Utah GOP Leader Hot-Tubbed With Naked 15 Year Old Girl, Paid For Her Silence

Utah GOP House Majority Leader Kevin Garn has admitted that in 1985 he skinny-dipped in a hot tub with a nude 15 year-old girl and has paid her $150,000 since 2002 in return for her silence. The devout Mormon and "family values" advocate was married at the time.

With his wife by his side, Garn yesterday told reporters: "I expect to suffer public humiliation and embarrassment. Some lessons are hard to learn. This is something I should've done back in 2002 but I was scared. I did not want to be publicly judged by one of my life's [worst mistakes]." Maher detailed the incident in an interview with the paper. She said that in 1985, age 15, she was employed by Garn, then 30, at his business, Pegasus Records and KSG Enterprises. Garn, she said, "struck up a relationship" with her, as the paper puts it. One night, he took her to a location in Salt Lake City -- it's unclear where -- where they both got in the hot-tub nude. Garn yesterday told reporters about the incident. "I can unequivocally tell you there was no physical contact, there was no touching, there was no intercourse, there was none of those things. It simply did not occur. I'm not trying to downplay what did occur but I want to make it very plain." Nonetheless, Maher, who now lives in New Hampshire, blames the incident for triggering the subsequent unraveling of her life. She has struggled with drugs and drinking, and has had mental health problems.

Garn has been a supporter of archconservative Utah Gov. Gary Herbert. In January he allowed a statewide LGBT rights bill to die in committee for the second year in a row, saying that "nothing had changed" that warranted the bill's passage.