A Leon County jury didn’t buy whatever Rep. Fabian Basabe was selling. The Miami Beach Republican was found liable this week for sexually harassing two former male staffers, along with battery and defamation, and was ordered to pay them $450,000 in damages, Florida Politics reports.
The allegations, first brought in 2023 by former aide Nicolas Frevola and former intern Jacob Cutbirth, describe a pattern of unwanted advances: Basabe allegedly grilled the young men about their sex lives, used graphic language pushing them toward men, and showed them a photo of a naked man on his phone, on top of slapping one on the buttocks during an elementary school career day and trying to kiss the other before hiring him as an intern a month later.
Frevola recalled Basabe “slapping him on his rear and whispering in his ear ‘I want all of that butt’ while they were standing in the back of a classroom full of elementary school children.”
The former staffer’s attorney, Cindy Myers, told the news outlet Florida Politics that the jury concluded Basabe sexually harassed Cutbirth on numerous occasions, including by “asking him how big his genitals were, and encouraging him to break off his engagement with his wife to have sex with Mr. Basabe and other men for sport.”