Trenton – Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg, the co-chair of the New Jersey Legislative Select Oversight Commitee, issued the following statement today in response to the Verniero Report:

“Unfortunately, this report falls short of the comprehensive investigation promised by the governor. It fails to meet any reasonable standard for an investigation into the serious allegations of sexual assault, the screening practices for hiring public employees, the failure to take responsibility by key officials, the continued failure to find out what went wrong and the reasons why no real actions were taken to address the plight of the alleged assault survivor.

“There continues to be too many unanswered questions, too many inconsistancies and contradictions, and too many people unable to provide a true accounting. We still do not know who hired Mr. Alvarez, why he did not leave state employment when he was told to do so by high-ranking members of the Administration, and what was the supposed decision-making process that allowed this situation to go unresolved for so long.

“This report is peppered with vagaries and uncertainties, relying on terms such as ‘seemed to’, ‘might have’, ‘appeared to’ and ‘based on available information’ in hedging its analysis.  These are hardly the types of conclusions that anyone expected from a highly-anticipated ‘investigation’.

“The report appears to make more of an effort to exonorate the principals who were involved or should have been involved than it does to shed light on this case.  There is no accountability and no one willing or able to take responsibility.

“If the Administration does not know how Mr. Alvarez was hired even after completing their own investigation, this leaves many unknowns, including: were others hired without their knowledge and what standards were used to approve the hiring for high-level, public positions?

“It would be difficult to learn the lessons that need to be learned from this case based on this report alone and it would be hard to implement the reforms needed to make sure this does not happen again.  That is our goal – to put in place the safeguards that respect the survivors of sexual assault and the protections in hiring practices. We will continue to work to achieve that goal.”