The recent avalanche of rev­e­la­tions about sex­u­al harass­ment in high-pro­file work­places include alle­ga­tions against the longest serv­ing mem­ber in the House, John Cony­ers. The press and the pub­lic seem stunned to learn that Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cony­ers con­fi­den­tial­ly set­tled a sex­u­al harass­ment claim brought by his long-term staffer, Mar­i­on Brown, using $27,000 of tax­pay­er mon­ey. Even mem­bers of Con­gress act sur­prised and out­raged when ques­tioned about this set­tle­ment. Yet the pro­ce­dures that led to this pay­out are no secret. They’re set forth in the pub­lic record in a statute iron­i­cal­ly enti­tled The Con­gres­sion­al Account­abil­i­ty Act; they’ve been in effect for two decades; and every mem­ber of the 1995 House and Sen­ate vot­ed in favor of them.

These pro­vi­sions escaped atten­tion when they were enact­ed in 1995 because Con­gress includ­ed them in a larg­er bill that looked like a big step toward major reform. Decades ear­li­er, Con­gress had passed a host of impor­tant employ­ment laws, includ­ing the Fair Labor Stan­dards Act of 1938, estab­lish­ing min­i­mum wage and over­time pay; the Civ­il Rights Act of 1964, pro­hibit­ing dis­crim­i­na­tion based on race, col­or, reli­gion, sex, or nation­al­i­ty; the Age Dis­crim­i­na­tion in Employ­ment Act of 1967; the Amer­i­cans With Dis­abil­i­ties Act of 1990; the Occu­pa­tion­al Safe­ty and Health Act of 1970, man­dat­ing safe­ty reg­u­la­tions in the work­place; and many oth­ers. These laws apply to all employ­ers with more than a hand­ful of employ­ees, except for one – Con­gress. Con­gress exempt­ed itself from their require­ments, leav­ing the 30,000 employ­ees of the leg­isla­tive branch unprotected. 

Dur­ing the 1994 Con­gres­sion­al cam­paigns, Repub­li­cans promised a new “Con­tract with Amer­i­ca.” One of the contract’s tenets was the nov­el idea that Con­gress ought to be sub­ject to the laws it impos­es on every­one else. The first law passed by the 104^th Con­gress was The Con­gres­sion­al Account­abil­i­ty Act. It pro­vid­ed that eleven fed­er­al employ­ment law statutes, includ­ing the laws men­tioned above, would apply to Con­gress from there on. The Act sailed through the House and Sen­ate with­out a sin­gle no vote. The press hailed it as a long over­due reform mea­sure, and mem­bers of Con­gress rushed to the micro­phones to take cred­it for final­ly mak­ing them­selves account­able for their behav­ior in the workplace. 

But there was a catch lurk­ing in the statute’s shad­ows that received almost no sun­light until a few weeks ago. Title IV of the Act allows an

employ­ee of the leg­isla­tive branch to file a com­plaint against a mem­ber of Con­gress only after com­plet­ing a one-sided review pro­ce­dure. For exam­ple, if a female staffer wants to take action against a mem­ber of Con­gress for sex­u­al­ly harass­ing her, she must first sign a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment. Then she must sub­mit to coun­sel­ing for up to 30 days and attend medi­a­tion meet­ings for at least 30 more days. Only at the end of anoth­er 30 day cool­ing off peri­od after medi­a­tion can she final­ly file her for­mal com­plaint. She must then choose between demand­ing an inter­nal hear­ing before a hear­ing offi­cer or fil­ing a civ­il suit in fed­er­al court, either of which will take many months, if not years, to reach a con­clu­sion. While the pro­ceed­ings grind for­ward, she con­tin­ues to work with the mem­ber of Con­gress she has com­plained about unless she resigns or he fires her.

Best of all for mem­bers of Con­gress, the Act pro­hibits hear­ing offi­cers and courts from requir­ing them to pay a dime out of their own pock­ets for these claims. The U.S. Trea­sury pays all dam­age awards and set­tle­ments out of tax­pay­er funds. The Act also sweeps puni­tive dam­ages off the table. Puni­tive dam­age awards cre­ate a pow­er­ful incen­tive to pur­sue claims because they dri­ve the cost of set­tle­ments and total dam­ages much high­er, so nat­u­ral­ly Con­gress was care­ful to immu­nize itself from that risk.

