Lake County Gazette

Victims right advocate and state representative candidate Denise Rotheimer is speaking out about her own experience with sexual harassment claims and troubling ethical activity in state offices.

Some of Rotheimer’s newest testimony before a state legislative committee coincides with some quick changes in the General Assembly and elsewhere. After a spate of Hollywood-related revelations of inappropriate sexual behavior and other high-profile cases, advocates for victims of sexual harassment started to shine a brighter light on Illinois state agencies and realized that multiple complaints were lying unaddressed in the office of the state ethics commission.

Now, after a three-year gap, the state has an inspector general to head the ethics commission. Lawmakers are putting in place a hotline and taking other measures to combat sexual harassment, including new training programs to try to stamp out the problem of sexual harassment and the abuse of legislative power.

Mothers On a Mission to Stop Violence Executive Director Denise Rotheimer | www.facebook.com/denise.rotheimer

Rotheimer recently spoke to Dan Proft and John Kass of Chicago's Morning Answer. 

Rotheimer talked about how she became involved in an effort to create legislation for the state to support the families of sexual abuse victims after her daughter was victimized and her family went through the legal process years before, hiring counsel on their own funds. She said she wanted families to be able to use funds from the Crime Victims Compensation Act to get legal counsel.

As she worked on promoting new legislation for these types of crime victims, she said, Sen. Ira Silverstein (D-Chicago) eventually became the sponsor of that legislation, through a process that Rotheimer said she was never sure about, and that's when the alleged sexual harassment began. 

“I really think that it's important that people understand the nature of this abuse,” Rotheimer said on Chicago's Morning Answer, describing efforts that can that seem subtle on the surface. She talked about the use of social media and how those trying to use power dynamics to sexually harass others can “lure” them in through platforms like Facebook.

Rotheimer described, for example, Silverstein's efforts to ‘figure out whether she had a boyfriend’ and how Silverstein would use the status of the bill to keep her accessible over a period of time.

“He knew how to do things to test me out,” Rotheimer said.

She said if the action had progressed to anything physical, she could have used criminal proceedings against Silverstein -- but that never happened. Instead, she said, there was a pattern of behavior that, again, was based on “social” interactions, but had an undercurrent that made her uncomfortable.

As it stands, her complaint is still under review; and although Silverstein has stepped down from his leadership position, he has not left the legislature or experienced other consequences for the allegations against him.

Proft and Kass aaddressed the idea that state legislators have allowed serious complaints to languish in internal process.

“It sounds like one of those nonaggression pacts,” Proft said, describing what he said may have been a bipartisan effort to push complaints under the rug.

Proft is a principal in Local Government Information Services, which owns this publication.