Senator ‘Takes Exception’

Sen. Bob Packwood said Friday that he took “strong exception” to accusations by a woman who has said that he made sexual advances toward her when she was 17. Her complaint, the first against Packwood involving a minor, has renewed calls for public hearings into his case and prompted various people, including Republican presidential aspirant Patrick Buchanan, to call for his expulsion from the Senate.

Packwood, R-Ore., said Friday that having read the woman’s deposition to the Senate Select Committee on Ethics, “I take strong exception to her version of the event.”

The woman’s account, first disclosed by The Washington Post in 1993, was one of two that emerged after the Senate voted last week against holding public hearings. They bring to 19 the number of women who have told the Ethics Committee that he made unwanted sexual advances toward them between 1969 and 1990.