About sitting in a hot tub? Sure there wasn't something more to the
episode?

Why is this coming to light now, after 25 years and a $150,000 hush up
payment?


SALT LAKE CITY (AP) - Utah's House majority leader resigned from the
Legislature Saturday, two days after his confession about sitting nude
in a hot tub with a teenage girl 25 years ago stunned this
conservative state.

Republican Rep. Kevin Garn, in an e-mail message to House Speaker
David Clark, apologized for becoming a distraction.

"After discussing this matter with my family, I have decided that it
is in the best interests of them, my colleagues and the people of
Utah," he wrote.

Garn, 55, acknowledged the indiscretion with the legal minor late
Thursday immediately after the Legislature adjourned for the session.

"Although we did not have any sexual contact, it was still clearly
inappropriate - and it was my fault," he told colleagues from the
House floor Thursday night.

House members responded with thunderous applause for his honesty and
embraced him.

Garn said he paid the woman, Cheryl Maher, $150,000 to keep quiet
about the episode when he unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2002.

But the now 40-year-old Maher began calling local news media last week
to tell them about being naked with Garn when she was 15. Garn is more
than 14 years older than Maher, who now lives in Derry, N.H.

"I'm sure the resignation was really difficult for him, but it needed
to happen," Maher said Saturday. "This is a secret that devastated my
life and my family's life."

Maher declined to comment on specifics of the hot-tubbing episode. She
said she thinks Garn still has a bright future out of politics.

"My intention was not to harm or hurt anyone, it's just to speak the
truth," she said. "It's freedom for me to get it out in the open and I
think somewhere down the line he will think it's freedom for him,
too."