Lise Olsen - Code of Silence: Sexual Misconduct by Federal Judges, the Secret System That Protects Them, and the Women Who Blew the Whistle

To whistleblowers everywhere, who speak out and right wrongs

Houston is a humid, heavy-breathing city where news takes no break even when quitting time approaches on a Friday. I was absorbed in notes for another investigative story in our bustling Houston Chronicle newsroom in March 2007, when Deputy Managing Editor George Haj waved me inside his private office and shared one of the most improbable tips Id ever heard. Haj told me that Harvey Rice, another senior staff reporter, had just called with a tale of something strange that a source witnessed inside the federal courthouse on Galveston Island. That afternoon, a woman had run, crying, from the chambers of US District Judge Samuel Bristow Kent with her clothing in disarray.

The tipster identified her as the judges top assistant, Cathy McBroom, known as a normally unflappable court employee and Judge Kents longtime case manager. After leaving chambers, McBroom never returned to her own office. Instead she detoured to another floor, apparently to hide from the judge. Some coworkers believed Kent had sexually assaulted her.

Perhaps if Id worked elsewhere, I might have automatically rejected the rumor that a man sworn to uphold our laws would violate them inside a so-called palace of justice. But I was an investigative reporter in Texas, a place where the improbable often occurs. Houston is home to the moon men of NASA, and to Joanne Herring, the glittering socialite and heiress who allied with a Texas congressman to finance a secret CIA war in Afghanistan. Skyscrapers near our downtown newsroom had formerly housed the swaggering swindler kings of Enron, before their pipeline empire fell to fraud. Already focused on the story, I navigated back through a maze of metal cabinets loaded with newspapers, maps, dictionaries, and bulging manila file folders. I plopped down at my desk and kept my voice low as I called Rice to follow up. This was such a sensitive subject that I didnt want even colleagues to overhear.

Harvey Rice lived on Galveston Island and was well connected both there and in the federal courts. Before coming to Texas, Rice had worked for the Clarion-Ledger in Mississippi. During his time in Jackson, Rice told me, hed been assigned to investigate rumors involving another powerful federal jurist named Walter Nixonno relation to the former US president. Nixon, rumor had it, had quietly accepted a bribe to help a business associates son beat drug charges. Rice tracked down sources and ferreted out documents. Nixon later beat the rap for bribery, but was convicted of perjury for lying to investigators and went to prison. Then Nixon refused to resign and continued to collect his judicial pay as a prisoner, Rice said.

Rice had just alerted me to the unusual level of power we were confronting. Federal circuit and district judges such as Kent and Nixon are appointed for life under Article III of the Constitution. They cannot be removed from office by anything less than impeachment by the US House of Representatives and removal by the US Senate. Nixon was one of three federal judges who were impeached and removed back in the 1980s. No other federal judge had been impeached or removed since.

Even if Kent had sexually assaulted an employee, I wondered, how could we possibly confirm that? It was a classic he said, she said situation. Kent certainly wasnt going to talk. And McBroom seemed to have vanished.

Rice and I began making cold calls and knocking on doors, but McBroom and all federal court employees in Galveston and Houston, where McBroom had been transferred, had been ordered not to speak. Sources said that McBroom had made a formal complaint and that a top secret judicial misconduct investigation was underway. Very slowly one source led to another, though most people we contacted were nervous and willing to speak only off the record.

Over the months of Houstons long hot summer, I accumulated a stack of spiral Reporters Notebooks filled with stories about Kent, a man who displayed a photo on his wall in chambers of himself clasping hands with President George H. W. Bush. Kent had been handed a lifetime appointment by Bush, who still lived part-time in Houston with his wife, Barbara. Many powerful and politically connected Houstonians admired Kent for his intellect and for his wit, but I found attorneys and former employees, male and female, who feared or even hated Kent. Their stories painted an increasingly detailed portrait of abuse of power.

Since I couldnt reach McBroom, I began tracking down other women with strange and shocking stories. Along the way I unearthed other troubling information about why federal judges who had begun to investigate McBrooms complaint instead seemed to be covering up Kents misbehaviorand ordering others to stay silent. For the first time I learned about a top secret federal judicial disciplinary system that allows judges nationwide to privately review complaints against their peers. That system seemed designed to protect the reputations of federal judges rather than to provide essential information to the public about judicial rogues.

In the summer of 2007, all of my online address searches for McBroom ended at the Clear Lake house that she no longer shared with her husband and son. It appeared that her marriage had begun to crumble under the stress. Then, in late August, a new address popped up: a Houston condo where McBroom had recently reregistered an SUV. Harvey Rice and I were wearing our IDs as newspaper reporters around our necks when we knocked on the door, figuring we might have just seconds to engage with McBroom. McBroom opened the door and looked right at me. Her eyes were crystalline blue. Rice had met McBroom beforein courtbut we introduced ourselves anyway.

I cant talk, she immediately said.

I rushed to try to create a channel of communication. If you were sexually assaulted I promise you we would not use your name without your permission, but if we do a story about your complaint, you deserve to decide whether you are named or not. Is there any way for us to stay in touch? For professional and personal reasons, I felt strongly that sexual assault victims should have some control over their own storiesthough in those days I told few people about my own experiences.

McBroom retreated into the shadows of the entryway. She seemed isolated and alone. Please, I said. Ive already talked to others who say Kent touched or propositioned them. Then purely on impulse, I added, I know what its like to be sexually assaulted. And if Kent did something like that to youhe should not get away with it. Not even if he is a federal judge.

McBroom hesitated, but before shutting the door, she accepted our business cards and supplied an attorneys name. It would take years before she could finally grant an interview. But for me, this brief encounter would be the beginning of more than a decade of slowly getting to know her story.

In the 2000s, McBroom was one of the only women in the United States who was publicly raising allegations about sexual harassment and sexual misconduct by a federal judge. In 2006, an activist from New York, Tarana Burke, suggested that women should band together to combat pervasive stories of sexual abuse and assault by sharing what she called Me Too stories, though Burkes idea would not fully take hold until 2017. That year, other women finally began to speak out about how other powerful federal judges had committed sexual harassment and other forms of misconduct. Many men cloaked in the power of their black robes seemed to have gotten away with it.