Nebraska lawmaker who targeted a colleague during a graphic description of rape is reprimanded

Source: Associated Press

Nebraska lawmaker who targeted a colleague during a graphic description of rape is reprimanded

BY MARGERY A. BECK
Updated 5:09 PM EDT, April 3, 2024

A Nebraska lawmaker who invoked the name of a colleague while reading a graphic account of rape on the floor of the Legislature violated the body’s workforce sexual harassment policy, an outside investigator found, leading the body’s governing board to issue Republican state Sen. Steve Halloran a letter of reprimand.

But that announcement Wednesday by state Sen. Ray Aguilar, chairman of the Legislature’s Executive Board, was met with strong criticism from several lawmakers who said Halloran should have faced a censure vote by the full body.

“This is embarrassing and disappointing,” said Democratic state Sen. John Cavanaugh, who along with his sister and fellow Democratic lawmaker Sen. Machaela Cavanaugh, were the target of Halloran’s remarks. “As it stands right now, the Exec Board has said that it disapproves of this kind of language, but the Legislature has not.”

The report and reprimand came after Halloran repeatedly called out the name “Sen. Cavanaugh” while reading a graphic account of rape from a best-selling memoir, making it appear as if that lawmaker was the subject of the assault. His embellished reading from the memoir “Lucky” by Alice Sebold came on March 18 during debate of a bill that would have held school librarians and teachers criminally responsible for providing what it considers to be “obscene material” to students in grades K-12.

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Read more: https://apnews.com/article/nebraska-lawmaker-graphic-description-of-rape-0fc4001d222026a3ce9390979da83ac1