Woman Says Missouri Governor Coerced Her into Sex
The woman told the Missouri State House committee that she was bound to exercise equipment and blindfolded, slapped, and coerced into an unwanted sexual encounter. The perpetrator of the violence, she said, was Missouri Governor Eric Greitens.
On Wednesday, the committee released her account in a report on the accusations against Greitens, which first broke earlier this year when the woman's ex-husband released a secretly recorded conversation with her in which she revealed that she'd been blackmailed by Greitens.
Now, several prominent politicians from both parties have called for the Republican governor to step down or face impeachment. The report expands on the accusations leveled in the audio record and quotes the woman, whose name has not been made public, on her relationship with Greitens. Under oath, she said that in their first encounter, Greitens taped her to exercise equipment and kissed her, took a nude photo of her without her consent, and threatened to distribute it if she ever discussed the incident. She cried "uncontrollably" until Greitens released her, but then took out his penis, the report said, and held it near her face. She told committee members that she didn't feel she'd be able to leave the basement of his home unless she performed oral sex. "It felt like consent, but, no, I didn’t want to do it," she told lawmakers, and later qualified the encounter as "Coerced, maybe. I felt as though that would allow me to leave." The woman, with whom Greitens admitted he had an affair, but whom he denied he blackmailed, is his former hairdresser.
"You're not going to mention my name. Don't even mention my name to anybody at all, because if you do, I'm going to take these pictures, and I'm going to put them everywhere I can," the woman testified Greitens said to her at the time. "They are going to be everywhere, and then everyone will know what a little whore you are."
Hours before the report was released, Greitens, who declined to speak to lawmakers, said the investigation into his conduct was "a political witch hunt" and called the report "tabloid trash, gossip."
But while Greitens would like to brand the scandal as a political smear, Republicans, too, seem to want him gone. Missouri State Attorney General Josh Hawley, who is challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) to her seat this fall, went on the record this week. "The conduct the report details is certainly impeachable, in my judgment," he said.
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