Police investigating man’s claim that Florida legislator drugged, raped him in 2003
Michael says he remembers the night vividly.
On a weeknight in late 2003, he and a friend went to an exclusive nightclub in Los Angeles. There, he met Fabian Basabe, who is now a Florida state representative but was then just beginning to gain notoriety as a 25-year-old socialite and party boy.
As the club was shutting down around 2 a.m., Michael told the Miami Herald, Basabe invited him and several others to an afterparty at Basabe’s friend’s condo in Malibu. Michael had only had a couple drinks at the club, he said, and drove himself to the afterparty.
That’s when Michael, then 24, says the night took a sudden dark turn. Basabe, he said, made him a drink that caused him to become sick. Shortly after that, he said, Basabe sexually assaulted him on a couch as Michael went in and out of consciousness and was barely able to fight back.
Michael, who is straight, did not report the alleged assault to police at the time, saying recently that he felt “shame” about what had happened. He confided only in his sister — who confirmed his account of the allegations to the Herald — and his boss.
Twenty-one years later, Michael, 45, says he felt compelled to come forward after learning late last year that Basabe, 46, was now an elected official. Adding to his motivation, he said, were the details of other claims made against Basabe since his election to the Florida House in 2022, including his alleged sexual harassment of two former legislative aides.
READ MORE: Biting, berating, racist language: Basabe has faced many claims of bad behavior
Michael described the incident in recent interviews with the Herald, which agreed to use a pseudonym instead of his real first name because he is an alleged victim of sexual assault.
Late last month, Michael reported the allegations to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. On Tuesday, the department confirmed that the agency is actively investigating the matter.
“There is an active investigation,” the department said in an emailed response to an inquiry from the Herald.
Michael also gave a sworn statement earlier this month to an attorney in an ongoing lawsuit against Basabe regarding the alleged harassment of former staffers, according to a transcript of the statement provided to the Herald.
In the statement, Michael described the alleged assault in detail and discussed his motivation for coming forward, saying his goal is to hold Basabe accountable and prevent others from going through similar experiences.
“I’m not motivated by money. I am not trying to sue him. I’m not trying to shake this guy down for any personal benefit other than to go through a process to come forward,” he said, according to the transcript. “I am scared that there are probably other people out there that this has happened to.”
The Herald provided Basabe with a detailed description of the allegations this week and asked for his response. On Thursday, Basabe said in a statement that the accusations were “baseless” and “false” and suggested they were politically motivated ahead of an upcoming election.
“The timing of these baseless accusations speaks louder about [the Herald’s] desire to influence your vote than any statement I can make,” Basabe said. “And let’s not ignore the fact that I am put under attack less than two weeks to Election Day is revolting and MUST be taken into consideration.”
Basabe was elected as a Republican member of the Florida House in 2022, representing a district that includes Miami Beach and other cities in northeast Miami-Dade County. Since his election, he has faced two House investigations into claims that he slapped an aide and sexually harassed the same aide and a former intern. Neither investigation found him guilty of wrongdoing.
Basabe won a primary election in August. He will face Joe Saunders, a former Democratic state representative, in the general election on Nov. 5.
In a statement, an attorney for Basabe, Gus Harper, said the claims were “20-year-old, unproven, and unsubstantiated allegations.”
“Proving (or disproving) something that allegedly occurred more than 20 years [ago] presents a number of inherent difficulties. Witnesses move and pass away, people change, and memories fade. Fortunately, however, the truth never does,” Harper said.
“The truth is that Rep. Fabian Basabe has never sexually battered anyone and never would,” he added. “These allegations are intended to leverage some benefit out of Mr. Basabe and to otherwise frustrate the outcome of his upcoming election. Rep. Basabe looks forward to clearing his name and in a court of law at the appropriate time.”
The alleged assault
When Michael arrived to the afterparty in Malibu in late 2003, he said, only Basabe and Basabe’s friend, who was the tenant or owner of the condo, were there. Basabe suggested they get into a hot tub and offered to make Michael a drink, Michael said.
Michael got into the hot tub in his underwear, and Basabe brought him a red Solo cup filled with orange juice and vodka, he recalled. But the drink tasted “gross,” Michael told the Herald.
As Michael, Basabe and Basabe’s friend sat in the hot tub, Basabe “got close to me and put his hand on my leg and kind of made a pass at me,” Michael said in the sworn statement. “I had met, you know, and had gay friends at that point. It wasn’t that big a deal. I kind of told him, ‘Hey, man, you’re cool and all, but I don’t roll like that.’”
Michael continued to sip his drink. But before he could finish it, “everything started to slow down,” he told the Herald. Michael, a former athlete, said he knew immediately that something was wrong.
“I’ve always been in control of my body,” he told the Herald. “Not having these physical capabilities was a really strange feeling.”
Michael said he stepped out of the hot tub, took a few steps, then fell over and hit his face on the concrete patio.
“I told myself, ‘Get your s--- together, get out of here, you’re embarrassing yourself,’” he told the Herald.
Michael tried to stand up, he said, but stumbled again and fell into some bushes. As Basabe and his friend asked if he was okay, Michael said he began vomiting and having diarrhea at the same time.
He faded out of consciousness as Basabe helped him toward the front of the condo, he said, and woke up with his head on a doormat. Michael asked Basabe what he was doing there.
“Fabian was like, ‘You’re a mess, bro. I’ll help clean you up,’” Michael told the Herald.
Basabe brought Michael to the second floor of the home, he said, and Basabe rinsed Michael off as Michael lay naked on a shower floor.
