A warning to listeners. This episode contains explicit language and descriptions of sexual violence.

I'm Amy Britton and this is Canary, an investigative podcast from the Washington Post.

Chapter 2. A Secret That She Couldn't Tell.

It's not unusual to get tips or emails after publishing a story.

I've gotten a lot of these tips after writing about sexual misconduct and I usually follow up.

When Carol Griffin first reached out to me,

Hi Amy, my name is Carol.

She said she had information implicating someone named in the story about Lauren Clark.

The young woman who was sexually assaulted and then handed out flyers that identified her attacker.

I kept rereading Carol's email and wondering who is this woman?

I did some quick googling and I saw that a woman named Carol Griffin owned a bakery in Alabama.

But if that was the same Carol Griffin who emailed me, how could she possibly be connected to Lauren Clark, the hairstylist in DC?

I called Carol the very next day.

She sounded anxious, unsettled, uneasy.

I remember saying to her, if you don't want to talk about this, we don't have to talk about this.

What she told me on that call was sensitive.

Carol alleged that Judge Truman Morrison had sexually assaulted her when she was a teenage girl.

And she said the assault marked just the beginning of his inappropriate sexual behavior toward her.

Judge Truman Morrison, the judge from Lauren's story, one of the longest-serving judges on the superior court of the District of Columbia.

The judge who gave the chef, Hiro Cruz, a 10-day jail sentence for sexually assaulting multiple women.

Carol wasn't sure yet if she wanted to come forward with this allegation.

Because of that, I told her I would keep the details of our call private.

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