Is This Trump's America? Politician Accused of Pinching Woman's Genitals

According to an arrest warrant obtained by Snopes, Christopher von Keyserling, a Republican member of Greenwich's local government, and the 57-year-old unnamed victim briefly chatted in December while passing in the hallway of the nursing home where she works.

"This is a new world (politically) and you need to educate your fellow politicians," she allegedly told him.

"I love this new world," von Keyserling allegedly responded. "I no longer have to be politically correct." He also allegedly called her "a lazy, bloodsucking union employee," to which she reportedly replied, "Fuck you."

The victim told police that she then went into her office; von Keyserling followed her shortly afterward, reportedly to see another worker. Because she didn't want to be alone with him, she allegedly attempted to leave the office. As she passed him, the affidavit states, "He reached between her legs from behind and pinched her in the groin area. She turned to him, pointed at him, and said, 'You're lucky I didn't deck you, but if you ever fucking touch me again I will.' She then said that he, 'looked back with a really evil look in his eyes' and said, 'It would be your word against mine and nobody will believe you.'"

Von Keyserling was released from jail Wednesday on a $2,500 bond and will appear in court on January 25. His attorney Phil Russell told Greenwich Time that the gesture was "playful." "It was too trivial to be considered anything of significance," he said. "To call it a sexual assault is not based in reality."

Kaitlyn Fydenkevez is the director of policy and public relations at Connecticut Alliance to End Sexual Violence. "We see cases all the time where an assault is brushed off as insignificant or trivial or in other language that diminishes what happened to the victim," she tells Broadly. "There's nothing trivial about nonconsensual contact." She also points out that nonconsensual contact is defined under Connecticut statute, therefore "it's not subjective. It's not based on whether or not the perpetrator thinks they assaulted someone."

Fydenkevez believes the alleged incident and von Keyserling's comments about no longer needing to be "politically correct" are connected to Trump's 2005 comments about women, and thus illustrate a trickle-down effect many advocates are worried about. "Even though there was backlash against the President-elect's comments," she says, "on some level his election showed a tacit approval of those kinds of statements. So it's clear that Mr. von Keyserling felt rather emboldened to make his comments in light of the current climate."

So is this sort of behavior what we can come to expect from politicians and other people in power? "As much as stories like this have permeated our media, especially since the Trump videos, I really don't think we should be expecting this from our leaders of any kind on any level," Fydenkevez says. "In fact, we know that most leaders don't behave this way."

"It's important to note," she continues, "that the victim did feel empowered to come forward, the Greenwich town government did believe her—they came out and made a statement from the selectman's office about their zero-tolerance policy—and that the police investigated the allegations thoroughly and it led to his arrest. To shed some positive light, I think people feeling like these avenues are available to them is one way that we can counter that expectation that this is what happens in leadership positions."