John Bickley

Well, you know, what I can tell you, Georgia, is that I grew up in the San Joaquin Valley, and I made a few calls to some old farm executives that my family knows.

And what I've been told is that it was at least known that Cesar Chavez's personal morals were malleable, let's say.

But I think if you speak to younger people in the labor union movement—

They're not aware of it.

They're saying this is news to them.

In fact, we spoke to attorney, author, and abuse survivor Jodi Neal, who has worked in civil rights organizing herself, and she told us these allegations were completely unknown to her.

What are the specific allegations here?

Yeah, Georgia, I don't think that this story would be the bombshell that it is if it did not include Dolores Huerta.

She was Chavez's longtime partner in the movement who founded the United Farm Workers with him.

Well, she's 96 now, and she told The Times that she never disclosed her story before because she didn't want to hurt the movement.

But she alleges that he assaulted her twice.

One encounter she described as coercive and the other she described as violent rape.

Now, Neal told us that having one survivor come forward does give others courage to do so.

And that seems to have been what happened here with Huerta.

Now, I want to ask you about the other two allegations.

We don't know a lot of specifics yet, but we do know they involved minors.

What do we know?

Yeah, these are arguably even more serious as they involve two girls who would have been 12 and 13 at the time that they allege the grooming by Chavez started.

So one says it began at 13 and continued for years.

Another says that the inappropriate touching began at 12.