Congressional candidate is raped while repairing her campaign signs

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Congressional candidate is raped while repairing her campaign signs

Embarrassed, she initially didn’t want to report attack.

Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office's investigation is ongoing.


It was just after 2 a.m. on a pitch-black Friday morning when Bernadette Greene-Placentia’s life changed. The Democratic candidate for Congressional District 8 strolled across a parking lot to repair a damaged campaign sign. It was a routine she’d followed all summer. This time, she only made it a few yards.

An attacker smashed her over the head. She blacked out. She woke up to find a strange man on top of her.

Greene-Placentia struggled to open her eyes. She felt a sharp pain below her waist. The attacker was pulling his penis out of her.

She heard him mumble something like, “-ic bitch, not a very good frick,” which her mind filled in as “Democratic bitch,” she recalled. She wasn’t sure that was exactly what he said.

One leg was out of her jean capris. She wore brand-new tennis shoes and a campaign T-shirt. Another man came over. Greene-Placentia felt his weight nudging her left leg further apart. She began swinging her foot at him. “Not even worth it,” she heard the man say as he moved away. He wore black boots and had small feet, she recalled.

The two men left Greene-Placentia face down in the parking lot. The hatch of her silver Jeep Grand Cherokee was still open. The car was still running. She heard music.

She doesn’t remember pulling up her pants or picking herself off the asphalt parking lot. She doesn’t remember closing her Jeep’s hatch and putting her foot on the gas. She doesn’t remember pulling her car into the driveway and collapsing into her bed.

“It’s just these little tiny flashes of things that I do remember,” Greene-Placentia said in an interview with Phoenix New Times. “As much as I don’t want to remember, I’ve tried very, very hard to remember more stuff. But that’s where I’m at.”

Greene-Placentia is a longtime long-haul trucker who moved to the district with her husband in 2017. She’s challenging MAGA Republican Rep. Abe Hamadeh for his congressional seat. The ultra-red district covers a large swath of the northwest Valley, including north Glendale, Peoria, Surprise, Sun City, and up into Anthem.

She’s gone out dozens of times in the middle of the night to repair campaign signs throughout the campaign. Sometimes her husband, Alex Placentia, joins her; other times, a campaign volunteer tags along. It’s been a successful way for Greene-Placentia’s campaign to put up signs while avoiding the heat and traffic.

She doesn’t do it anymore.

She believes she could have suffered a concussion during the altercation, which would have been her third one, although she didn’t seek medical attention. “I just wanted to forget it,” she said. Her body was covered with bruises from the assault, including dime-sized ones from fingers and more on the back of her arms and above her butt.


She initially didn’t want to report what happened either. She was “embarrassed” and just wanted to “forget it happened,” she said. But on the campaign trail, Greene-Placentia is constantly speaking about fighting for Arizonans, “and I didn’t feel like I could keep saying that if I weren’t also fighting for women that are victims of sexual assault,” she said.

She told her campaign staff what happened that Sunday and her husband the next day. She reported the assault to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office two weeks later. She told deputies that the sexual assault occurred near 99th Avenue and Bell Road in Sun City, according to the police report.

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