3 Women Back Out of Senate Testimony, Citing Hill Episode

Three professional women scheduled to testify Wednesday before Congress about job discrimination backed out because of negative reactions to testimony by law professor Anita Faye Hill during confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.

“This is one of the negatives--three people who are victims who are reluctant to testify,” Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.) said in opening the Senate Labor subcommittee hearing. “I hope that in the future that we can assure witnesses that they are going to be treated well.”

The three women “weren’t satisfied with the way Congress handled the Anita Hill situation,” Simon spokesman Christopher Ryan said earlier in explaining their decision.

“They thought it would jeopardize their career if they came forward,” he said.

The women were scheduled to testify about their experiences with hitting a “glass ceiling” that kept them from being promoted.

Ryan said that each of the three white-collar professionals had contacted Simon’s office independently to say that she would not testify after seeing Senate hearings into Hill’s allegations of sexual harassment by Thomas.

The women asked to have their identities kept confidential, he said.

Thomas was sworn in as a Supreme Court justice Wednesday, a week after the Senate confirmed his nomination. He denied all of Hill’s allegations that he had sexually harassed her when she worked for him at the Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Simon’s subcommittee on employment and productivity is reviewing ways to shatter the glass ceiling.

Labor Secretary Lynn Martin said it was unfortunate that the women did not want to testify.

“I can’t imagine anything worse than having a society where people are afraid to complain and talk,” Martin said at an unrelated news conference before the hearing.

She has pledged to use her post as a “bully pulpit . . . to encourage every corporation to develop its own strategy” for promoting women and minorities into middle- and upper-management ranks.