A former Gillibrand aide resigned in protest over the handling of sex harassment claims
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand , one of the most outspoken advocates of the #MeToo movement who has made fighting sexual misconduct a centerpiece of her presidential campaign, spent last summer pressing legislators to update Congress’ “broken” system of handling sexual harassment.
“I trusted and leaned on this statement that you made: ‘You need to draw a line in the sand and say none of it is O.K. None of it is acceptable.’ Your office chose to go against your public belief that women shouldn’t accept sexual harassment in any form and portrayed my experience as a misinterpretation instead of what it actually was: harassment and ultimately, intimidation,” the woman wrote.
Two weeks ago, however, POLITICO presented the office with its own findings of additional allegations of inappropriate workplace conduct by Malik. Among the claims were that he made a “joke” about rape to a female colleague — a person whom the office had failed to contact last summer despite repeated urgings by Malik’s accuser to reach out to the person.
Gillibrand’s advisers said they took the woman’s claims seriously, consulted with Senate employment lawyers for guidance and punished Malik at the time for what they could substantiate. But after “a full and thorough investigation into the evidence, including multiple interviews with current employees who could have witnessed this behavior, the office concluded that the allegations did not meet the standard of sexual harassment,” the office said of its initial internal investigation.
One of those two former staffers said Malik often called her fat and unattractive to her face and made light of sexual abuse. She recalled one instance in which Malik remarked that a particular woman they were talking about “couldn’t get laid Gillibrand’s office acknowledged it found evidence that Malik had made unspecified inappropriate comments and revoked his expected promotion, which would have come with a raise. It also moved his desk and gave him a final warning. This was not the first time the senator’s top aides dealt with an allegation of bad behavior by Malik: According to a firsthand witness of an incident in 2015, Malik confronted a fellow aide in the office.
As part of her freelance work for an events production firm, she staffed the kickoff rally for one of Gillibrand’s rivals in the Democratic presidential primary. She has not done any other work for that or other presidential campaigns, and is not interviewing with any 2020 contenders.Malik became Gillibrand’s driver in 2011 after serving two tours in the Iraq War.
On one day alone, July 13, she said Malik made four unwanted advances, which were all rebuffed. The first occurred alone in the office early in the morning when Malik told the woman he had a secret for her: Her boss had just quit. And at a birthday party for another staffer that evening, Malik told her privately that “I thought by debrief you meant you were hitting on me,” referencing an earlier text message.
Though it’s common in Congress for top aides to investigate alleged harassment by another office employee, experts in sexual harassment law said the arrangement is inherently unfair to the complainant. Ideally, an independent third party should look into such claims given that staff members have pre-existing relationships that often pose a conflict of interest, they said.
The main mechanism for the woman to bring a complaint outside the Senate office would have been through the Office of Compliance. She visited that office before going to her superiors but found it unhelpful, saying a staffer merely recited language from its website. She also knew that in order to file a complaint she would first have to go through at least 30 days of mediation and likely more.
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