Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 9, 1995 TAG: 9508090066
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
The woman said in the complaint that she was 17 when the Oregon Republican grabbed and kissed her in 1983. She had worked as a Senate intern for Packwood the previous two summers.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said she may try again to force public hearings.
Last week, the Senate voted 52-48 against hearings, upholding the Ethics Committee's position reached on a 3-3 vote.
``Think if it was your daughter, who put her faith and trust in a senator and was treated this way,'' an angry Boxer told reporters.
Boxer said she believes the Senate would have voted for hearings if the lawmakers had known about the complaint. All six Ethics Committee members said they were unaware of it until informed by committee staff Thursday, a day after the vote.
Ethics Committee Chairman Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., had no comment on Boxer's remarks, said spokesman Kyle Simmons.
The Oregonian, based in Portland, Ore., reported Tuesday that the woman, who was 17 in 1983, was one of the two women whose complaints delayed Ethics Committee action on the Packwood case. Her name was not disclosed by Senate sources.
Packwood had no comment on the accusations.
The former intern first told her story in a Washington Post article in February 1993.
She told the Post that she occasionally drove Packwood to work from the Bethesda, Md., neighborhood where she lived with her parents and where Packwood lived with his then-wife.
She asked Packwood for a letter of recommendation to use for college applications. The senator reportedly called her several times to discuss it, then insisted on delivering it himself.
He arranged to come to her house when no one else was home. She told the Post that after she read his letter, he tried to hug her. When she freed herself and showed him to the door, he ``laid a juicy kiss on my lips. I could feel the tongue coming,'' she said.
She told the newspaper she was so ``shaken'' that she double-locked the front door after he left.
The committee has found ``substantial credible evidence'' that Packwood made unwanted sexual advances toward 17 women in 18 instances between 1969 and 1990; sought jobs for his wife - as the couple was divorcing - from lobbyists and businessmen with interests in legislation; and altered his diaries when he learned they were to be subpoenaed.
The committee will decide in September whether it will add the allegations by the two additional women to the formal charges filed in May. Possible punishments include a censure, loss of Packwood's Finance Committee chairmanship and expulsion from the Senate.
Meanwhile Packwood, strongly denied a report Sunday by ABC-TV that he would resign.
by CNB