According to allegations, first reported by The Washington Post, Sydney Black, a student at Virginia Commonwealth University, said that Wilder, 88, took her out in February 2017 to celebrate her 20th birthday, ordering her martinis. Black told The Post that Wilder later took her to his condo in Richmond, where, she said, he touched her leg and kissed her on the lips.
Black said she jerked away from Wilder’s advance and rebuked him. She told The Post that, months later, Wilder told her that there was no longer funding for her position as an office assistant at the university’s L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, where the former governor works as a distinguished professor. Black filed a complaint with the university in December, and its Title IX office is investigating the allegations, The Post reported, adding that she also reported the episode to police.
Wilder did not respond to requests for comment through email and phone calls to his assistant Thursday. As the country’s first elected African-American governor, Wilder is a historic figure in U.S. politics.
The accusations against him come after a storm of political scandals in Virginia, where Gov. Ralph Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring admitted to wearing blackface, and Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax was accused of sexual assault by two women. Fairfax has denied that he assaulted either woman.
Attempts to reach Black on Thursday were unsuccessful. Her mother, Margo Stokes, referred questions to the family’s lawyer, Jason Wolfrey, who said The Post had accurately reported Black’s allegations.
Wolfrey said in a statement that the family has “faith in the Title IX investigative process and are confident that it will affirm Sydney’s reports to investigators.” He said the family declined to comment further.
A spokesman for Virginia Commonwealth University declined to confirm that officials were investigating Black’s accusations, citing university policy.
Black, now 22, told The Post that at her birthday dinner in 2017, Wilder said he could help her get admitted to Howard University School of Law, where he sits on the board of trustees. She said that he later told her that he could pay for law school and take her on trips to Paris and Atlanta, and he offered to let her live for free in his home, according to The Post.
Black told The Post that, at first, she saw Wilder as the “key to my future.” Troubled by Wilder’s behavior and struggling to pay for college, Black withdrew from university courses last fall, The Post reported. She enrolled again this semester.
Wilder has long been a towering figure in Virginia politics, with a history of breaking racial barriers. The grandson of slaves, Wilder entered state politics in the late 1960s, when he became the first African-American state senator in Virginia since Reconstruction. He was elected governor in 1989 and served from 1990-94.
Black, an African-American woman, told The Post that she had struggled over whether to report Wilder’s behavior because of his historical legacy.
She told The Post, “I had to choose being a woman over being black.”
Wilder has recently been outspoken about harassment by powerful men at his university. In October, he published a blog post saying that he had filed a whistleblower lawsuit against a former Virginia Commonwealth University dean, alleging that the dean had harassed and discriminated against one of Wilder’s office assistants. There is no indication that the lawsuit is related to Black’s allegations.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.