Will he take the Bill Clinton defense? “It depends upon what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is?
Four sentences in a letter to Speaker of the House Todd Richardson are about to turn the Missouri political world upside down.
“My name is Cora Faith Walker. I will be in the Capitol in January as the Representative of the 74th District. Earlier this week, I reported a sexual assault to the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department. I named my rapist as Steven Roberts, Jr., who hopes to be in the Capitol in January as the Representative of the 77th District.”
On Friday night, Walker, 31, a Ferguson attorney who won the Democratic primary for her seat in August, sent the letter containing those four sentences and more to Richardson, Minority Floor Leader Jake Hummel and assistant minority floor leader Gail McCann-Beatty.
She is asking the leadership of a Missouri Legislature that has been rocked by sexual scandals over the past couple of years to not allow Roberts, a Democrat, to take his seat until “this investigation is complete.”
Both Walker and Roberts are running unopposed in November.
On Saturday, after this column appeared on stltoday.com, each of the three legislative leaders issued statements responding to Walker’s letter. Richardson called the allegations “disturbing” and said he would monitor the criminal investigation. The Democratic leaders suggested Roberts should consider dropping out of the election.
In an interview at the home of her husband’s parents, Walker asked me to tell her story, including using her name, to give courage to women who are victims of rape, and to encourage a change to the Jefferson City environment that “perpetuates gender violence and rape culture.”
“I felt a moral responsibility to speak out,” Walker said. “The idea or the thought of me trying to just bury it is one I could not live with.”
Walker said the alleged assault took place either the evening of Aug. 26 or the early morning of Aug. 27 at an apartment in the city of St. Louis. She had gone there to meet Roberts to discuss how they might work together in the upcoming legislative session, Walker says. The two will be the only black lawyers in the Legislature.
Walker said she met Roberts at the apartment about 9:30 p.m. She woke up in a bed there the next morning.
“I had no recollection of why I was still there,” she said. Walker said she had two glasses of wine and remembers nothing after the second glass.
She told her husband, Tim, the next day about what happened, she said, but it took the couple several weeks to decide whether to go to police.
Two highly placed law enforcement sources confirmed to the Post-Dispatch that there is an active investigation into Walker’s report to police and that Roberts is the person being investigated. He has not been arrested nor charged with a crime.