Arizona congressional candidate says she raped in August while fixing a campaign sign

A congressional candidate in Arizona says she was raped this past summer by two men while she was fixing a campaign sign.

Democratic candidate Bernadette Greene-Placentia says the incident occurred Aug. 14 in Sun City, a Phoenix suburb, when she was fixing the sign in the predawn hours. 

Greene-Placentia said she was knocked unconscious by two men, then sexually assaulted, according to a report to the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office obtained by local media.   

Greene-Placentia is making a long-shot bid in Arizona’s 8th Congressional District to unseat GOP Rep.  Abraham Hamadeh who won by 13 percentage points in 2024.

The police report states Greene-Placentia initially said she heard one of the men saying “Democratic b---h” and that she didn't remember much afterward. She later said she could not be sure what she had heard.

Greene-Placentia, a former long-haul trucker, reported the attack to police about two weeks after she said it occurred. She did not make it public until this week, when she shared it with the Phoenix New Times, the city’s alternative newspaper, which published it Wednesday.

 “When it first happened, I didn’t want to tell anybody,” she said in an interview on Wednesday. “I don’t want my campaign to be about this,” she said. “But women need to know it’s OK to come forward.”