Former U.S. Rep. Massa’s Mashing on Male Employees Worse Than Initially Reported
New details emerging in the media indicate that former Democratic Congressman Eric Massa engaged in sexual harassment of his staffers more often, earlier in his term, and in worse ways than initial reports indicated.
The Washington Post reported in an April 13 article that, based on numerous interviews and examination of internal documents, complaints about Massa began as early as three months after he took office, with the earliest known claims of harassment by young male staffers starting in March of last year. The article said that the harassment ranged from improper touch to admissions of sexual interest.
Word of Massa's conduct reportedly didn't reach the ears of senior members of Congress until a year later; at that time, an ethics probe was launched, the story broke in the media, and Massa resigned from office, citing a health scare late last year.
The House Minority Leader, Republican John Boehner, politicized the scandal, named House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, as he condemned Democrats for what he characterized as a failure to act on their part.
"It is now readily apparent that Congressman Massa's pattern of troubling behavior continued long after Democrats first became aware of his conduct," stated Boehner. "Speaker Pelosi's staff has acknowledged they knew about problems in Mr. Massa's office back in the fall of 2009. What action, if any, did the Speaker and the Democratic leadership take to protect Rep. Massa's subordinates from harassment and abuse?"
A law passed in 1995 was intended to prevent members of Congress from exercising their status to harass members of their staffs, but junior staffers are still afraid, in many cases, of damaging their careers by speaking up. Said layer Debra Katz, who represents one alleged victim, the scandal "speaks to the significant power differential that exists between members of Congress and the personnel they employ." Katz added that, "staffers by and large are fearful of retaliation and career suicide if they file complaints or go outside of their offices to report sexual harassment."
Early reports of Massa's behavior seem to have stayed within the ranks of Massa's staff, with junior staff taking their concerns to Massa's chief of staff, Joe Racalto. But Racalto himself was allegedly also a target for the Congressman's purportedly predatory conduct, though Racalto would not confirm this for the Post article. Racalto did, however, indicate that there were multiple instances when he sought to intervene and shield junior staffers from Massa. Racalto's lawyer, Camilla C. McKinney, issued a statement in which she declared, "When Mr. Racalto did witness something or hear a complaint concerning inappropriate conduct, Mr. Racalto made every effort to curtail the Congressman's behavior by directly addressing each issue with the congressman."
In one memo sent to staffers, Racalto wrote, "It has been brought to my attention that casual conversations of a sexual nature are ongoing. This is highly inappropriate, offensive, and against the law," the memo continued. "I want to invite all staff to immediately contact me if you are aware of any inappropriate conversations that are taking place." The article said that though junior staffers were assured that Massa's conduct would be reigned in, the harassment only continued to worsen. Racalto went so far as to prevent Massa from taking male interns with him on overnight trips.
Finally, after Massa's conduct spilled over to the outside world--with Massa reportedly having invited a male bartender out to dinner, leading to a blog posting that accused Massa of sexual impropriety--Racalto and his then-deputy chief of staff, Ron Hikel, went to Congressional Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, a Democrat, who insisted on a prompt report to the ethics committee.
Massa responded by painting himself as the victim of a Democratic plot to target him because of his opposition to the Obama administration's health care reform bill. Conservative pundits responded by embracing him--though briefly; FoxNews host Glenn Beck had Massa on his program. But Tom Reed, the Republican politician who had intended to run against Massa for his Congressional seat, before Massa resigned, raised questions about Massa. "I think there are a lot of legitimate questions as to what [Massa] is saying," Reed told the media. "We're seeing a transformation of his positions and his explanations of his resignation. I think there is some serious questions that need to be raised. I would say there are some serious inconsistencies in his statements, and I am troubled by what he is saying."
Details soon emerged about Massa tickling another man at a birthday party and former fellow officers from his days in the Navy came forward to to say that Massa had harassed them. During an appearance on Larry King Live, Massa was asked by King whether he was, in fact, gay. Massa refused to answer, snapping back, "Well, here's my answer," Massa told King. "I'm not gonna answer that." Added Massa, "Ask my wife. Ask my friends, Ask the ten thousand men I served with in the Navy."
King responded, "Didn't mean to insult you."
"No, no. Not me," Massa replied. "It insults every gay American. It somehow classifies people. Why would anybody even ask the question in this day and age?"
But for some, the question of Massa's sexuality--and his conduct while in the Navy--carries a great deal of meaning. Opponents to ending the military's ban on service by openly gay troops say that gays in the military will lead to sexual harassment of the sort that Massa's former shipmates claim he subjected them to. Others say that allowing gays to serve openly will remove stigma and defuse such situations by allowing gay soldiers and sailors to be who they are, without the pressures and contradictions of trying to keep up a pretense of heterosexuality.
Kevin Nix, a spokesperson for the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, told EDGE in a March 29 article that Massa's conduct would not derail the retirement of the anti-gay ban, which has been gaining momentum in recent months. "What Massa shows is that misconduct is misconduct and what he did is totally unacceptable," said Nix. "There are rules in the military that apply to gay and straight alike to deal with the kind of behavior displayed by Massa."
One conservative group had already seized on Massa as a "poster child" for keeping the anti-gay ban in place; said Nix, "What he is, is the poster child for having a zero tolerance for misconduct."
Nathaniel Frank, an adjunct professor at New York University and senior research fellow at the Palm Center, a think tank at U.C. Santa Barbara that studies gender, sexuality and the military, and author of the book Unfriendly Fire: How the Gay Ban Undermines the Military and Weakens America," told EDGE that research has demonstrated that gays in uniform do not sexually harass their peers. ""The research certainly does not bear out the stereotypes of gay men being predators or being any more prone to abuse or sexual harassment than straight men," he said, pointing to research that indicates that straight men are far more responsible for harassment within the ranks of the military--bother targeting women and other men. Heterosexual male servicemembers, Frank said, "are notorious for creating disturbances that the military has spent enormous time addressing," such as the Tailhook sex assault scandal in 1991 and prisoner abuse at Abu Graib in Iraq in 2004.
"The military is what sociologists call a homo-social environment or even a homoerotic environment," said Frank, in explanation for why straight men would sexually harass their male peers or subordinates. Some of the harassment may be sexualized horseplay of the sort found in other situations in which men live and work together for extended periods of time--such as workers on oil rigs.
But there are other implications to straight males harassing the men with whom they work or serve. One consistent finding among police officers who stake out public areas where men have sex with other men is how often those who placed under arrest claim to be straight--and turn out to be married to women. For example, EDGE reported last month on a police crackdown of cruising in Los Angeles parks; "Very typically these are married man who do not identify themselves as gay," LAPD Deputy Chief Sergio Diaz told the media during a March 12 press conference.