Filner aide to Trump accusers: ‘telling the truth is empowering’

As more women come forward to speak out about presidential nominee Donald Trump’s belittling abuse, I know that their lives will be upended by the public scrutiny and all that entails. I also know that speaking the truth is empowering and necessary.

That was the case for me, when I publicly told about being sexually harassed by then-San Diego Mayor Bob Filner and filed a lawsuit against him. Twenty-two women, only one of whom I knew well, followed in my footsteps, supporting me out of nowhere, telling eerily similar stories that spanned decades. Together we forced the resignation of a mayor, taking the power from him.

For me, the healing journey since that awful time as the mayor’s communications director in 2013 has taken three years, much longer than the agonizing decision to go public.

By the time I made the decision to “show my face,” former Councilwoman Donna Frye and attorneys Marco Gonzalez and Cory Briggs had held two press conferences demanding the mayor resign. Without using our names, they shared my experience and those of women who had contacted them. As a result, national news and entertainment media were camped out in the eighth largest city in the country. The mayor had apologized, then said he did nothing wrong.

I was scared, humiliated, sick and exhausted. I trusted no one but family and friends. As a former journalist, I knew anonymity weakens a story and a credible, recognizable source strengthens it. I also knew that people like Filner count on the silence of their victims.

People were demanding the accusers come forward so the mayor could have due process. But to be at the center of the storm, opening my life to questions and judgments and putting my daughters through this struggle with me was overwhelming.

A survivor of rape in my early 20s, I had learned in my life to avoid the braggarts and belligerent, to not make eye contact with strange men, to laugh in order to appease a rising anger and to leave immediately if my sixth sense started pinging.

It was the memory of a young woman, leaving the mayor’s office looking disheveled and mortified, that opened the door on my trapped anger. I had Donna and Marco fighting for me, talking with the women who came forward anonymously. I needed more. I looked up the phone number of women’s rights attorney Gloria Allred and dialed it. Thirty minutes later, I was talking to Gloria and making plans to visit her office in L.A.

Five days later, with Gloria’s arm in mine, I walked into a San Diego hotel conference room packed with journalists, many of them former colleagues, and I told my story of being harassed, kissed, and groped by the mayor. I became the news story.

My ears were ringing and my head felt like there was a fog in it. Following a quick snack with family, I headed back to work. As I walked to my car inside the hotel parking garage, a smiling man approached me to thank me for my courage. A few minutes later, while walking to the city building, a woman called me a bitch. That was the dichotomy I would face on a daily basis.

The next day, I was alone in the elevator when a woman got in and cried out when she saw me. She put her head on my shoulder and hugged me. She thanked me for my courage to confront my abuser because for the first time she felt free of the humiliation and shame that had haunted her since leaving a better-paying job where her boss would shove his hand up her skirt or in her blouse. She had never told her husband or her friends. We hugged. She got out of the elevator, and I’ve never seen her again.

The women who followed me onto the public stage had had enough, too. The Sheriff’s Department opened a hotline for women to call to report Filner’s actions. Charges were filed. Speaking out restored our dignity and righted wrongs.

I often think about the woman in the elevator, my symbol for all the women who are subjected to abuse by those who assume their political or financial power allows them to mistreat, disrespect and abuse people, to treat them like sexual objects or career pawns or subhumans who can be easily discarded.

Silence is not golden, it is invisible. We knew that and acted to make it stop. We stood up to make a difference for ourselves and for those who may still be suffering in silence.

McCormack, the first woman to publicly accuse former Mayor Bob Filner of sexual harassment, is a former reporter and editor with The San Diego Union-Tribune and now works as an independent communications consultant.