Michigan State Senator Backs Journalist’s Claims Against Male Lawmaker, Files Harassment Complaint
‘PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR’
A Michigan state senator says she was sexually harassed by a male senator who told a young reporter last week that she could “have a lot of fun” with a group of teenage boys, ABC News reports. Sen. Mallory McMorrow filed a sexual harassment complaint against GOP Sen. Peter Lucido and said she “felt a level of responsibility” to share her experience after 22-year-old Michigan Advance reporter Emily Donahue publicly called Lucido out for his inappropriate comments in a first-person article she wrote. “My heart sank because she said, ‘It made me feel small.’ And that’s exactly how I felt in November of 2018,” McMorrow said. “I wanted to support her reporting with a story that’s corroborated to show that this is a pattern of behavior, not just an isolated incident.”
McMorrow claims that Lucido put his hand “very, very low” on her back, grazed her hip, and held it there while they were having a conversation. “I told him that I just beat incumbent Marty Kollenberg. And he looked me up and down, while still holding onto my low back, raised his eyebrows and said, ‘I can see why,’” McMorrow recalled. Another lawmaker, Sen. Rosemary Bayer, told ABC that she also saw Lucido’s arm “reaching around” McMorrow’s back. McMorrow, a Democrat, said Lucido’s “creepy” behavior made her feel “gross and degraded,” but she didn’t say anything at the time because of her relative youth and her place in the minority party. Lucido apologized shortly after Donahue made her claims but denied McMorrow’s allegations, telling ABC they were “politically motivated.”