have been harassed feel like there’s a safe place, and that needs to be in the zeitgeist.”

As whispers reached a roar on the Hill this month, leading to the departures of Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, and Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., Ross and other women in Congress said they are always there to listen.

“If your boss is mistreating you, or someone else in the office, tell somebody — come to my office,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., told reporters. “Let one of us loudmouths get it out there for you. I’m happy to issue receipts on behalf of anyone.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said she tells her staff they can come directly to her, and “if they have a problem with me, they can come to my chief … (and) if they don’t feel comfortable with either of those internal mechanisms, note that they know what offices outside of our House office that they are able to file a protected complaint.”

In a rare press release last week, the House Ethics Committee said it “strongly encourages” people to use its website to report sexual misconduct, while also reminding staffers they can file civil claims through the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights and get help through the Office of Employee Advocacy.

Still, the Hill is a decentralized place where junior staff log long hours and face intense hierarchy as they work for powerful public figures.

“A lot of what we’re talking about here is a power dynamic,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Bear it or report it?

Staff members, who were granted anonymity to speak freely about the issue, said they are required to partake in sexual harassment training that covers where they should report such accusations.

But the fast-paced, high-turnover nature of work on the Hill means some fall through the cracks. One staff member who is newer to the job said they had not received such training and would not know where to report.

They added they wouldn’t know when to report, either — instances of sexual harassment can be nuanced and easy to deny. Some staff members said they would rather bear it than report it, especially if they are accusing a member of Congress.

One aide said they would rather go to the Ethics Committee since it’s a third-party body outside of their office. But they said their decision would depend on where the harassment was coming from.

When asked if she would have reported any allegations to the Ethics Committee when she was a staffer, Ross said she would have. “I’m a little sassy,” she said.

Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., who formerly worked as a campaign and White House aide, said she would have reported it to a chief of staff.

“I’m lucky that I worked with people that I believe if something like that happened, they would have taken it seriously,” Budzinski said. “We should be doing a review of those processes.”

Despite the legislative branch employing thousands of people across the Hill and other agencies, Congress does not have a single centralized HR authority. Offices largely act like independent entities, and each chief of staff tends to set their own norms as they deal with issues that arise.

And even in the case of a formal ethics complaint, investigations can move slowly by design, said Rep. Maggie Goodlander, D-N.H., also a former congressional aide.

“We’ve got to make sure that it’s a sound process that protects due process, but that it is responsive in real time to allegations of abuse that arise,” she said. “As someone who’s worked in all three branches, there shouldn’t be vast differences throughout the federal government.”

Years in the making

The issue is more than just a few bad actors working on the Hill — it’s part of a decades-long struggle to enact workplace safety protections for the legislative branch, said Daniel Schuman, executive director of the American Governance Institute and himself a former staffer.

Back in 1995, lawmakers passed what’s known as the Congressional Accountability Act, applying some of the same labor laws to themselves that they had imposed on the private sector.

During a nationwide reckoning with sexual misconduct in 2018, they made some key changes, putting lawmakers on the hook for paying out their own sexual harassment settlements, among other things.

But there’s much more to be done, Schuman said.

For example, he said while OCWR has issued recommendations to help “address all sorts of behavioral misconduct inside the legislative branch,” some have been ignored. He wants Congress to automatically adopt those suggestions, including extending whistleblower protections to Hill staff.

When it comes to the ethics process, he rejects the idea that the House and Senate Ethics committees can meaningfully preside over their own colleagues: “Members don’t want to police other members.” And he thinks lawmakers should create a select committee to investigate the “discentives” and “jurisdictional problems” of how bad behavior is handled.

“Having Ethics and (the Office of Congressional Conduct) and OCWR and leadership, all these different places, in a place where there’s no HR and no unions to speak of, and no practical reporting mechanisms? This is a recipe for disaster,” Schuman said.

Leading the cause

Speaker Mike Johnson said last week that he would be willing to “lead” a push for sexual misconduct overhauls in the House, and for members to share ideas they may have.

“If there are ways to tighten the rules, or suggestions, we’re seeking that from all members, we’re open to that,” he said.

It may not be so simple, some acknowledge.

“We follow the lead of the speaker. Even within our own conference, there’s a variety of different opinions on how to approach it, even among the female members of our conference,” said Rep. Erin Houchin, R-Ind.

But some say the ideas already exist — you just have to know where to look for them.

“What I have told everybody is we have the experts in the House, and those are the women who work for it. Those are our staff. This is about protecting them. And I do think it needs to be bipartisan, and so we need to work together,” said Rep. Teresa Leger Fernández, D-N.M., who chairs the Democratic Women’s Caucus.

Women have slowly grown their ranks and now account for more than a quarter of voting members of Congress. But representation and pure numbers can only go so far, some say, and a recent report from the National Women’s Defense League found that most recent allegations on the Hill still involve men harassing women.

“This isn’t a men’s issue or a women’s issue, it’s a workplace safety issue,” said Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove, D-Calif.

A few lawmakers have already come forward with proposals they say could deter future misconduct, like one from Reps. Suhas Subramanyam, D-Va., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., that would block pensions for members who commit crimes like sexual assault.

“There’s lots of ideas and suggestions that are out there, and I’m continuing this conversation with my colleagues,” said House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil, R-Wis., whose committee typically has jurisdiction over proposals to change how the House is run.

Steil did not have a timeline to share or offer details of what ideas had been discussed.

But Schuman remains skeptical of changes that don’t address what he sees as major shortcomings of the system.

“They have to make a structure that makes sense and isn’t designed simply to protect the political interests of members,” Schuman said. “I think a lot of people want to do the right thing. I just think that the incentives are wrong for them to do so.”

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