Clinton: This is why I didn’t fire aide accused of sex harassment

HILLARY Clinton has revealed in a frank Facebook post why she didn’t fire one of her aides after he was accused of sexual harassment.

Hillary Clinton said she kept Burns Strider on her team because she ‘didn’t think firing him was the best solution.’ Picture: Brendan Smialowski/AFP

HILLARY Clinton has finally offered an explanation as to why she didn’t fire a top campaign aide over allegations that he sexually harassed a female staffer.

Speaking in a lengthy Facebook post on Tuesday night ― which she posted just minutes before President Trump’s State of the Union address ― Mrs Clinton claimed that she kept Burns Strider on her team in 2008 because she “didn’t think firing him was the best solution to the problem.”

“He needed to be punished, change his behavior, and understand why his actions were wrong,” she wrote. “The young woman needed to be able to thrive and feel safe. I thought both could happen without him losing his job. I believed the punishment was severe and the message to him unambiguous.”

Furthermore, Mrs Clinton said that she believes “in second chances” ― and wants to “continue to believe in them” ― despite what others think.

“I’ve been given second chances and I have given them to others,” she explained. “But sometimes they’re squandered. In this case, while there were no further complaints against him for the duration of the campaign, several years after working for me he was terminated from another job for inappropriate behavior. That reoccurrence troubles me greatly, and it alone makes clear that the lesson I hoped he had learned while working for me went unheeded. Would he have done better ― been better ― if I had fired him? Would he have gotten that next job? There is no way I can go back 10 years and know the answers. But you can bet I’m asking myself these questions right now.”

Mrs Clinton said she waited to respond to the reports about the Strider situation because she wanted to find the best way to deal with them.

“You may question why it’s taken me time to speak on this at length,” she said. “The answer is simple: I’ve been grappling with this and thinking about how best to share my thoughts. I hope that my doing so will push others to keep having this conversation ― to ask and try to answer the hard questions, not just in the abstract but in the real-life contexts of our roles as men, women, bosses, employees, advocates, and public officials.”

Mrs Clinton went on to say that it was “reassuring” to hear that the female staffer in question “felt supported back then ― and that all these years later, those feelings haven’t changed.”

She refused to apologise for keeping Strider on, but did say that if she had to do it again, she “wouldn’t.”

“Over the past year, a seismic shift has occurred in the way we approach and respond to sexual harassment, both as a society and as individuals,” Mrs Clinton said. “This shift was long overdue. It occurred thanks to women across industries who stood up and spoke out, from Hollywood to sports to farm workers ― to the very woman who worked for me.”

She added, “We can’t go back, but we can certainly look back, informed by the present. We can acknowledge that even those of us who have spent much of our life thinking about gender issues and who have firsthand experiences of navigating a male-dominated industry or career may not always get it right … I hope that women will continue to talk and write about their own experiences and that they will continue leading this critical debate, which, done right, will lead to a better, fairer, safer country for us all.”

This article originally appeared on the New York Post and is republished here with permission.