Utah’s House majority leader, Kevin Garn, confesses on late Thursday night that he had shared a bath tub with a 15-year-old 25 years ago. “This has just been a nightmare for me,” Maher said in a telephone interview with the newspaper from New Hampshire. “I just want to tell the truth because it’s part of the healing processfor me.”
The story, as reported by the Salt Lake Tribune, is a sad one. Garn, a Republican, reportedly made the payment during his 2002 campaign for Congress after Maher threatened to go public; she kept quiet then but in recent days told her story to reporters and lawmakers.
The House majority leader, “visibly distraught and shaken,” confirmed Maher’s account Thursday on the statehouse floor.
“I expect to suffer public humiliation and embarrassment,” he said. “Some lessons are hard to learn. This is something I should’ve done back in 2002 but I was scared.”
Garn said he “did not want to be publicly judged” for his mistake, though he added that it was inappropriate and “my fault.”
In 1985, according to the Tribune, Maher, then 15, worked for married Garn in business. They should know each other, and some nights Garn and Maher together, naked, in Salt Lake City hot tub. Over the next year, Maher struggled with pills, alcohol and the problems of mental health, something that attribute to the incident.
Garn told the Associated Press that the skinny-dip was “sudden” decision and that “we sat there and that’s all.” He was 28 years old at the time.