Probation officer gives office BJ to boot-camp teen
Kevin Garn, Utah House Majority Leader, Paid Woman $150,000 to Keep Naked Hot Tub Secret
Though no one can beat Florida's sheer volume of depravity, tiny Utah, with its repressed religious culture, has gotta be America's weirdest state per capita. Meet Kevin Garn, the 55-year-old majority leader of the Utah House...
25 years ago, the then 28-year-old Republican decided to do a some naked hot-tubbing. That wouldn't be a crime -- if he hadn't done it with a 15-year-old girl. He says there was no sex. But getting naked with a school girl is just a little creepy. In 2007 Maher, who now lives in New Hampshire, asked Garn to pay her way back to her high school reunion in Utah. They met while she was visiting. A year later, she emailed Garn's oldest son to say that "nothing will stop me from getting exactly what this matter needs, and that is justice and compensation." At the time, she was going through a divorce with a custody battle, and clearly needed money. In recent weeks, she'd been contacting newspapers to get her story out. Garn tried to call her, but she hung up. Maher believes he has a history of going perv on young women -- a claim he denies -- and wants the good people of Utah to know.
The matter seemed to have been left in the past until 2002. But that's when Garn (pictured above) decided to run for Congress. In Utah, you can't be a good family-values conservative when you get naked with other family's daughters.
So Garn decided to make sure no one knew about it. He paid Cheryl Maher, the girl in question, $150,000 to keep her mouth shut.
Garn lost the election, but that didn't put an end to his little bribery scheme. Either Maher is a gold digger, or she's merely suffering pangs of conscience -- we'll let you decide.
So let's recap, shall we? The guy is a pedophile. He pays someone off to keep that secret. Then when he's about to get caught, he beats his victim to the airwaves with a spinned confession. Is this what passes for political courage?
Republicans say they won't ask Garn to resign. After all, he's the Utah GOP's point man on new ethics legislation that comes in response to -- you guessed it -- a bribery scandal.
Read other strange adventures from the Mormon state in our Utah Archives.
