San Diego Mayor Bob Filner Taking Leave To Seek Treatment

LOS ANGELES -- San Diego Mayor Bob Filner will take two weeks off to undergo behavioral counseling.

During a news conference broadcast live, Filner said he needed to take responsibility for his actions.

Allegations of sexual harassment by the mayor have been circulating around San Diego. The issue came to a head earlier this week when Filner’s former communications director filed a sexual harassment lawsuit against the city.

Women’s equal rights attorney Gloria Allred announced that Irene McCormack Jackson, the mayor’s former spokeswoman, had filed a sexual harassment lawsuit during a press conference held Monday.

Allred, a partner in the Los Angeles-based employment law firm Allred, Maroko and Goldberg, filed the lawsuit against the city on behalf of McCormack, who was the first woman to come forward publicly with sexual harassment allegations against the mayor.

Since then several others have come forward.

Filner has only been mayor for less than eight months, following two decades in the U.S. House Representatives.

The full-time treatment will begin Aug. 5 with Filner returning to work on Aug. 19.

He will receive morning and evening reports from staffers about city business while in treatment, said Filner.

McCormack, along with a panoply of California and San Diego politicians, has demanded the 70-year-old Democrat’s immediate resignation.

She says she resigned in June at a staff meeting after a deputy chief of staff complained to the mayor that his behavior toward women was wrong and possibly illegal.

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