A Vermont lawmaker who has admitted to and apologized for repeatedly dumping water into a colleague’s bag at the Statehouse described her behavior as “out of character,” while the targeted legislator said the episode followed years of verbal taunting.
State Rep. Mary Morrissey, R-Bennington, was twice caught on video pouring water into the bag of her district-mate, Rep. Jim Carroll, D-Bennington, in April. Carroll has said his bag was soaked almost daily at certain points in the recently concluded legislative session.
Carroll, who recorded the incidents with a video camera after seeking the Capitol Police’s assistance in identifying the culprit, released the footage publicly on Tuesday after an account of the scheme was first published by Seven Days last week.
Morrissey confirmed to VTDigger on Wednesday that she faces an internal investigation by the House Ethics Panel — a legislative committee that investigates allegations of bad behavior by House members within the Statehouse.
Neither Carroll nor Morrissey responded to Seven Days’ initial requests for comment, the newspaper reported. But three days after its first story on the subject was published, Carroll sent a late-night email to several Vermont reporters announcing his “reluctant” release of the video footage.
With the story out in the open, Carroll said then, “I believe it is only right that I release the video to be fully transparent to my constituents and all Vermonters.”
Attached to the email were two surveillance-style video clips — one dated April 23 and another April 26. Both videos depict a person walking up to Carroll’s white and green tote bag, looking over their shoulder, then pouring water from a plastic cup into the bag before leaving.
In the April 26 video, the culprit appears mere seconds after Carroll retrieved something from the bag, which was hanging on a coat rack in the Statehouse.
The culprit’s face is obscured in both videos, with only the back of their head visible. But the person’s hair matches Morrissey’s, and the culprit’s outfit in the April 26 video matches what Morrissey was seen wearing during a recorded committee hearing the same day. Confronted with the video evidence, Morrissey admitted to reporters and House leadership that it was her.
Reading aloud from a prepared statement during a phone call with VTDigger on Wednesday, Morrissey said, “I just want to say how very, very sorry I am for my actions of pouring water into Jim Carroll’s tote bag.”
“Quite honestly, I don’t know why I did it,” Morrissey continued. “I was not meaning to hurt him. It is something very out of character for me, and I am truly ashamed.”
But in an extensive interview with VTDigger Tuesday afternoon, Carroll rejected Morrissey’s argument that the episodes were “out of character.”
“One or two times, I’d say, ‘Well, it’s just a joke,’” Carroll said. “But no, this went on unabated from January until May, when she got caught.”
The water incidents did not happen in a vacuum, according to Carroll. The relationship between the two district-mates was sour long before this year.
Carroll and Morrissey knew one another decades before they began representing the same House district in Montpelier.
Morrissey told VTDigger that she knew Carroll’s parents “very well.” Carroll delivered the Morrisseys’ newspapers, he told VTDigger, and the two families attended the same Catholic church.
“Socially, they didn’t intermingle,” Carroll said. “But, you know, there was no rivalry of any kind.”
Since they both began serving in Montpelier, one particular incident between the two representatives stands out to Carroll. He recounted to VTDigger his memory of a 2019 public hearing on Proposal 5, a constitutional amendment codifying the right to an abortion in the Vermont Constitution. Carroll supported the measure, which was ultimately enacted; Morrissey did not.
According to Carroll, he heard Morrissey say his name from several rows behind him. When he approached, he recalled that Morrissey said that she had a letter from Carroll’s parents from two decades prior, “expressing their feelings about abortion.”
“She said, ‘I just want you to know that I think your parents would be so ashamed of you if you voted in favor of codification,’ or words to that effect,” Carroll recounted. “I was stunned, absolutely stunned, that she would drag my dead parents from the grave.”
Asked about Carroll’s recollection of the hearing, Morrissey said she couldn’t remember.
“I, you know, 2019, you know, I, really, you know, as I said, I can’t think, I’m not thinking back that far,” Morrissey replied. “I’m not trying to avoid the question. I just can’t recall it.”
The incidents accumulated over the years, Carroll said. Morrissey was “just miserable toward me,” he said.
“Her favorite was, she’d be in proximity to me — either near the elevator, or in the lunch line, or at one of the ice cream socials — and she’d say, ‘What is that smell?’ and she’d recoil from me,” Carroll said. “She would say it in front of other legislators, and it was humiliating.”
