City-Council VP knew about sexual harassment, supported victim

INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — City-County Council Vice President Ali Brown knew about Lauren Roberts being harassed since 2019.

Brown, a Democrat, told News 8 she supported Roberts over the last four and a half years.

“She told me that she had been harassed,” Brown said. “She told me that Thomas had sent her a letter and all this kind of stuff, and that was kind of it. She didn’t go into a lot of the details that she’s now sharing.”

Brown was running for council for the first time when Roberts approached her, and was not in an elected position as she is now.

“So, then at the time, I told Lauren, I said, “When you are ready to come forward and tell more of your story, and tell more people because my whole position is I cannot tell your story for you,” Brown said. “But when you’re ready, I am there to support you. So, when she decided to come out and tell her story this year, there I am. I am there to support her and there to make sure this doesn’t happen again.”

Brown said that Roberts came to her as a member of the Indiana Young Democrats and a first-time candidate for City-Council.

“Lauren reached out to me in January of 2019 via Instagram. At that time, I was vice president of the Young Democrats so I sat on the State Central Committee for the Indiana Democratic Party,” Brown said. “I was also at that time, just to frame it out, also running for council. I had just announced in January of the year that we were running [2019]. So, that’s why she had reached out to that particular account and she had found me.”

Brown explained her concern that campaigns run as “start-ups” with no human resources departments and no recourse were something to happen to an employee.

“So, this has always been a concern because if you are on those campaigns you believe in your candidate, you believe in their message. You believe in their party,” Brown said. “So, if something were to happen to you, there becomes this internal fear that I can’t tell anybody, because if I tell somebody, then it might hurt my candidate. Who am I supposed to go to?”

Brown explained that she has supported Roberts through this situation and has advocated on her behalf to the Indiana Democratic Party.

“I talked to the then-state party chair, who is John Zody, about what we could do as a state party to protect people in the campaigns,” Brown said. “I met with him, I met with the lawyers, and at that time, they said there is nothing we can do because they are separate entities.”

Brown said the recent unionization of the state party moves things in the right direction when it comes to protecting campaign workers.

“They do have protections, and that’s actually really important because they have people who represent them,” Brown said. “Now, when it comes to campaigns it’s up to each individual campaign. However, I have talked with people who are seeking leadership positions, and they are very excited to work on standards and codes of ethics that would hold campaigns to account to take care of their workers.”

City-Council VP knew about sexual harassment, supported victim

Ali Brown interview

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