Greitens Report: Woman Describes Sexual Assault And Violence

JEFFERSON CITY, MO — Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens led his hair stylist into his basement, ripped open her shirt, and forced her to perform sex acts on him against her will, according to the woman's testimony before a Missouri House Special Investigative Committee. That committee's report was released this afternoon, despite a request from the governor to delay it until after the conclusion of his trial for invasion of privacy in May.

Greitens has been accused of taking a non-consensual, partially-naked photo of the woman, with whom he was having an affair. According to her, he threatened to release the photo if she went public with details of their affair. Both Greitens and his mistress were married to other people at the time, and Greitens was already exploring his run for office.

The governor admitted the affair in January, calling it a "deeply personal mistake" in a joint statement with his wife. But he denied trying to blackmail his mistress, instead blaming a "reckless liberal prosecutor" for the case against him.

The House investigative committee interviewed multiple witnesses, including the governor's ex-mistress, her ex-husband, and a close friend. The governor declined to be interviewed by the committee.

The committee deemed the governor's mistress to be a credible witness overall, according to the report.

The woman testified that she met Greitens in 2013, while working as a hair stylist, and that she saw the governor regularly during that time. "...We got to know each other pretty well, and I thought he was great," she said. "I thought he was this perfect guy."

The woman testified that the governor flirted with her while his wife was pregnant, and on one occasion, the report states, he groped her, moving "his hand up her leg and 'all the way up to [her] crotch' without her consent."

The two began seeing each other outside of the hair salon in March 2015, first meeting in an alleyway behind a Starbucks — a fact the woman's friend verified with testimony of contemporaneous conversations about the affair. In the alley, the governor invited the woman over to his house during a time when his wife would be out of town, according to the report.

"Upon entering the home," the report states, "Greitens made a 'shush motion' to Witness 1 [his mistress], took her purse and keys, removed all items from her purse and searched it, patted her down from head to toe, and then went back outside to check if anyone had seen her enter the home."

Her testimony continues:

[H]e said, Well, okay, I have this idea. And I thought about you so much, and I have this idea, and it's to make you feel good. I feel like you haven't been treated good in so long. And I said, Well, I want to talk to you. I want to know what is going on in your relationship. You don't even know what's going on in mine. And he said, I know...but we don't have a whole lot of time. Have you exercised today?

It was like he was on a mission, sort of, like this kind of high energy — it was kind of high energy. And I said, No I haven't exercised. And he said, Will you let me take you through an exercise — like, through a workout? I just have this idea. It's going to make you feel so good and — for whatever reason, I trusted him, thought this is okay, this is — somehow we're going to get to this — I don't know — I'm going to leave here feeling more clarified that, obviously, he has feelings for me.

The woman said Greitens had prepared clothes for her to change into:

So he said, I have these clothes I want you to put on. He had clothes sitting on his countertop. I want you to go change into these — take off all of your stuff — take off everything you're wearing and put on these clothes. And I just kind of looked at him like, Oh, God, what do you have? And he said, Just trust me. ... I just want to make you feel good.

So I went — he has, like, a little bathroom off his kitchen, and I went in there, changed into these clothes. The shirt was his — like, a man's white T-shirt that he had cut a slit at the top, and the pants were men's pajama pants.

Greitens led the woman into his basement, according to her testimony, bound her hands with gauzed tape and put her in a blindfold. He spit water into her mouth, telling her, "You have to be hydrated." When she spit the water out, he told her, "You're not going to be a bad girl, are you?"

The woman's testimony to the House committee challenges whether the encounter was consensual, as previously reported. She describes numerous times feeling uncomfortable, saying that she didn't want to have sex with Greitens or even kiss him.

She says the governor tore her shirt open, exposing her, and began kissing her, an act she did not consent to.

Shortly afterward is when she says the governor took the illicit photo and threatened her with blackmail.

The woman accused Greitens of saying: “You’re not going to mention my name. Don’t even mention my name to anybody at all, because if you do, I’m going to take these pictures, and I’m going to put them everywhere I can. They are going to be everywhere, and then everyone will know what a little whore you are."

She testified that Greitens coerced her into oral sex as she was crying. She said she felt she had no choice but to comply with his demand. "It's a hard question because I did it — it felt like consent, but no, I didn't want to do it," she told the committee, adding that she felt in danger and unable to leave.

The woman's friend verified much of her story to the committee, testifying about contemporaneous conversations she had around the date of the incident in March 2015.

The governor and the woman had consensual oral sex several more times, according to her testimony. During one encounter, she said, Greitens slapped her when she told him she had also recently had sex with her estranged husband. She told the committee that the slap was "forceful" but did not leave a mark. "I felt like he was trying to claim me," she said.

She describes being hit and shoved to the ground on at least one other occasion during sex. That time, she said, "might have left a mark."

Speaking to reporters Wednesday afternoon, Greitens called the Republican-led investigation a political witch hunt and said the report is full of lies and falsehoods. Lawmakers — Democrats and Republicans alike — called the report disturbing. Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley, a Republican, went further, calling it impeachable.

Rep. Todd Richardson, the Republican House speaker, said he plans to seek a special legislative session to consider disciplinary action against the governor, which may include impeachment.

Read the full report here.

Photo: Gov. Eric Greitens and his wife Sheena in 2011. (Larry Busacca/Getty Images for GQ)