Oregon Senate President Peter Courtney defended himself Sunday against multiplying allegations that he has swept sexual harassment complaints under the rug, both as one of the most powerful lawmakers in Oregon and in his former role as assistant to the president of Western Oregon University.

Willamette Week reported Saturday that Western Oregon paid out $165,000 to two students in the 2000s to settle allegations that Courtney and the university ignored complaints about professors who sexually harassed them. This month, the Salem Democrat was named in two lawsuits alleging he didn’t do enough about complaints of sexual harassment in the Capitol.

Courtney confirmed that Western Oregon University settled with two students in 2001 and 2005 but minimized his involvement in the cases. He said he wasn’t involved in reaching the settlement in the first case and was quickly dismissed as a defendant in the other.

“I always took every complaint seriously and followed the policies of the University,” Courtney wrote.

Courtney also responded to a suit filed Feb. 18 claiming he didn’t do enough to curb a former senator’s inappropriate behavior. In his statement, Courtney provided a thirteen-point list of steps he took to sanction Jeff Kruse, R.-Roseburg, when he was told Kruse had repeatedly behaved inappropriately with women in the Capitol.

Kruse resigned in March 2018 after an independent report detailed his groping and verbal harassment of women.

-- Fedor Zarkhin

fzarkhin@oregonian.com

desk: 503-294-7674|cell: 971-373-2905|@fedorzarkhin

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