The Act cre­at­ed the Office of Com­pli­ance (“OOC”) to admin­is­ter the com­plaint review pro­ce­dure. It con­sists of a five mem­ber Board of Direc­tors, which appoints an Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, who hires staff, medi­a­tors, and hear­ing offi­cers. The Act pro­vides that Congress’s lead­er­ship appoints the Board mem­bers, which gives employ­ees lit­tle con­fi­dence in the OOC’s will­ing­ness to bite the hand that feeds it. Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Jack­ie Speier recent­ly said the OOC “is a place that has real­ly been an enabler of sex­u­al harass­ment for these many years because of the way it’s con­struct­ed.” She esti­mates that eighty per­cent of the employ­ees who have spo­ken to her office about sex­u­al harass­ment have not filed claims for that reason.

Since 1996, the Trea­sury has paid out 17.2 mil­lion dol­lars for 268 claims under the Act. This includes claims for vio­la­tions of all eleven of the employ­ment laws cov­ered by the Act. Because of the secre­cy pro­vi­sions, we don’t know how many claims involved sex­u­al harass­ment. In fact, we know almost noth­ing about these claims because the House and Sen­ate Com­mit­tees that have the pow­er to require the OOC to give them the infor­ma­tion had nev­er asked for it in the twen­ty year life of the Act until a few weeks ago when Mar­i­on Brown’s claim against Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Cony­ers hit the air­waves. If the OOC has respond­ed to that recent request, Con­gress has not yet seen fit to make the infor­ma­tion public.

Pen­e­trat­ing this veil of secre­cy to a small degree, the press uncov­ered details about two past sex­u­al harass­ment claims. Accord­ing to these

reports, the Trea­sury paid $100,000 in 2010 to two young male staffers to resolve sex­u­al harass­ment claims against Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mas­sa of New York. He resigned under pres­sure short­ly after­wards. In 2014, the Trea­sury paid $84,000 to Lau­ren Greene, a staffer who worked for Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Far­en­thold of Texas, for a civ­il law­suit she filed against him for sex­u­al harass­ment. As of this writ­ing, Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Far­en­thold has suc­cess­ful­ly resist­ed calls for his resignation.

On Novem­ber 15, Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Speier and Com­stock intro­duced the “Me Too” bill to amend the Act. The Me Too bill removes the require­ment that an employ­ee sign a con­fi­den­tial­i­ty agree­ment before mak­ing a claim, pro­tects the employ­ee from retal­i­a­tion for fil­ing a claim, offers legal rep­re­sen­ta­tion to the employ­ee, pro­vides that coun­sel­ing and medi­a­tion are vol­un­tary only, and requires a mem­ber of Con­gress to reim­burse the Trea­sury for dam­ages paid for per­son­al con­duct. As best I can tell, only forty-nine rep­re­sen­ta­tives have for­mal­ly endorsed it to date, but it’s ear­ly, and the tem­per­a­ture is ris­ing every day. 

When I was an attor­ney and lat­er an exec­u­tive, I han­dled a lot of sex­u­al harass­ment claims in the pri­vate sec­tor. Most exec­u­tives and man­agers I worked with were well-inten­tioned. With train­ing and edu­ca­tion, they tried hard to do the right thing. But there were some bad actors out there, peo­ple who behaved self­ish­ly and irre­spon­si­bly no mat­ter how much train­ing, coun­sel­ing, warn­ings, and dis­ci­pline they received. In my expe­ri­ence, the only way to deal with those peo­ple was to hit them with max­i­mum pun­ish­ment: ter­mi­na­tion of employ­ment, full pub­lic dis­clo­sure, big honk­ing finan­cial penalties. 

Con­gress under­stands this when it pass­es laws that apply to the rest of us, but its enthu­si­asm for pun­ish­ment seems to with­er when it points its guns at its own mem­bers. For twen­ty years it has pre­tend­ed to hold its mem­bers account­able while shield­ing them from the con­se­quences of their actions. Enough of the faux reform.

If Con­gress tru­ly wants to elim­i­nate the sex­u­al­ly hos­tile atmos­phere on the Hill, it should pub­lish a list of names of all of the accused, the details of the claims against them, and the amounts of mon­ey paid out on each one; the House and the Sen­ate should demand res­ig­na­tions from the preda­tors and expel those who refuse to resign; and Con­gress should pass the Me Too bill now.

That’s what should hap­pen and it should go down with bru­tal swift­ness, but with Congress’s track record on self-reg­u­la­tion, I’m not hold­ing my breath. 

