Watchdog finds ex-Illinois Rep. Harry Benton violated law with sexual harassment, third victim revealed

A legislative inspector general’s investigatory report released Friday found disgraced former state Rep. Harry Benton violated state law by engaging in sexual harassment, and also revealed the existence of a third female victim, a staffer for another state legislator who said Benton’s “creepy” behavior in a Springfield bar last year made her feel uncomfortable.

But Legislative Inspector General Michael McCuskey’s report still left unanswered key questions about how Democratic House Speaker Emanuel “Chris” Welch handled allegations first raised by a Benton staffer three years ago. Welch spent $1.4 million the next year to get Benton, a Democrat from southwest suburban Plainfield, reelected. It was not until a female lobbyist ran into Benton in January in a River North Chicago bar, where she said he made lewd comments to her, that the speaker’s office took any steps to discipline him.

The seven-page report contains the results of McCuskey’s investigation, which began March 4 following a complaint filed by Welch’s office. It provides a synopsis of many of the details first reported in July by the Tribune, whose months-long investigation examined Benton’s conduct toward two women — his former young female staffer and the lobbyist.

But the report also recounts a complaint from a third woman — a legislative district office director who said Benton harassed her in a bar following 2025 Latino Unity Day festivities in Springfield. According to the report, while the female district office director was at the bar, Benton leaned over her and put his hand on her back. He also complained about how county officials disliked him. As he continued to lean over her while touching her back, she backed away because he made her feel “uneasy,” and, she said, Benton “was creepy,” the report said. The report lists the district office director’s complaint as “founded.”

McCuskey wrote in the report that he questioned Benton on May 29 about incidents involving all three women. McCuskey wrote that Benton denied “ever saying or doing anything of a sexual nature” or “ever attempted to sexually harass anyone,” adding in the case of the lobbyist, “I don’t hit on lobbyists.” But McCuskey said he found Benton, in his denials, to be “not credible.”

McCuskey wrote that he spoke with each of the three victims, who were not named in the report. The Tribune has also spoken with the women, but the Tribune is not identifying them because they are victims of sexual harassment.

McCuskey ruled the 2026 and 2025 complaints involving the lobbyist and the district office director “founded.” He could not make that finding on the 2023 allegations from the former Benton staffer because he was prohibited by a one-year statute of limitations. But he wrote that he included circumstances regarding the ex-Benton staffer in his report to show a “pattern and practice of sexual harassment occurring during the entirety of Harry Benton’s career as a member of the General Assembly.”

In a supplemental response she submitted to the legislative inspector general’s office that was released with the report, the former Benton staffer wrote that she had hoped to build a career in government but was dissuaded “watching leaders I admired put their own desires before the work.”

“Sexual harassment is not a lapse in judgment. It is not something to be swept under the rug. It is an abuse of power, an abuse of the trust that voters place in that office,” the ex-staffer wrote. “The workers who keep our state government running, many of them young people who showed up eager to serve, deserve to work without fear. And every young person watching learns from what our leaders do, not what they say. Those lessons ripple far beyond one office and one news cycle.”

In his report, McCuskey recalled that in November 2022 he attended a conference with Democratic state Rep. Maurice West of Rockford, then the chair of the Legislative Ethics Commission, to speak about ethics and sexual harassment to newly elected legislators. Among the attendees was Benton, McCuskey wrote.

“It is outrageous to think that the LIG (Legislative Inspector General) and Chair of the Legislative Ethics Commission would address a new member of the General Assembly about ethics and sexual harassment and have that member shortly thereafter begin a pattern and practice of sexual harassment against the first woman he hired in his district office in 2023,” McCuskey wrote.

The former Benton staffer sent Welch’s office a lengthy list of allegations, many of a sexual nature, against Benton in April 2023, followed by an additional list weeks later, the Tribune has reported. But Welch’s office did not address Benton until that July. By then, the staffer had quit Benton’s office, saying she feared for her mental health.

“The Chief of Staff and the Ethics Officer for the Speaker’s Office decided to confront Benton with these allegations after the district employee resigned in June 2023 to avoid retaliation by Benton if he found out who filed the complaint,” McCuskey wrote.

That statement is at odds with what Welch has said at various Democratic caucus meetings as he has tried to contain criticism over his handling of the Benton situation. In those meetings, Welch has maintained that it was the former Benton staffer who asked his office not to pursue questioning Benton until she had quit. The staffer told the Tribune she did not recall telling Welch’s office that.

The former Benton staffer rejected Welch’s office’s suggestions that she file a complaint with the legislative inspector general’s office at the time because she did not want to become a pariah and jeopardize a future job in politics and government, she told the Tribune. She instead thought the matter could be handled internally.

Regardless, she was insistent with Welch’s office that she did not want other women to face the harassment she experienced from Benton, emails obtained by the Tribune show. She told the Tribune that no disciplinary action followed her complaint.

In a statement, Welch maintained the report “reaffirms confidence that our office acted responsibly – following legal guidance, respecting the wishes of those who came forward, and taking decisive action as additional information established a pattern of misconduct.”

But in the report, McCuskey made no judgment on the speaker’s office’s actions. Additionally, the report makes no mention of whether Welch ever spoke to Benton following the former staffer’s allegations.

The report also does not address Welch’s communication with the former Benton staffer, who had previously interned in the speaker’s office, on social media. The Tribune investigation revealed that Welch’s interactions with her included him responding with heart-eye emojis to images of her, as well as a request over the Signal messaging app to meet in the bar area of a suburban restaurant, though she said she never met Welch there.

The staffer told the Tribune Welch’s emoji responses made her feel “uncomfortable.” In meetings with Democratic caucuses, Welch has acknowledged he was wrong to send the emojis but said he often meets people at that restaurant.

