For All Those Suffering Sexual Harassment: Investigate the Paul Morrison leak

By Diane Silver

Good grief, I should have made this point earlier. I'm thrilled to see that it's being made now. KC Star columnist Mike Hendricks has a great piece at the Buzz Blog about why we all need to know exactly who leaked Linda Carter's statement.

In case you're one of the two people who were on a desert island last week, Carter's statement alleged that Attorney General Paul Morrison sexually harassed her. This led to Morrison's resignation.

Carter's statement was supposed to be a confidential part of her complaint to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Instead, it showed up darn near word-for-word in the Topeka Capital-Journal. Carter's lawyer claims that neither she nor he had anything to do with the leak to the media.

Hendricks writes that such an investigation is important.

Not for Morrison’s sake. Forget him. He got what he deserved.

No, it would serve the interests of women like Morrison’s former lover, Linda Carter, who accused him of sexual harassment and gave the sworn statement containing all those salacious details we’ve read.

I’m talking about the women – and sometimes men – who for one reason or another believe that they have been sexually harassed in the workplace.

And who, because of how Carter’s statement was mishandled, will now be asking themselves a question: Is it worth it to file a complaint against their boss, if it means the risk of having all the gory details splashed across newspapers’ front pages?

Good point. I also want to know whether someone in public office decided to trash the concept of confidentiality. I mused earlier this week that the leak might well be Phill Kline's revenge. If the document was leaked by him or someone associated with him, we need to know. If the leak was from someone else, we also need to know.