HOUSTON -- Federal Judge Samuel B. Kent was indicted and charged with two counts of abusive sexual contact and one count of attempted aggravated sexual abuse on Thursday.

Cathy McBroom, a former case manager at the U.S. District Court in Galveston accused Kent of twice touching her under her clothing and repeatedly making obscene suggestions during the six years she worked with him.

Through his attorney Dick DeGuerin, Kent has denied the allegations.

Galveston County Daily News

Federal Judge Samuel Kent has been indicted on three charges of sexual harassment.

“He is innocent; he did not force himself on this lady. Everything that happened was consensual. They worked together for six years and she did not complain until she was about to be fired,” DeGuerin said after the indictments were announced.

Kent was moved from Galveston to Houston in October as part of a four-month suspension. He returned to the federal bench in Galveston in January, but was restricted from hearing any federal cases involving sexual harassment and had to share his caseload with federal judges in Houston.

The ex-court employee who made the allegations against Kent was feeling vindicated on Thursday.

“After a very difficult 17 months, I feel like I have finally been vindicated,” McBroom said in a statement released by her attorney Rusty Hardin. “I have listened and read with horror as Judge Kent's lawyer suggested that what happened to me was ‘enthusiastically consensual.'

“The indictment makes cleat that the Department of Justice and the grand jury recognize that what happened to me was much more than offensive words.”

Kent was appointed to the federal bench in 1990 by President George H.W. Bush.