INDIANAPOLIS — A day after Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett signed a proposal for an independent investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against one of his former deputy mayors, a woman who said that same man harassed her while they worked for the mayor's 2015 campaign spoke to 13News.
On Thursday, Sept. 12, Hogsett signed a proposal passed by the Indianapolis City-County Council earlier this week.
Proposal 287 creates an investigative committee of Indianapolis city-county councilors to look into how the Hogsett administration handled investigations into his former deputy mayor and 2015 campaign manager Thomas Cook.
Lauren Roberts said Cook harassed her while he was her boss when she worked for the campaign in 2015. She said whether the committee subpoenas her or not, she's open to talking to its members about her experience.
That's not the only conversation she'd like to have.
Roberts said she still wants to meet with Hogsett and emailed him Thursday after he signed the proposal to tell him that.
Roberts is also calling on the mayor to prove he ordered an investigation of Cook in 2017.
Hogsett said he reached out to legal counsel in October of that year to investigate Roberts' claims that Cook sexually harassed her.
Roberts said she started emailing the mayor to talk about those claims earlier that year in May, indicating it was important and that she needed to talk to him about Cook, who was now working for the city.
Roberts wants the mayor to prove he sought that investigation, and what its results were, by providing documentation — a paper trail.
"I think it would be a show of good faith for him to release my report because I'm the victim and I'm the one requesting it. I think it would show he takes this seriously and is listening to survivors," Roberts said.
At a news conference Thursday, the mayor said releasing any reports would undermine trust in a recently established anonymous reporting system where city-county employees can make harassment complaints.
"To release a report would be counterproductive to what is bringing us here today," Hogsett said.
"As the victim, it should be up to me whether or not something is public," said Roberts, adding if an investigation did happen, no one ever contacted her about it. "If that's the case, I would love to see a record of the email or a phone call or a text message, however those investigators got in touch with me because I don't have a record of that."
At Thursday's press conference, Hogsett was asked repeatedly about that.
"I have no idea, I didn't conduct the interviews," Hogsett said when asked if anyone contacted Roberts.
According to a timeline provided by the mayor's office, the treasurer for his campaign reached out to Roberts in July 2018.
Roberts said that only came after she reached out to Hogsett again after not getting a response to her 2017 emails.
"She said she was there to talk. At no time was the word 'investigation' used. At no time was the word 'interview' used, and this was again in 2018 — more than a year after I first came forward," Roberts explained.
Roberts said she had the same concerns when leaders with the Indiana Democratic Party offered to sit down with her in August 2017 after she contacted them to ask how to report sexual harassment on a campaign.
"They were connected to the mayor, and that's not a reporting process," Roberts said. "I was asking how to report and that's not how you report, a casual conversation with two people whose interests ultimately and their roles are to protect the organization, not the victim. That's not a safe way to report."
The newly formed committee will look at how Roberts' claims were handled, along with those of Caroline Ellert, who said Cook also sexually harassed her in 2018 when she worked for the city and he was her boss.
According to the mayor, Ellert reported those allegations to him in September last year, and the city hired an independent counsel to look into Ellert's allegations.
At the time of that investigation, Cook no longer worked for the city.
According to the mayor's office, Hogsett asked Cook to resign in December 2020 after an investigation revealed he was involved in a relationship with a co-worker, something the mayor said Cook was told was prohibited from doing after the 2017 investigation into Roberts' claims.
Now, an investigative committee made up of five Democrats and two Republicans on the City-County Council will hire an outside law firm to do interviews and dig into any documentation involving harassment claims and reports.
The committee has 21 days to meet after this week's vote by councilors to create it. According to Proposal 287, the committee will meet once a month and have the power to subpoena witnesses.
Right now, it's not clear if those witnesses will have to testify under oath.
Roberts said she'd welcome the chance to testify if she's asked.
"I want to be helpful because I want to fix this. Because it appears unless we survivors come forward and demand changes and be part of it, it's not going to happen," Roberts said.
After Roberts and Ellert went public in July with their claims against Cook, the mayor signed an executive order requiring sexual harassment training for all city-county employees, along with a way to anonymously report harassment complaints.
"Those are things Caroline and I demanded in our letter to him," Roberts said.
Now, she has another request to meet with the mayor face to face.
"I would like to sit down and have a conversation with him. Our two understandings of what happened after I came forward in May 2017 don't line up," Roberts said. "My sense is the mayor is not telling the truth, but I'm open to having the conversation. Maybe there's been a miscommunication between him and his team."
Roberts said she emailed the mayor Thursday requesting to meet with him but has not heard back.
13News reached out to the mayor's office for comment on what Roberts said, but we have not heard back.