Forget It Jake, It’s Texas

One might think that after a number of very public sexual harrassment cases popping up in the Texas state senate, that reforms to prevent this have been put in place.

You could think that, but you would be wrong:

Lila had been working late again. Her ballet flats pattered on the terrazzo floors of the Texas Capitol as she walked through the bowels of the building, up the stairs, and out its heavy, carved oak doors. Across the expansive south lawn, a few blocks away, she joined some fellow Senate interns who were enjoying the evening at a bustling rooftop bar. She looked forward to relaxing with Moscow mules and tacos under the glow of the string lights overhead. It was a beautiful March evening—until it wasn’t. 

A 21-year-old college senior, Lila worked for state senator José Menéndez, a San Antonio Democrat. Soon after sitting down with her friends, she started venting about the months of touching, after-hours texts, and questions about her dating life that she had been facing from the lawmaker’s 52-year-old chief of staff, Thomas “Tomas” Larralde. As she talked, her phone buzzed on the sticky high-top table. Larralde had sent an incoherent message to the office group chat—which included the district director and the senator. It appeared that Larralde, a brash and divisive figure, was drunk. If he’d spoken the jumbled words, Lila imagined they would’ve been slurred.

Someone else in the chat responded to ask if he was okay. Larralde didn’t reply, but five minutes later he sent a private message to Lila (who asked that we not use her real name, out of fear of retaliation). “How’s your night,” he texted. 

“Pretty good! Nothing too crazy, yours?” Lila responded.

“I’ve been drinking,” he said. “So on a scale of 1 to 10. It’s a 5.”

As her phone lit up, the other interns looked on in horror at the behavior they were witnessing in real time. “I remember showing my friends,” Lila told Texas Monthly. “I was like, ‘This is exactly what I was talking about!’ ” 

………

Menéndez decided to fire his chief of staff. “I was like, ‘Okay, this guy’s gone,’ ” he said. “It took less than twenty-four hours to get rid of him.”

Others in the Capitol, however, told Texas Monthly that he had known of Larralde’s misconduct for more than five years. By the time Lila came forward, three current and former statehouse employees had reported to Menéndez what they described as Larralde’s demeaning and sexist behavior, during incidents starting in 2015, Texas Monthly found. One former staffer said she repeatedly told the senator that she saw Larralde touch female colleagues inappropriately and also complained to Menéndez about the chief of staff’s lewd jokes. Another former staffer said she described Larralde’s conduct to Menéndez as flirtatious, creepy, and belittling. One former lawmaker told reporters she’d called out Larralde’s use of sexist language, and Menéndez had apologized for it. 

………

The complaints Menéndez received were about behavior consistent with the examples of sexual harassment detailed in the Senate’s policy, including “sexually oriented comments, jokes, or gestures,” “messages that are sexually suggestive, or in any manner demeaning, intimidating, or insulting,” “unwelcome physical contact,” and “repeatedly asking a person to socialize during off-duty hours when the person has said no or has indicated that he or she is not interested.” Other staffers said they left Menéndez’s office in part because they didn’t feel comfortable working with a man they described as misogynistic.

………

Menéndez’s failure to view these complaints as reports of sexual harassment is emblematic of breakdowns in the enforcement of the Senate’s sexual harassment policy, which was updated in 2018 and trumpeted as a deterrent to misconduct in the Capitol. In practice, the new policy has functioned to protect individual senators accused of misbehavior and the reputation of the institution rather than the women who work there.

Lila had made a verbal complaint to a supervisor, as instructed in the policy, but there are no public records of her complaint or of any investigation into allegations of sexual harassment by Larralde, according to Spaw, who serves as the custodian of all Senate records. Menéndez confirmed to Texas Monthly that at his direction Larralde signed a nondisclosure agreement barring him from discussing the circumstances of his termination. Then, days after Larralde was fired, Lila’s internship coordinator called her and asked her to sign a document that Lila understood would have given the internship program “cover” by outlining steps it had taken to handle the situation. Lila never signed anything. “I kept saying, ‘No, I don’t want to sign it, I don’t feel comfortable signing it,’ ” Lila told Texas Monthly. “I felt very alone and taken advantage of. I don’t have an attorney.” 

………

It would be easy to see Larralde’s case as an isolated incident—and one that was eventually solved with his firing. Most Texas lawmakers and their staffers have never been publicly accused of sexual harassment. But in the macho culture of the Capitol, where some legislators have famously watched porn on iPads on the Senate floor and forcibly kissed journalists, Lila’s experience is hardly unique, and harassment remains widespread. During nearly twelve months of reporting and more than a hundred hours of interviews with current and former elected officials, legislative staffers, interns, and lobbyists, Texas Monthly reporters learned about new sexual-misconduct allegations against Senator Borris Miles, a Democrat from Houston; Senator Charles Schwertner, a Republican from Georgetown; and former senator Carlos Uresti, a Democrat from San Antonio. (None of the three responded to multiple interview requests or to specific questions we sent them about the allegations.) We also spoke with the woman at the center of a headline-grabbing 2018 Title IX complaint against Schwertner. She agreed to her first-ever interview about a lewd photo and text messages she says she received from the senator (which he has denied sending), in part because of lingering frustrations she felt over the investigation he thwarted by refusing to cooperate.

 ………

The Senate’s revised policy removed a clear instruction that anyone with knowledge of sexual harassment should report it directly to human resources and the secretary of the Senate. It now says employees may report misconduct to their supervisor or chief of staff or submit an internal complaint to the HR director or the Senate secretary. In practice, Texas Monthly has found, only reports made to the latter two individuals are treated as “official complaints” that trigger an immediate investigation, with the probe to be handled by the director of human resources and impartial attorneys. The 31 senators are given leeway to handle sexual harassment complaints reported to supervisors within their offices as they see fit. The policy does not require that senators keep any record of complaints, investigate those complaints, report those complaints to any central office in the Senate, or hold anyone accountable for misconduct.

………

When asked why his office didn’t turn over records of complaints, Patrick’s press secretary, Steven Aranyi, wrote, “Our office released no records because there are no records to release, as no complaints of sexual harassment have been filed with Lt. Gov. Patrick’s office.” In a statement to Texas Monthly, Spaw, who did not respond to multiple interview requests but answered some written questions, acknowledged that she knew about Lila’s case. She wrote that she never “received and neither has Senate Human Resources received an official complaint regarding Senator Menendez’s office. It is my understanding that, as provided in the Senate policy, a matter was reported to and handled and resolved by the Senator, both expeditiously and appropriately.”

Spaw added that “no official sexual harassment complaints have been filed in the Senate since 2001,” an idea that Lisa Banks, an employment attorney and founding partner at D.C.-based law firm Katz Banks Kumin, called “utterly preposterous.” Banks represented Christine Blasey Ford when she testified to the U.S. Senate judiciary committee that Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her when they were high school students.

“The fact that they say that shows they have a problem,” she said. “The clear inference is they’re making an effort to not have anything in writing, to cover themselves.”

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

In the case of the Texas state senate, the answer would be no one at all.