‘I knew what was happening’
The next thing Michael remembers, he said in an interview with the Herald and in his sworn statement, is waking up on a couch and seeing that Basabe “had his mouth on my penis.”
Michael tried to fight back, but it “was like trying to punch in slow motion” because he was “in a very deep, drugged state,” he told the Herald.
“I tried to punch, and I said, ‘No, stop,’” Michael said in the sworn statement. “And it was really difficult to move my body. It was like quite literally being in a dream and trying to punch.”
Michael said he then faded out of consciousness. When he woke up again, Basabe was “forcibly trying to penetrate my anus,” he said. He recalled feeling repeated “pokes” near his lower back.
“I then felt him get behind me very close, and I started feeling, you know, his body right behind mine and then some poking in my hamstrings, my buttocks, my lower back, and then he forcibly penetrated my anus,” Michael said in the sworn statement.
He then had a “moment of clarity,” he said, fearing for his safety and feeling like Basabe “was going to kill me or something.”
“I knew what was happening,” he said. “I needed to make my body work to defend myself.”
Michael said he grabbed a blanket and rolled himself off the couch to escape.
“It’s unbelievable how opposite of consensual my behavior and my words were,” he said in the sworn statement. “This is not something that I wanted to happen.”
Michael passed out and woke up in the morning, he said, sweaty and with a pounding headache but clear on what had happened. He said he went downstairs and found Basabe and his friend drinking coffee.
“They’re like, ‘Hey, dude, you all right? You had a rough night,’” Michael said.
Michael told them he needed to go to work. He said they offered to drive him to his car, which was parked outside the property, an offer he decided to accept because his phone was dead and he wanted to get out safely. Basabe and his friend stopped at a grocery store and bought Michael a wheatgrass shot and a water bottle, he recalled.
After they dropped him off at his car, Michael plugged in his phone and began driving back home to Los Angeles. At one point, he said, he had to pull over to the side of the highway to vomit.
Then, he said, he called his sister and told her what had happened.
‘You got drugged’
The Herald interviewed Michael’s sister, who requested anonymity to protect her brother’s identity. She said that, the morning after the alleged assault, her brother didn’t show up to their shared workplace. Michael then called her and explained what had happened the night before.
When she asked where he was, “he was like, ‘I don’t know. I’m in Malibu. I’m sick,’” she said. “He goes, ‘Something happened.’”
Michael told her that Basabe had sexually assaulted him at the condo. His sister was “vaguely familiar” with Basabe from headlines in Page Six, she said, as Basabe was beginning to gain notoriety around that time.
She pressed her brother on whether he had too much to drink the night before, but he insisted that he hadn’t — an answer that didn’t surprise her.
“He doesn’t drink that much,” she said. “Over the years, he’s never been a big drinker.”
As Michael walked her through the events, his sister — who is several years older — “started to realize what really had happened” and became emotional. She had experienced a similar incident in college, she said, in which she believes her drink was spiked and she was sexually assaulted.
“She says, ‘You got drugged,’” Michael told the Herald, recounting the conversation. “I told her to tell our boss I’m not going to come in.”
Michael’s sister now says she wished she could have somehow protected her younger brother. After the alleged assault, Michael was “embarrassed” and “ashamed,” she said, and chose not to report it to the police or other authorities.
“It breaks my heart, because I feel like I should have done something then,” his sister said. “I didn’t know how to deal with it.”
For a while after the incident, Michael felt “really depressed” and didn’t want to go to work, he said. He also said he had trouble being intimate with women for almost a year.
After that, he said, “I packed a lot of this away and tried to move on with my life.”
In the sworn statement, Michael said feelings he had tried to suppress for years have bubbled to the surface since he learned last November that Basabe had become a state representative.
“I’ve been more and more an angry person, admittedly,” he said, according to the transcript. “I feel this short-temperedness that’s built over time, and I attribute a lot of that to maybe feeling, you know, bullied or something, or that this thing happened and I didn’t stand up for myself.”
‘That’s the drink he made me’
Michael and his sister hardly discussed the incident for nearly 20 years. Then, in November, she came across a profile of Basabe in New York magazine under the headline “Fabian Basabe Will Not Be Canceled.”
The piece describes a history of bad behavior and claims against Basabe and his unlikely path from reality TV and tabloids to public office in Florida.
Michael’s sister said she spent the next two days agonizing over whether to send the story to her brother. On Nov. 30, she texted him the link, according to screenshots of their conversation reviewed by the Herald.
Michael — who says he didn’t know at the time that Basabe had become an elected official — responded with a screenshot of part of the story. He drew a red circle around a sentence that noted Basabe was drinking a screwdriver cocktail.
“That’s the drink he made me!!!” he messaged his sister.
For two decades, Michael hardly told anyone about the alleged assault, he said. But this past January, he confided in his then-girlfriend after she shared her own story of sexual abuse.
In an interview with the Herald, Michael’s ex-girlfriend said Michael didn’t mention Basabe’s name or the possibility of going public at the time. But he shared details of what had happened, saying he had been “drugged and raped” by a man about 21 years earlier, she said.
Michael told her he had met the man that night and gone in a hot tub, she recalled, and that the man had made Michael a drink before he lost consciousness and woke up “confused” while knowing that “something terrible had happened.” He told her the incident had “caused him a lot of anger, stress and emotional damage.”
“It’s a hard thing to talk about, especially as a man,” she said.
Michael told the Herald he ultimately decided to go public with his story because he wants Basabe to be held accountable — and wants to prevent others from being hurt.
“I need to fix this part of my life because it’s affected my life,” he said. “I don’t want to be angry anymore.”
This story was originally published October 25, 2024 at 5:00 AM.
