Another One: Former Staffer Says Conyers ‘Was Trying to Feel Me Up’

Another one of Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers’ former staffers has come forward to publicly accuse him of sexual misconduct as the embattled congressman steadfastly refuses to resign from office, The Detroit News reported on Tuesday.

Deanna Maher, 77, alleged that Conyers, 88, made three unwelcome sexual advances when she worked for him as his deputy chief of staff between 1997 and 2005. Maher said she rebuffed Conyers’ offer to have sex with her when he put her up in his hotel room in September 1997 at a Congressional Black Caucus event.

She also claimed the Democratic congressman “was trying to feel me up” with his hand when she was a passenger in his car in 1998. “I kept pushing his hand away. Then he put his hand on my neck and started trying to tickle me,” she continued, before police pulled him over for driving “erratically.”

Maher alleged that during a meeting in 1999, Conyers “put his hand up [her] dress” and whispered in her ear.

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The former staffer told The Detroit News she didn’t come forward publicly at the time of the alleged harassment because she feared retaliation from Conyers — one of the most prominent African-American lawmakers in Congress and the longest-serving member of the House of Representatives. She also worried she wouldn’t be able to find another good job.

“I needed to earn a living, and I was 57. How many people are going to hire you at that age?” Maher said. “I didn’t report the harassment because it was clear nobody wanted to take it seriously … John Conyers is a powerful man in Washington, and nobody wanted to cross him.”

Although this is the first time that Maher has allowed her name to be attached to her allegations, it wasn’t the first time that she approached reporters with her story.

“She told me about the sexual harassment claims, but at the time she didn’t feel confident she wouldn’t be hung out to dry and retaliated against,” former Detroit Free Press reporter Joel Thurtell told The Detroit News, saying Maher spoke with him about the allegations at the time.

Maher also approached The Detroit News in 2013, but declined to go public.

Conyers’ lawyer, Arnold Reed, told the paper that the Democratic congressman denies Maher’s allegations.

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“At best, they are uncorroborated. At worst, they’re just not believable,” Reed said. “Any female or male that comes forward and says anybody harasses them, that is serious … Those things are not to be taken lightly. But we have to be able to at least have some corroboration if we’re going to be saying my client did something wrong.”

Although Conyers maintains that he will not resign from Congress, he announced Sunday that he would be stepping down from his position as the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee while the House Ethics Committee carries out its investigation. Conyers has denied the allegations leveled against him.

The Democratic congressman first found himself in hot water when BuzzFeed reported last week that Conyers paid a former employee more than $27,000 out of his office fund in 2015 to settle a complaint alleging she was fired because she refused to “succumb to [Conyers’] sexual advances.”

Melanie Sloan, an ethics lawyer who worked for Conyers in the 1990s, was the first former staffer to go on the record about abuse allegations last week. Sloan claimed in one instance that Conyers met her in his office wearing only underwear. BuzzFeed also first reported that Maria Reddick, Conyers’ former scheduler and a babysitter for his children, filed a civil lawsuit against Conyers in 2017 before rescinding it when she discovered her name would become public.