How Capitol Hill culture enabled Eric Massa
It took just three weeks for New York Democratic Rep. Eric Massa to resign his seat in Congress after accusations surfaced that he had sexually harassed members of his staff. The long trail of unwanted and often abusive advances that preceded his resignation—and why his alleged behavior went unreported for so long—highlights how much Capitol Hill is a feudal society …
… Congress once routinely exempted itself from the workplace laws it passed for everybody else. That ended in 1995, under Speaker Newt Gingrich’s leadership, with the creation of the Office of Compliance, an independent, nonpartisan agency created to handle complaints about workplace rules and regulations, including sexual harassment.
It’s nice that it’s there, and it does good things, but the truth is that few Hill staffers know it exists, and if they did, it’s not at all certain they would turn to it.
The culture of Capitol Hill is not about accountability and responsibility. It’s about damage control and circling the wag