Conroy Calls Acts Friendly, but Not Sexual

Former Assemblyman Mickey Conroy admitted Thursday to sometimes hugging and kissing on the cheek a onetime employee who is suing him for sexual harassment, but said he stopped after she complained and he ordered other staffers to clean up their behavior.

Conroy, testifying for the first time in his civil trial, said former legislative aide Robyn Boyd appeared to be a willing participant in what he considered friendly gestures.

Boyd has sued Conroy, his former chief of staff Pete Conaty and the Assembly alleging that as a $6-an-hour assistant in 1993, she was subjected to hugs, kisses, inappropriate touching and sexual jokes, then was ostracized and ultimately fired for complaining. Conroy and Conaty deny the charges.

Conroy, 69, left office last November because of term limits and lost that same month in a bid for an Orange County Board of Supervisors seat after his opponent repeatedly brought up the harassment case.

While not disputing that he kissed and hugged his accuser on occasion, the Orange County Republican put a decidedly different spin on his behavior.

“I never kissed Robyn Boyd anywhere other than the cheek,” Conroy said, suggesting that at most they had hugged or kissed “once or twice.”

He described one encounter with Boyd during an after-hours political function, where he pursed his lips and joked to a bystander that she was a perk of the office, as “kind of a mutual thing” because Boyd “was stretching out her arms as I was.”

Conroy acknowledged he did not realize Boyd, 37, would consider the encounter embarrassing and admitted it wasn’t very compassionate to publicly call her a perk.

While conceding he felt some remorse, Conroy vigorously tried to explain his actions.

He said it was entirely appropriate for Conaty as chief of staff to order subordinates to serve coffee or water and accompany him to political events after work hours.

The former Marine Corps aviator agreed under questioning that Boyd and another woman on staff would occasionally walk arm-in-arm with him to receptions and that he called them his “bookends.”

And he said that he occasionally drove Boyd to her car and gave her a hug and kiss, calling it “the normal, proper ‘good night, take care, drive carefully’ kind of thing.”

He suggested that Boyd didn’t understand an ongoing joke he had with a woman staffer who once worked at a popular hotel in town. Conroy would query whether the woman should get “one room or two,” but he said it was always directed in a light-hearted way at the other woman, not at Boyd.

Conroy said Boyd would on occasion volunteer to give him a neck rub because of pain he suffered from an injury years ago. But he insisted he never pressured her and said other staffers, including one young man, would volunteer to kneed his neck out of kindness.

The three-term lawmaker insisted he took pains even before Boyd complained to ensure the office environment wasn’t out of line. “I was sensitive about conduct in the office,” he said.

Conroy said he never saw a “Sexual Harassment Consent Form” that was distributed in the office by a staffer as a joke.

And Conroy also testified that he told a female aide that a sign she put up by her desk--it read “Sexual harassment in this area will not be reported, however it will be graded”--would have to come down if anyone had a problem with it. He said Boyd never complained about the sign.

“I took the proper action,” he said. “I didn’t think the sign was sexual harassment.”

But he later suggested that the Assembly’s “zero-tolerance policy” on sexual harassment seemed extreme. “Just saying good morning to someone who takes it the wrong way would be a violation of the zero policy,” Conroy said.

When Boyd finally did complain to Conaty and Conroy three months after coming aboard, “I said I would take care of it,” Conroy said. “She seemed assured.”

Conroy also said he was unaware that Conaty one day tossed an X-rated magazine, distributed on the Assembly floor during debate on pornographic vending machines, on Boyd’s lap. “I find it absolutely degrading to anyone,” Conroy said. “And disgusting.”

When he was punished by the Assembly with a letter of reprimand, Conroy said, he felt it was unjustified but didn’t appeal because “I saw no need to further the agony,” not because he was guilty.

“I thought she had complained and I took the proper action,” Conroy said.