A woman says Wyoming Secretary of State Ed Murray sexually assaulted her at a law office where she was working as an intern in 1982, the Casper Star Tribune reported Thursday.
Murray is a Republican who is considering running for governor. In the 1980s he worked at a law firm in Cheyenne that employed Tatiana Maxwell, who said one night after-hours Murray invited to the office for pizza and beer.
“He was older, handsome and from an old Cheyenne family but I didn’t really know him,” Maxwell wrote in a now-deleted Facebook post.
She said that he resisted Murray’s sexual advances, but he didn’t stop.
“Ed wrestled me down to the carpet in front of the receptionist desk, opened his pants, lifted up my blouse and ejaculated on my stomach,” Maxwell told the Tribune. “I was disgusted and horrified.”
She said she didn’t report the incident to the firm’s senior lawyers out of fear of being fired, and she did not contact police because she was not “physically hurt.”
According to the Tribune’s report, Maxwell was encouraged by her 17-year-old daughter decided to come forward with the allegations last week. Maxwell said years after the incident, Murray tried to apologize, but in a statement this week the secretary of state vehemently denied sexually assaulting Maxwell.
“This baseless claim about an encounter from thirty-five years ago is unequivocally false,” Murray said. “There is no basis to this falsehood whatsoever and it is deeply hurtful to me and to my family, as well as to everyone I serve.”
H/T Daily Beast
