It sounds like things are going quite badly for San Diego Mayor Bob Filner at the moment.
In addition to the 14 women who’ve come forward to allege various sorts of inappropriate or harassing or headlock behavior, “three members of the Sheriff’s Department have been assigned to handle phone calls from a hotline set up for Filner accusers to report possible criminal misconduct and conduct follow up interviews and investigations.”
Three staffers to cover the special Filner groped, harassed, assaulted me hotline. That sounds like a lot of volume.
Then there’s this other thing: investigators are looking into claims by Filner’s security detail that Filner frequently took women to the Westgate hotel in downtown San Diego. Politically, that would not be a welcome revelation for Filner, though perhaps at this point he might get some level of credit for consent? More seriously, it sounds like there must be something going unstated in this part of the story since simply taking consenting women to hotels for sexual liaisons wouldn’t be a criminal matter in itself. Perhaps there was some lack of consent, some pressure applied relative to work for the City government or maybe they were prostitutes. Obviously those are very different possibilities. But something more must be afoot with this part of the probe.
In any case, it may all be too much for Filner’s one week of harassment therapy to overcome.
