Mayor Bob Filner said Friday he’ll take two weeks in August to enter an intensive behavior counseling clinic to address behavior toward women he said the city doesn’t deserve to see in its mayor.
“I must become a better person,” he said.
That isn’t nearly enough, said Morgan Rose, who accused Filner this week of showing her unwanted sexual attention in 2009.
“This is very deep-seated,” she said. “Who’s going to feel comfortable around him?”
Rose, a psychologist with the San Diego Unified School District, described to KPBS a 2009 interaction with the then-congressman when he tried to kiss her and said her eyes had bewitched him. She’s watched and listen to other stories revealed this week and said it suggests a longer pattern than should be expected to change in a short time period.
“You don’t rehab these kinds of people,” she said. “He doesn’t even understand what we’re talking about. He doesn’t even have the wiring to understand how a woman feels when he does something like that.”
The city would be better off with “a real statesman or stateswoman,” Rose said.
“Do we have to put Band-Aids on this horrible person and call him our mayor?” she said. “If he’s going to go therapy it’s going to only be to hang on to power. His heart’s not going to be in it.”
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