Staffers' Accounts Detail Life in Massa's Office

Just three months after Eric Massa took office in Congress, his young male employees on Capitol Hill began complaining to supervisors that the lawmaker was making aggressive sexual overtures toward them, according to new interviews and internal documents.
Senior staff members for the New York Democrat tried to manage the problem internally. But reports of Massa’s inappropriate behavior continued, leaving junior workers feeling helpless, according to victims, other staffers and sources close to an ongoing House ethics investigation. Most spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the ethics probe and the risk of hurting their job prospects.
This account, drawn from more than two dozen interviews and internal documents, shows that aides were accusing the married lawmaker, now 50, of far more egregious behavior than previously known. Beginning in March 2009 and over the next several months, male staffers complained that their boss touched them in a sexual manner, came up with reasons to have staffers travel alone with him on overnight trips and expressed a desire to have sex with the men working in the office.
But it wasn’t until after a year of staff complaints, when allegations about Massa’s behavior threatened to become a public embarrassment, that supervisors alerted congressional leaders. Massa, who represented a district in western New York, resigned a few weeks later. He declined to comment for this story.

Read more: (Carol D. Leonnig, “Staffers’ Accounts Detail Life in Massa’s Office,” The Washington Post, 04/14/10)