I met Dr. George Ritchie in 1965, twen­ty-two years after he died of dou­ble lobar pneu­mo­nia.  I was in the audi­ence at Wes­ley Memo­r­i­al Church in Char­lottesville, Vir­ginia, when he spoke about his death, and I met with him after his talk. 

In 1943, when he was a sol­dier sta­tioned at Camp Barke­ley, Texas, he was hos­pi­tal­ized with pneu­mo­nia. An order­ly found him unre­spon­sive, with no pulse, res­pi­ra­tion rate, or blood pres­sure. The doc­tor on duty (“O.D.”) con­firmed that Ritchie was dead, and told the order­ly to move the corpse to the morgue when he fin­ished his rounds. When the order­ly returned to Ritchie’s room, the O.D. exam­ined him again and found no signs of life. By then, Ritchie had flat-lined for almost ten minutes.

In the past, the O.D. had used adren­a­line shots to kick-start a heart­beat inter­rupt­ed by a trau­mat­ic injury. He had nev­er seen one revive a heart stopped by a debil­i­tat­ing ill­ness, espe­cial­ly after so much time had passed. On a whim, he nev­er­the­less plunged a nee­dle into Ritchie’s heart.

To the O.D.’s great sur­prise, Ritchie’s heart began to beat errat­i­cal­ly. Irreg­u­lar res­pi­ra­tion com­menced. His blood pres­sure rose. Three days lat­er he regained consciousness.

The hospital’s com­mand­ing M.D. said Ritchie’s recov­ery was “the most amaz­ing med­ical case I ever encoun­tered… (It) has to be explained in terms oth­er than nat­ur­al means.”

I was eigh­teen when Dr. Ritchie spoke at the church. My father became a preach­er in 1960. Five years lat­er, the pow­er of his faith was clear to me, but I couldn’t seem to embrace it. I strug­gled with a boat-load of doubt. Just before I left home for col­lege, my father asked me to attend a dis­trict youth group meet­ing. I tried to beg off, but he insisted. 

So I sat in the audi­ence that night as Dr. Ritchie turned to the meat of his talk – the events he claimed occurred while he was dead. The gist of it was this. His spir­it (my word, not his) left his corpse. A light appeared and grew in bright­ness until it over­whelmed all else. Its source was a being of infi­nite love, whom Ritchie believed to be the Son of God. The being showed Ritchie a panora­ma of scenes from his life, took him to oth­er-world­ly places sim­i­lar to pur­ga­to­ry (my word again), and then guid­ed him to the edge of par­adise. There, he told Ritchie he must go back, and Ritchie reen­tered his body in the hospital.

It sounds crazy as I write it here, but Dr. Ritchie wasn’t crazy. He was a prac­tic­ing psy­chi­a­trist with an M.D. from the Med­ical Col­lege of Vir­ginia and a psy­chi­atric res­i­den­cy at UVA Hos­pi­tal. He lat­er became the Chair­man of Psy­chi­a­try of Tow­ers Hos­pi­tal and Pres­i­dent of the Rich­mond Acad­e­my of Gen­er­al Prac­tice. Soft-spo­ken and artic­u­late, he told his sto­ry dis­pas­sion­ate­ly, with no hint of mis­sion­ary zeal. 

Today, there are thou­sands of reports of near death expe­ri­ences (NDE’s), but Dr. Ritchie’s sto­ry was one of the ear­li­est, and I was moved by it. At the end of the meet­ing, I stood at the door, hop­ing to speak to him. To my sur­prise, when he left the podi­um he sought me out.

“Would you like to talk?” he said. He guid­ed me into a lit­tle room and we sat down. I asked ques­tions about the details of his sto­ry. He answered patient­ly, with humor and warmth. My ques­tions tailed off and I stared at him uncomfortably. 

“Did you believe in God before this hap­pened?” I asked.

“No.”

I paused. “Do you real­ly think you met Jesus?”

“Yes.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m cer­tain.”

We fell silent. I felt great­ly unset­tled. He was so obvi­ous­ly at peace and I was not.

He put his hand on my shoul­der. “You’ll be all right,” he said. “He loves you.”

He walked me out into the hall where my father wait­ed. When he and Dr. Ritchie shook hands and exchanged know­ing looks, I real­ized they had set me up. Dr. Ritchie’s per­son­al atten­tion was a favor to my dad. 

