I came to Washington, D.C. in January 1981, a 37-year-old woman, to be president of the National Consumer Cooperative Bank (Coop Bank), a federally chartered lending institution.  The Reagan administration wanted to rescind the charter of the bank.  It was part of my job as the bank's president to make the case for the bank in the Congress.

As part of that campaign, I went to see Speaker Tip O'Neill to appeal for his help in saving the bank.  Although we had never met, the speaker knew me by reputation because I had been a crusading bank commissioner in Massachusetts for four years during Mike Dukakis's first term as governor.  When I entered O'Neill's office, the speaker shook his big shaggy head and told me I had to deal with Congressman Freddie St. Germaine, the chair of the House Banking Committee.

"You know how to deal with Freddie, don't you?" he asked me.

I shook my head doubtfully.

"Just walk into his office and sit on his lap and tell him what you want."

The speaker smiled at my shocked look.  "Stand up," he said.  He enveloped me in a bear hug and then proceeded to run his hands all over my body.  I stood there in total shock, not knowing what to do.  Slapping my rear, he told me to go.  He assured me that everything would be fine.  I staggered out of his office.

When I reported my humiliation to the bank's executive vice president and swore that I would never go into another congressman's office, he told me, "You can't report Tip to anyone, or the bank is done for.  Anyway, do you think the Washington Post would report it?"  He then advised me never to go into a congressman's office alone again.  After that, I always took an aide with me, and when a congressman asked me to come into his private office alone, I always declined and explained that I needed my aide to take notes so I would not forget the congressman's information requests.

I learned from Tip that congressmen believed that their positions of power meant they were free to sexually abuse women without the press reporting  their behavior.  Regardless of how high your position – I was, after all, the president of a bank – in their eyes, I was just "a girl."  It was a sobering and infuriating realization.