After Dolores Huerta on Wednesday said she was “manipulated and pressured into having sex” with Cesar Chavez in the 1960s, Gov. Gavin Newsom and other elected officials reacted to the stunning allegations.

Huerta, the labor leader who co-founded the United Farm Workers with Chavez, issued a statement in response to a New York Times article on allegations that Chavez, the late farmworker organizer who became a national civil rights icon, abused women and minors.

“I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences,” Huerta said.

On Wednesday morning, Newsom spoke at a previously scheduled event in Alameda County, whose topic was expanding financial literacy for students and wealth access for women.

“It’s been hard to absorb this. Jen and I are very close with Dolores — so many of us are — but very close, have been for decades and decades,” the governor said, referring to this wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom. “None of us knew. … I think all of us are processing it. And these kids have to process it now.”

The governor noted that more than two dozen schools in California are named after Cesar Chavez, along with others across the U.S.

“So we’re just going to have to reflect on all of that,” he said, “and reflect on a farm workers’ movement and a labor movement that was much bigger than one man.”

In a statement, Los Angeles County Supervisor Janice Hahn said she was “horrified by the abuse that we now know Dolores Huerta and other women suffered, but I’m moved by their incredible courage in telling their stories publicly all these years later.

Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of Gov. Gavin Newsom, spoke out at a news conference about the sexual abuse allegations against labor leader Cesar Chavez. https://abc7.com/18731410

“What matters most now is that we listen and support them as well as any other woman who suffered this abuse,” Hahn said, calling for Cesar Chavez Day, which has been typically celebrated on March 31, to be renamed as “Farmworker Day” in Los Angeles County.

According to the New York Times, one of the survivors alleged she was 12 years old when Chavez first touched her inappropriately and 15 when he raped her in California. Another victim who spoke to the Times alleges she was summoned for sexual encounters with Chávez dozens of times over a four-year period, starting when she was 13 and he was 45.

The Times investigation claims that Chavez used his position of power to exploit many of the women who worked and volunteered in his movement for his own sexual gratification.

“I’m still shaking a little bit about Dolores and all these young women,” Jennifer Siebel Newsom said at Wednesday’s news conference, her voice choked with emotion. “It’s a lot. It’s like, we’re living in really tough times and this war on women isn’t new — it goes way, way back, centuries. Enough is enough.

“So, it’s got to end. It’s got to end in my lifetime,” Siebel Newsom said. She later delivered similar remarks about the matter in Spanish.

In November 2022, Siebel Newsom testified in Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault trial in Los Angeles, at times breaking into tears while alleging he raped her in a hotel room in 2005.

Huerta, 95, said she had two separate sexual encounters with Chavez in the 1960s.

“The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” Huerta said. “The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”

Also on Wednesday, the advocacy group California Rising called for the official renaming of Cesar Chavez Avenue to Dolores Huerta Avenue. A spokesperson for the group said public spaces must reflect values that honor and protect communities, adding that the proposed renaming is positioned as a “course correction” that “acknowledges harm, challenges long accepted narratives, and centers a legacy that better represents dignity and equity for current and future generations.”

Huerta co-founded the United Farm Workers with Chavez in 1962, work that led to the first farmworker union contracts in U.S. history. In 2012, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her decades of advocacy in civil rights and women’s equality.

Chavez died in 1993 at the age of 66.

Huerta said both encounters with Chavez led to pregnancies that she kept secret and later arranged for them to be raised by other families.

“Over the years, I have been fortunate to develop a deep relationship with these children, who are now close to my other children, their siblings,” Huerta said. “But even then, no one knew the full truth about how they were conceived until just a few weeks ago.”

ABC News contributed to this report.

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