A former staffer for Houston's Sheila Jackson Lee says she was sexually assaulted by a supervisor with the
Congressional Black Caucus Foundation in 2015, of which Lee was chair. The staffer says she was fired when she told Lee she would be suing the foundation over the attack. Rice University political science professor Mark Jones says "the complaint is effectively the type of retaliation that we've often seen in Me Too cases where women who've asserted their rights and tried to get justice have been punished."
Jones says Lee's will have to prove the woman's firing had nothing to do with lawsuit, and if she can't "its going to leave a cloud hanging over her that's going to really adversely affect her ability to be effective in Washington, since many women's rights groups are already fleeing away from her and many of her Democratic colleagues are likely to do the same."
Lee has now been removed as chairwoman of the foundation and forced to step down as chair of a house judiciary committee's crime terrorism homeland security investigation subcommittee. She has issued a statement "adamantly" denying the woman's allegation.
Jones says one saving grace for the congresswoman is that "she fires a lot of people. So just because she fired someone it doesn't mean it was because of this foundation lawsuit. It could have been due to anything."
A report published last year by Politico.com shows Lee's office had an annual turnover rate from 2001 to 2016 of 62 percent, the highest in congress.