A Democratic congressional candidate running against a Republican endorsed by President Donald Trump in Arizona was raped after she stopped to repair one of her campaign signs.
Bernadette Greene-Placentia, who is challenging Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-AZ) in the state's 8th Congressional District, described the attack in an interview with the Phoenix New Times published Wednesday.
New Times also cited a police report and interviewed six people close to her, including family, friends, campaign staff, and her landlord. The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office is investigating.
The attack happened just after 2 a.m. on a Friday, as Greene-Placentia walked across a parking lot to fix a damaged campaign sign, according to the report. It was a routine she had followed all summer.
She made it only a few yards before an attacker struck her on the head and she blacked out, according to the New Times. She woke to a sharp pain below her waist and a man she did not know on top of her, pulling out of her.
"-ic b—, not a very good f—," she heard the man mumble, the outlet reported. Her mind filled in the words as "Democratic b—," though she told the New Times she wasn't sure that was exactly what he said.
She felt a second man use his weight to nudge her left leg further apart, the report said. She swung her foot at him and heard him say "not even worth it" as he moved away. The men left her face down in the parking lot with her Jeep still running and its hatch open, she said.
She does not remember driving home or collapsing into bed.
"It's just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember," Greene-Placentia told the outlet. "As much as I don't want to remember, I've tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that's where I'm at."
Greene-Placentia, a longtime long-haul trucker, is running against Hamadeh, a MAGA Republican, in an "ultra-red" district that covers much of the northwest Phoenix suburbs, New Times reported. It includes Peoria, Surprise and Sun City.
She had gone out dozens of times in the middle of the night to repair signs, sometimes with her husband, Alex Placentia, or a campaign volunteer, the outlet reported. The late hours let the campaign avoid the heat and traffic. She no longer does it.
Greene-Placentia believes she may have suffered a concussion in the attack, which would have been her third, but she did not seek medical care, the New Times reported. Her body was covered in bruises, and the police report says she bled vaginally for three days afterward.
At first, Greene-Placentia did not want to report the assault because she was "embarrassed" and wanted to "forget it happened," she told the outlet.
"I didn't feel like I could keep saying that if I weren't also fighting for women that are victims of sexual assault," she said of her campaign message about fighting for Arizonans.
She told her campaign staff on the Sunday after the attack and told her husband the next day, according to New Times.
More than two weeks after the assault, she reported it to the sheriff's office and told deputies it happened near 99th Avenue and Bell Road in Sun City, the police report shows.
Craig Beckman, her communications director, said she was "visibly upset" that Sunday when she told him in her car at a campaign event that two men had raped her while she was fixing signs, though she did not have a clear memory, the outlet reported.
"I spent quite a lot of time explaining to her that this isn't her fault," Beckman told New Times. "Just because she put herself in a vulnerable position doesn't give a man an excuse to physically or sexually assault her."
Greene-Placentia also confided in state Rep. Stephanie Simacek (D-AZ), a political friend, over coffee in early September, according to the report.
"It was a big wake-up call for me. I think oftentimes, as candidates and electeds, we think that it's not going to happen to us," Simacek said.
Dave Moyer, a spokesperson for the sheriff's office, declined to comment on the investigation because it is ongoing, the New Times reported.
"I need to let women know that it's okay to talk about it," Greene-Placentia said.