Just three months after Eric Massa was elected to Congress, his young male employees on Capitol Hill began complaining to supervisors that the lawmaker was making aggressive, sexual overtures toward them, according to new interviews and internal documents.
The senior staff, one of whom said he heard Massa (D-N.Y.) making lewd remarks to young staffers, tried to manage the problem internally. But reports of Massa’s inappropriate behavior continued, leaving junior workers feeling helpless, according to victims, other staffers and sources close to an ongoing House ethics investigation.
And there was this:
“The incident that eventually lead to Massa’s resignation occurred at a funeral reception on Feb. 2 in Hornel, N.Y., for Lance Cpl. Zack Smith. The 19-year-old Marine had died in an explosion in Afghanistan. Massa struck up a conversation with a young bartender serving at the informal wake. Four days later, a local blogger alerted the congressman’s office that someone had posted an anonymous comment on his site accusing Massa of soliciting sex from the bartender, according to an e-mail obtained by The Post.”