I wasn’t the only one Dr. Ritchie moved that sum­mer. One of his talks inspired Dr. Ray­mond Moody to spend his life inves­ti­gat­ing NDE’s. Moody’s book in 1975, Life After Life, ded­i­cat­ed to Dr. Ritchie, dis­cuss­es Moody’s meet­ings with more than 150 peo­ple, who returned from a clin­i­cal death. Their sto­ries dif­fered, but Moody noticed some gen­er­al­ly repeat­ing traits. The most preva­lent were an out-of-body expe­ri­ence, an encounter with a being of bright­ness, a sense of uncon­di­tion­al love, and a review of the person’s life.

The study of NDE’s took off after Moody’s book. The sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty ini­tial­ly regard­ed them as fab­ri­ca­tions, but after thou­sands of sto­ries with sim­i­lar pat­terns emerged, the reac­tion shift­ed to pro­vid­ing sci­en­tif­ic ratio­nales for them. Today, scores of peer-reviewed stud­ies offer bio­log­i­cal and neu­ro­log­i­cal explanations. 

On the oth­er side of the debate, tak­ing the posi­tion that NDE’s are gen­uine spir­i­tu­al occur­rences, two heav­i­ly cre­den­tialed doc­tors pub­lished accounts of their own NDE’s. Dr. Mary Neal, the for­mer direc­tor of spine surgery at USC, drowned in a kayak acci­dent in Chile. To Heav­en and Back tells the sto­ry of her ardu­ous recov­ery and her claim that she went to heaven.

Proof of Heav­en, by Dr. Eben Alexan­der, was a N.Y. Times best sell­er for 60 weeks. His sto­ry is dif­fi­cult to dis­miss. He is a neu­ro­sur­geon who was edu­cat­ed in thecountry’s most elite insti­tu­tions. He taught at Duke, Har­vard, and UVA. He devot­ed his life to sci­ence; he did not believe in God or an after­life; and he viewed NDE’s as pure fantasy.

Then, at age 54, he con­tract­ed E coli bac­te­r­i­al menin­gi­tis, a rare dis­ease that eats the brain’s cor­tex. It should have killed him, and it almost did. He lan­guished in a coma for sev­en days. His doc­tors gave up hope and rec­om­mend­ed to his wife that she pull the plug. At that moment he regained consciousness.

He should be a veg­etable today, but he recov­ered ful­ly. That much is beyond astound­ing, but his sto­ry doesn’t end there. This for­mer­ly faith­less man of sci­ence claims that he expe­ri­enced a rich­ly-detailed, lengthy encounter with God in heav­en. As a lead­ing neu­ro­sur­geon, he read his own med­ical charts and con­clud­ed that his brain reg­is­tered no activ­i­ty dur­ing his NDE, prov­ing to him that it was not a cere­bral hal­lu­ci­na­tion. Con­scious­ness exists inde­pen­dent of the body, he asserts.

Dr. Alexander’s claims have drawn enthu­si­as­tic crit­ics. They gen­er­al­ly accept the sin­cer­i­ty of his sto­ry and his exper­tise in inter­pret­ing his charts, but they argue that he could have expe­ri­enced his NDE before his brain shut down or while it was com­ing back up, or that parts of his brain may have been inter­mit­tent­ly active dur­ing his coma.

So what does all this boil down to? Is there reli­able evi­dence of an afterlife?

I’m a skep­tic, by nature. As with my dad’s faith, I’d like to believe, but my Inner Lawyer whis­pers in my ear, “We need proof beyond a rea­son­able doubt.”

Dr. Ritchie believed “with stu­pen­dous cer­tain­ty” that he’d met the Son of God, but his sin­cer­i­ty isn’t proof. Dr. Alexander’s brain-wave charts come close, but there’s still wig­gle room.

In research­ing NDE’s for this post, I was sur­prised by the sci­en­tif­ic community’s intense inter­est in this debate. That, along with the rapid advance of med­ical tech­nol­o­gy, will like­ly pro­vide irrefutable answers to these ques­tions soon. 

Until that day comes, my Inner Lawyer and I will con­tin­ue to float along with our boat-load of doubts.

Post Script: Dr. Ritchie died for the last time in 2007 at his home in Irv­ing­ton, Vir­ginia, after a long bat­tle with can­cer. He was unafraid. “Death is noth­ing more than a door­way, some­thing you walk through.” His words, not mine.