Woman accuses Eric Swalwell of violent sexual assault

from Jeanne KuangCalMatters

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A Beverly Hills woman alleged Tuesday that Democratic Rep. Eric Swawell sexually assaulted her in a hotel room in 2018, saying he believed she had been drugged.

“He raped me and choked me. And while he was choking me, I passed out. And I thought I was dead. I didn’t consent to any sexual activity,” Lona Drews told reporters at a press conference at her lawyers’ offices in Beverly Hills.

Drewes said Swawell, whom she met through mutual friends, “spoke repeatedly about his ability to make connections” to help with her software company. Drews said he was also considering a run for the Beverly Hills City Council at the time.

Swawell and his attorney, Elias Dabaye, did not immediately return requests for comment. He denied the “serious, false allegations against me” and said he would continue to fight them, but apologized to his wife for “errors in judgment that I have made in the past.”

Swawell was one of the three leading Democratic candidates for governor a week ago, but his support quickly collapsed soon after the san francisco chronicle reported last Friday that an unnamed former staff member said Swawell asked her for oral sex while she was working for him and sexually assaulted her twice when she was too drunk to consent.

CNN later Friday posted the same woman’s account, as well as those of three other women, one of whom said he kissed and touched her inappropriately, and two of whom claimed he sent unsolicited messages.

Swawell suspended his campaign for governor On Sunday night and on Monday, he said he would resign from Congress.

Drewes said she met Swawell a total of three times in 2018 and did not see him again after the third time, when the alleged assault occurred. She provided reporters with a photo that her lawyers say shows one of their dates at the opening of a restaurant in Beverly Hills. The restaurant opened in late April 2018, according to news reports.

One of her attorneys, Lisa Bloom, said she will file a complaint with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office later Tuesday that will include text messages between the two, journal entries in which Drews said she recorded the incident at the time and information about people she told about the alleged assault. Drews also told reporters that she then sought therapy at an assault survivor center in Connecticut.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.