Morrissey declined to answer questions about her feelings toward or relationship with Carroll, nor his descriptions of their interactions. “I gave my statement the other day. I’m not going to get into any of this. We have a process we’re going through and that is where I stand,” she said, referring to the ethics panel probe.
Fast-forward to this legislative session. Carroll told VTDigger that he brought one particularly concerning episode, in which he said Morrissey walked by and verbally taunted him on April 4, to House leadership and Capitol Police.
“We locked eyes, and she got about two feet, two steps, beyond me, and she said, ‘Fuck you,’” Carroll said. “I kept walking and I said, ‘I heard that,’ and then I just laughed.”
Morrissey denied that the interaction ever took place.
“Absolutely not,” she said when asked about the account. “We very rarely spoke. When I’d go by him, I’d go, ‘Jim,’ you know, kind of nod my head. But we really didn’t have an exchange.”
It was the water-dumping scheme, though, that Carroll said tormented him most. In January, Carroll began noticing that his tote bag was repeatedly soaked. At first, he thought maybe snow fell into his bag and melted, or that he accidentally set it down in a puddle. Or perhaps someone accidentally tripped and spilled something into his bag, he thought.
“Then it started to happen just about every day,” Carroll said. “I said to myself, ‘This is not an accident.’”
For weeks, he said, he kept his suspicions to himself, fearing that he would sound paranoid if he told anyone. Eventually, he confided in a handful of legislative colleagues, then House Speaker Jill Krowinski, D-Burlington, and Capitol Police. By April, Carroll said he began going to Capitol Police daily to log whether his bag was wet or dry.
One day, according to Carroll, he told Capitol Police Chief John Poleway that he suspected Morrissey was the culprit.
According to Carroll, Poleway said he needed “two pieces of direct evidence” implicating Morrissey, such as an eyewitness, a photo or a video. Carroll hatched a plan with his brother. They ordered a small camera online.
“I taped the camera to the collar of the coat, and I had a black wool scarf, and I hung my coat on the opposite wall of my committee room and aimed it on my canvas bag,” Carroll explained. “You’d walk by my coat and look right at it, and you never would have seen it.”
Armed with video evidence, Carroll presented it to Krowinski, who then held a May 3 meeting with Morrissey and House Minority Leader Pattie McCoy, R-Poultney. McCoy did not respond to VTDigger’s requests for comment this week.
Rep. Mary Morrissey, R-Bennington, prior to the start of the 2017 legislative session at the Statehouse. Photo by Jim Therrien/VTDigger
In a written statement released Tuesday afternoon, Krowinski said that as a result of Morrissey’s behavior, she opted not to appoint Morrissey to conference committees to negotiate with the Senate in the final few weeks of the legislative session.
“This is a truly disturbing situation that is at odds with our legislative practices,” Krowinski said in her statement. “The integrity and decorum of our legislative proceedings and of legislators are of paramount importance, and any actions or behaviors that compromise these values will be thoroughly investigated and addressed. I want to assure everyone that the matter is being taken seriously.”
For Carroll, Morrissey’s apology felt shallow after months of being made to feel paranoid and embarrassed.
“There were weeks where I didn’t know who it was,” Carroll said. “It was a miserable time for me, really miserable. I was paranoid, thinking, ‘Why? Why? What could I have possibly done to anyone to deserve this? Was it inadvertent? Did I say something on the floor that pissed somebody off or I hurt them?’”
“I would spend hours turning it over in my head,” he added.
It wasn’t Carroll’s only challenge this legislative session. After he was charged with a DUI outside the Statehouse in February, Carroll checked himself into rehab to seek help for substance use disorder. (Morrissey denies that the prank had anything to do with Carroll’s DUI charge.)
He’s been sober since then, he told VTDigger, but it’s been difficult — especially this legislative session.
“It didn’t make staying sober easier,” Carroll said. “This past weekend, when the story broke out of Seven Days, it was about 10 minutes where I thought, ‘Man, I’d really like a beer.’ But, you know, I just redirected myself, and that’s what I’ve done all along.”
Read the story on VTDigger here: A lawmaker was caught on tape dumping water into her colleague’s bag. He says it’s part of a yearslong pattern of bullying..