After the lobbyist’s interaction with Benton this past winter, Welch in late February removed the lawmaker from caucus and committee assignments, and in March Welch filed the complaint with the legislative inspector general’s office. After the speaker’s office received McCuskey’s report on July 1, Welch called for Benton’s resignation, which Benton submitted two days later. Benton also dropped his 2026 reelection campaign for his legislative seat. Democrats have selected Jessica Dixon Heitman to serve out the remainder of Benton’s term and appear on the November ballot as the party’s nominee.

Welch’s handling of the former Benton staffer’s complaint has drawn criticism from some of the 46 women in the speaker’s 78-member caucus. The House Democratic Women’s Caucus called Welch’s handling “insufficient,” and other women’s groups have questioned his leadership.

At the same time, some in the 22-member House Black Caucus have been protective of Welch, the state’s first Black speaker of the House.

Welch ascended to the speakership in 2021 in part because of a 2017-18 uprising among female House Democrats against then-longtime Speaker Michael Madigan over his handling of a #MeToo scandal, though Welch, too, had a controversial past involving women. Madigan, after losing the support of women members, was later convicted in a federal corruption scandal and sentenced to prison.

Gov. JB Pritzker, the de facto head of the state’s Democratic Party, called on Welch July 22 to be forthcoming with the public about how he handled the Benton situation.

“The speaker has a responsibility to be utterly and completely transparent about the situation to make sure that he is letting the public know, as well as, in particular, his members know exactly what happened, and to the extent that he made mistakes, to own up to those mistakes,” Pritzker said.

Welch has not personally addressed the media since the Tribune disclosed that his office was aware of sexual harassment complaints against Benton dating to 2023. Instead, his office has issued generic statements to the Tribune through a spokesperson that did not address detailed questions.

In the complaint filed by Welch against Benton, the inspector general determined three claims were unfounded.

One involved an allegation that Benton acted hostilely in an attempt to get on stage with Pritzker at the Illinois State Fair in the summer of 2024. “Because this claim is barred by the statute of limitations and has nothing to do with sexual harassment, I find the claim to be unfounded,” McCuskey wrote.

Another unfounded claim involved a political argument Benton had with an Illinois Federation of Teachers staff member over school funding for Chicago. McCuskey called it “purely a political argument and not sexual harassment.”

McCuskey dismissed a third claim as “hearsay” — an allegation that Benton had pictures on his phone of women “in various stages of undress which he claimed to be involved with romantically.”

“Every woman member of the General Assembly I interviewed said they had heard about the pictures on Benton’s cell phone, but could not identify anyone who saw the pictures,” McCuskey wrote. “Without any names from anyone about lobbyists who may have information of interest, my investigation in this claim came to (an) end with only hearsay. Accordingly, this claim is dismissed as unfounded.”

But in a separate response released Friday with the report, the lobbyist said there were “inaccuracies” in McCuskey’s report “that must be addressed.” She said it was likely due to McCuskey not recording his interview with her or taking “contemporaneous notes.”

The lobbyist disagreed with the legislative inspector general’s decision to rule as “unfounded” complaints about Benton displaying photos from his phone of women he claimed to have slept with. The lobbyist said she told McCuskey that had been the case with her and did not know why he “disregarded this information.” She previously also told the Tribune the same.

The lobbyist also said Benton never asked her, “You want to get out of here and have some fun” as part of her encounter with the Plainfield Democrat that included him engaging in lewd conversation, as McCuskey detailed in his report.

But McCuskey called his work an “extensive investigation.”

“I have concluded that Representative Harry Benton during 2025 and 2026 engaged in inappropriate conduct which rises to the level of sexual harassment in violation of state law,” McCuskey wrote.

“The fact that these violations are only misdemeanors and may be considered minor crimes by some does not mean they should be ignored,” he wrote. “People should not be treated as mere objects to tolerate other people’s verbal pleasure or jokes. Rep. Benton took the sexual harassment training at least three times in his short legislative career and ignored common sense examples of what not to say and do.”

At the time McCuskey finished his report, Benton had not yet resigned but had been sidelined by Welch. To discipline Benton, McCuskey recommended that Welch make permanent Benton’s removal from the Democratic caucus, legislative committees, and access to the speaker’s office staff resources. But McCuskey wrote that he opposed expulsion proceedings by the full House, saying they “would be lengthy and require a Special Session” of the legislature. Welch disagreed, saying that upon receiving the report, he told Benton to resign or face expulsion. Benton resigned two days later.

McCuskey’s initial report cited Benton for violating the state’s Human Rights Act. But Welch’s office corrected him, noting elected public officials and staff are not covered by that law. But Benton violated a prohibition on sexual harassment under the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act.

Welch had urged the Legislative Ethics Commission — the bipartisan, eight-member panel of lawmakers that oversees the legislative inspector general’s work — to make McCuskey’s findings public. The commission voted unanimously July 23 to release the report, pending additional comments from the complainants and Benton as required by law. After that deadline passed Thursday, the commission released it.

There was no response from Benton.

In the ex-Benton staffer’s response, she wrote that the formal release of a report about Benton’s behavior provides an opportunity for introspection and change.

“This moment is not an opportunity to pit one party against the other; we have enough of that. My hope is that this experience, my experience, leads to something more important: honest reflection on the culture change, the policy change, and the personal change Springfield needs to attract and keep its brightest talent, and to make it a place where the work that matters is the focus,” she wrote.

“Serving as an elected official is a privilege, not a right. With that privilege comes scrutiny, and it should. If you cannot put the people you serve ahead of yourself, this profession is not for you. But to those who can, and I believe most can, this is your moment,” she continued. “Hold your colleagues accountable. Protect the people who work for you. Let down the ladder. And leave this state better than you found it, for the generations coming behind us.”