I absolutely believe Leeann Tweeden’s account of how Al Franken sexually assaulted her in 2006. Her telling is too close to the types of encounters I and so many other women around the world have experienced.
The crossing of boundaries and refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer. Diminishing the ‘no’ as being silly. Badgering and gaslighting. Then retaliation through trying to humiliate when we get angry.
Leeann was there to WORK. She wasn’t there to be a piece of meat for Franken’s entertainment.
Here is part of her account.
Franken had written some skits for the show and brought props and costumes to go along with them. Like many USO shows before and since, the skits were full of sexual innuendo geared toward a young, male audience.
As a TV host and sports broadcaster, as well as a model familiar to the audience from the covers of FHM, Maxim and Playboy, I was only expecting to emcee and introduce the acts, but Franken said he had written a part for me that he thought would be funny, and I agreed to play along.
When I saw the script, Franken had written a moment when his character comes at me for a ‘kiss’. I suspected what he was after, but I figured I could turn my head at the last minute, or put my hand over his mouth, to get more laughs from the crowd.
On the day of the show Franken and I were alone backstage going over our lines one last time. He said to me, “We need to rehearse the kiss.” I laughed and ignored him. Then he said it again. I said something like, ‘Relax Al, this isn’t SNL…we don’t need to rehearse the kiss.’
He continued to insist, and I was beginning to get uncomfortable.
He repeated that actors really need to rehearse everything and that we must practice the kiss. I said ‘OK’ so he would stop badgering me. We did the line leading up to the kiss and then he came at me, put his hand on the back of my head, mashed his lips against mine and aggressively stuck his tongue in my mouth.
I immediately pushed him away with both of my hands against his chest and told him if he ever did that to me again I wouldn’t be so nice about it the next time.
I walked away. All I could think about was getting to a bathroom as fast as possible to rinse the taste of him out of my mouth.
I felt disgusted and violated.
Franken spent the rest of the tour trying to humiliate her including drawing devil horns on pictures she was autographing for the troops.
Then on the flight home, while she was asleep, he asked someone to take a picture of him pretending to feel her up...because hahaha.
I will never look at Al Franken the same way again.