The Texas House of Representatives will vote Tuesday on whether to expel Republican state Rep. Bryan Slaton after an investigation found that he engaged in inappropriate sexual conduct with a 19-year-old aide.
The House Committee on General Investigating on Saturday released an 18-page report detailing its investigation into Slaton’s conduct. It found he violated House rules by engaging in inappropriate workplace conduct, specifically sexual harassment and retaliation. The five-person committee unanimously recommended his expulsion.
“Slaton’s misconduct is grave and serious,” the committee’s report said. “He took advantage of his position to engage in sexual conduct after completing training in which he had been advised that conduct of this type was harassment because of the power imbalance.”
Slaton, 45, is a conservative representative in the chamber. Last year, he called for drag shows to be banned in the presence of minors, citing a need to protect children from “perverted adults.“
Slaton and Patrick Short, his attorney, did not immediately respond to NBC News’ requests for comment. Last month, Short called the allegations against Slaton, which came from three female staffers who were between the ages of 19 and 21, “outrageous” and “false.”
Slaton’s lawyers had tried to have the complaints dismissed by arguing that his actions occurred at his Austin residence, not in the workplace. But the committee, citing a state court ruling, said their job in investigating the allegations was to “ask whether sufficient facts exist from which to infer a nexus between the sexual conduct and the work environment,” which the panel concluded there was.
According to the report, Slaton had sexual intercourse with a legislative aide whom he had primary responsibility for overseeing. He invited her to his apartment late at night on March 31 and served her several alcoholic beverages, the committee found. The aide later testified that she consumed “a lot of alcohol” and felt “really dizzy” while at Slaton’s apartment. Sometime on the morning of April 1, the two had sexual intercourse and the aide got Plan B to prevent pregnancy later that morning.
The report found that the aide could not effectively consent nor indicate whether sex was welcome or unwelcome. The committee did not address the question of whether Slaton committed sexual assault, saying it did not have “sufficient facts” to undertake the analysis.
“’In the moment, obviously, I had too many drinks. Kind of hard to think in the moment when you’re intoxicated. But now that I look back at it, it was definitely an inappropriate situation,'” the report quoted the aide as saying.
The committee found that Slaton later engaged in harassment and retaliation to prevent staffers from speaking about his conduct. The aide testified that Slaton showed her an anonymous “threatening” email from someone claiming to know he had slept with a staffer. She said she became “really fearful” that she would lose her job. She said Slaton told her “everything would be fine. Everyone involved just has to stay quiet,” according to the report.
The committee also found that a fellow representative had called Slaton to ask if he had had sexual intercourse with a staffer, which Slaton confirmed. The representative said that the next day he told Slaton to resign, at which point Slaton asked if the phone call could remain “between us?”
Slaton has resisted calls to resign from office and has not expressed regret for his conduct, the committee said.
“It is the Committee’s unanimous recommendation that, considering the factors stated above, the only appropriate discipline in this matter is expulsion,” the report reads.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
