TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Florida House Speaker Richard Corcoran said Wednesday that he has personally confronted former state legislators who sexually harassed others, but he won’t name names.
One of the fiercest critics of lawmakers accused of sexual misconduct, Corcoran said none of those legislators are in office in now and that the incidents occurred before he became speaker.
“I did report, I did talk to the legislators involved and it was resolved,” Corcoran said, adding later that “to the extent that there was a violation, that violation needed to be addressed, and it was addressed. And the behavior was curbed.”
The bad behavior, Corcoran said, occurred throughout his political career, including when he worked as chief of staff in 2007 for then-House Speaker Marco Rubio, now a U.S. Senator.
Corcoran boasted in a December television interview that the House imposed tough new sexual harassment rules for its members in 2016 in response to what he called “grossly inappropriate” and “illegal” behavior from “male pigs.” Those rules included mandatory training for House members.
Corcoran said this week he did not report any of these incidents to authorities. Corcoran said he could not give an exact number of how many legislators he witnessed engaging in misconduct, but added that there were probably “less than 10.”
A Republican considering a bid for governor, Corcoran has been the most outspoken Republican in the Florida Capitol denouncing sexual misconduct, especially in the Florida Senate.
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