OPINION: Lessons Jane Doe should have taught legislators

The Idaho Legislature should have learned a lot more than it did from the way it traumatized former Rep. Aaron von Ehlinger’s rape victim.

But so far, the sole lesson legislators seem to have drawn is taking better care of any lawmaker who winds up charged with sexual abuse in the future.

Jane Doe, a then-19-year-old legislative intern, exposed the former Lewiston Republican lawmaker as a sexual predator who forced her to perform oral sex at his Boise apartment as the 2021 legislative session was nearing its adjournment.

Her complaint triggered a House Ethics Committee hearing and a subsequent recommendation that would have effectively removed von Ehlinger from office had he not preempted it with his resignation.

A year later, an Ada County jury found von Ehlinger guilty of rape and he is now serving eight-to-20 years in prison.

But the process also exposed Doe to additional abuse.

After von Ehlinger’s lawyer released an unredacted report identifying Doe by name to reporters, the far-right outlet Redoubt News published it with her picture. And the morally bankrupt former Rep. Priscilla Giddings, R-White Bird, shared that information on social media and her email newsletter.

For that, Giddings was censured by the full House and stripped of a minor committee assignment. Later during the 2022 election, voters weighed in by denying Giddings’ bid to become Idaho’s next lieutenant governor.

But as the Idaho Statesman’s Sally Krutzig detailed last week, the legislative process failed Doe in other ways — and it may fail others like her.

Doe’s May 26 appearance on the radio program and podcast “This American Life,” noted that the chairperson of the House Ethics Committee, Rep. Sage Dixon, R-Ponderay, came to the hearing relatively unschooled in what he was doing.

For example, the program obtained a transcript of the committee’s interview with Doe in which she was asked to provide details of what happened during the incident. But when she began talking about von Ehlinger “climbing on top of her,” Dixon stopped her, saying “maybe the committee’s getting uncomfortable, too.”

Replied Doe on the program: “You made me relive a horrible experience and just tell me you’re uncomfortable by it.”

Things got worse by the time of von Ehlinger’s Ethics Committee hearing.

Doe wanted to testify remotely and have her voice disguised — something the attorney general’s office denied. Although she was shielded, members of the audience — including Giddings and other legislators — taunted her.

When it came time for her departure, someone failed to guide Doe to a private door and she wound up in a public hallway — chased by von Ehlinger’s supporters and an unethical television reporter who since lost her press credential and her job. Only Does’ lawyers may have stopped the emotionally distraught rape victim from throwing herself off the Capitol Rotunda balcony.

Since then, Dixon acknowledged the error.

“I’m very sorry if we increased that trauma, or that we did, because it was never our intent,” Dixon told the radio program. “I know each one of those members feels very strongly that she was wronged and wanted to protect her, but just due to our inexperience, things didn’t come out maybe as cleanly as they could have.”

Of that, there is little doubt. Ethics Committee members were visibly anguished by what they had seen and heard.

Safe workplace guidelines, adopted on the eve of the von Ehlinger case, had never been tested.

But as Krutzig reports and the legislative record reveals, they’ve not been substantially reformed since.

If citizen lawmakers such as Dixon have been obligated to undergo training on how to pursue sexual abuse and assault cases, there’s been no indication of it.

No new rule outlines how to better pursue sexual assault investigations.

Sexual harassment policies drafted before von Ehlinger tested their limits have not been updated.

Nor have there been substantive changes in anti-fraternization rules.

Thanks to Giddings’ misbehavior, there are stronger protections for victims’ confidentiality.

But the major change to emerge from Jane Doe’s nightmare is this Ethics Committee rule change: The next time a legislator is accused of sexually abusing someone, the Idaho taxpayer may wind up paying that lawmaker’s legal fees.

All of which tells you what the Idaho Legislature truly cares about. — M.T.