Sacramento failed Patricia Todd

No one should ever have to endure what Patricia Todd says she went through.

Todd has accused former Republican Assemblyman Bill Brough of raping her in 2015.

Todd is the sixth woman to accuse Brough of sexual misconduct. While Brough is entitled to due process, the litany of accusations are impossible to ignore and even those before this one were enough for voters to boot him from office. Now, depending on how the investigation into Todd’s accusation ends up, Brough may face sanctions far greater than electoral defeat.

Todd’s accusations are sadly just the latest in a long string of accusations of misconduct by those in the state Capitol.

In the aftermath of a letter signed by hundreds of women calling out a culture of sexual harassment in Sacramento in 2017, former Assemblymembers Raul Bocanegra and Matt Dababneh, and state Sen. Tony Mendoza resigned from office amid such allegations.

Todd’s story reveals more work must be done. After the alleged incident, Todd, who worked as a legislative staffer for then-Sen. John Moorlach, informed her boss, Moorlach’s Chief of Staff Tim Clark, what happened.

Both Todd and Clark confirm this conversation took place, but their accounts diverge from this point.

According to Todd, Clark told her not to tell anyone what happened. According to Clark, he told Todd to report the incident to the authorities and then he sought advice from state Senate authorities, but he didn’t give them any names because, he says, Todd asked him not to tell anyone.

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In either account, state government failed. Either Todd was silenced by her boss, or her boss failed to properly respond to a serious allegation of sexual misconduct, which should have included a proper investigation.

Moorlach, who is running for Orange County supervisor and is being advised by Clark on his campaign on a volunteer basis, may not have been briefed at the time, but he should have been, and that’s a failure of his leadership organization.

Meanwhile, Todd says she came forward in August of this year to the California Legislature’s Workplace Conduct Unit, but still hasn’t heard back. It is unacceptable for any place, especially the state Capitol, to tolerate sexual harassment and a culture that doesn’t take accusations of rape seriously. The Capitol needs to do better.

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