State leaders from both parties had been calling for Johnson’s immediate resignation after the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting published a report Monday detailing allegations that Johnson woke his daughter’s friend during a sleepover in 2013 and forced himself on her, slipping his hands up her shirt and bra and putting his fingers in her vagina.
“What you did was beyond mean; it was evil,” the victim said she wrote in a Facebook message to Johnson shortly after the alleged assault, according to KyCIR.
Johnson said that the incident never happened. “This allegation concerning this lady, this young girl, absolutely has no merit, these are unfounded accusations, totally,” he said on Tuesday, according to the Courier-Journal.
The young woman, now 21, told KyCIR that for years she had considered Johnson to be a “second dad.” She became close with his daughter, Sarah, and familiar with the boozy weekend parties Johnson would throw at the “Pope’s House” — the fellowship hall next to the Heart of Fire Church. Those parties, KyCIR reported, featured scantily clad women, body shots and costumes.
In the first hours of 2013, as a New Year’s Eve party came to an end, the woman said, she was spending the night with Johnson’s daughter in the apartment under the fellowship hall, according to the report. The Washington Post does not identify victims of sexual assault without their consent.
Johnson entered the apartment, drunk and stumbling, so the then-teenager helped him navigate the stairs, she said. She thought he was putting his arm around her for balance, until his hand allegedly slipped up the girl’s shirt, KyCIR reported.
The victim then woke up later that night on the sofa, she told KyCIR, and found Johnson kneeling above her. She told KyCIR that Johnson kissed her forehead and then slipped his hands up her shirt and bra. The report said he groped her, stuck his tongue in her mouth and put his fingers in her vagina. She begged him to stop and tried to force the man, who weighed twice as much as she did, off her without waking Johnson’s daughter, KyCIR reported.
“He told her she’d like it. She said no, she didn’t. She pleaded with him: go away, go away,” KyCIR reported. He eventually did.
The KyCIR report highlights how Johnson — known in his church community as “Danny Ray Johnson” — painted a picture of himself over the years as a pro-gun, antiabortion “patriot,” which helped propel him into the Kentucky legislature in 2016, when he won the House’s 49th District seat. But the seven-month investigation, comprised of more than 100 interviews and thousands of pages of public records, alleges the Republican’s persona is orchestrated to mask troubling incidents — including sexual abuse, arson and false testimony.