When the incident occurred, Garn, a conservative family-value Repbulican, was married. He paid Cheryl Maher the money in 2002 to hush the matter up after she contacted media when he was running for Congress.
He had a lawyer draft a non-disclosure agreement. In his press conference with his wife, Garn said “I expect to suffer public humiliation and embarrassment. Some lessons are hard to learn. This is something I should’ve done back in 2002 but I was scared. I did not want to be publicly judged by one of my life’s [worst mistakes].”
At the time, Maher was a 15-year-old employee at Garn’s business Pegasus Records and KSG Enterprises. He insists that they did not have sex and stated:
I can unequivocally tell you there was no physical contact, there was no touching, there was no intercourse, there was none of those things. It simply did not occur. …I’m not trying to downplay what did occur but I want to make it very plain.
Maher says that there was contact and there are allegations of a cover-up in 2002, here.
Garn has refused to resign, here.
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