OMAHA (Washington Insider Magazine) – After one of her peers announced his resignation after confessing to taking images of a female legislative staffer without her consent, a Nebraska republican senator asked for a criminal probe.
According to ABC NEWS, Democratic state Sen. Megan Hunt from Omaha sent a letter to the Nebraska State Patrol and the state attorney general demanding them to examine Republican Sen. Mike Groene’s actions to see whether he violated any felonies.
To prevent subjecting his family to a public hardship, Groene told Reporters on Friday that he intended to resign this week. The North Platte Republican, who frequently clashed with his Democratic counterparts in the Senate, also announced that he will drop out of the election for the University of Nebraska Board of Trustees and retire from politics.
Groene announced his resignation after one of his employees filed a complaint after seeing the images on Groene’s laptop, that he had given her to finish a job, according to Nebraska Sunrise News.
Kristina Konecko, the employee who was photographed, informed the World-Herald that one aspect in the original reports about her allegation was wrong. She said she couldn’t discover any proof that the photographs were forwarded to anybody else.
However, Konecko stated that several of the photographs were close-ups of her body parts containing sexually provocative comments.
The Associated Press does not usually name sexual misconduct victims but simply did so in this situation because Konecko requested that her identity be released.
Groene admitted to photographing the employee, but he presented the photographs as innocuous portraits of his coworkers, family members, and visitors to his workplace. He further disputed that none of them were sexualized or focused on specific parts of the body.
Konecko told reporters that she lodged her workplace sexual harassment claim with the Legislature in February and that she has subsequently shifted to another parliamentary office. She claims no one told her she couldn’t talk about it, but she doesn’t want to answer any more questions regarding it now that it’s being examined.
Images via Norfolk Daily News