A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.

The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office.

Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.

“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”

  • velma@sh.itjust.worksOP
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    2 days ago

    Racicot previously described “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior by Platner to The New York Times, but says she didn’t go public with the specific assault claim because she didn’t want to be known as a rape victim.

    Racicot said she later felt compelled to go public about her experience because the reaction to the Times story was dominated by controversy about another woman, Lyndsey Fifield, who alleged Platner mistreated her and faced attacks because of her ties to the Republican Party. (Contacted by POLITICO, Fifield stood by the allegations she made to the Times and declined to comment further.)

    “My part of the story was just a read-over,” Racicot said in an interview. “And the story was Lyndsey, and the accusations of her being politically motivated.”

    Racicot said she was torn over coming forward in part because she agrees with Platner politically.

    We all chose not to believe Lyndsey Fifield because she’s conservative.

    • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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      2 days ago

      That’s a perfectly good reason to not believe someone. Conservatives lie. Regularly and with glee. Especially when it will benefit them politically. It’s ok to treat politically beneficial claims from conservative operatives as likely lies.

        • Zaktor@sopuli.xyz
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          2 days ago

          Someone being truthful once doesn’t mean they are trustworthy or should have been trusted. If conservative operatives wanted to be given good faith they shouldn’t have spent their entire career gleefully abusing it. It’s perfectly fine to require exceptional proof from known liars.