Sexual assault survivor named in Heitkamp ad: ‘She definitely lost my vote’

One of the sexual assault survivors listed without her permission in a recent ad by Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) says she currently does not plan to vote for the North Dakota senator this November.

“I do plan on voting, but I’m definitely going to have to do my research and figure out the right choice for this situation,” Lexi Zhorela said early Thursday on CNN’s “New Day.” 

{mosads}”As of right now, she definitely lost my vote,” Zhorela added. 

Zhorela is one of multiple women named without their consent as a survivor of domestic violence, sexual abuse, or rape. 

The ad that included Zhorela’s name was an open letter criticizing statements made by Heitkamp’s Republican opponent regarding the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh. 

Heitkamp has apologized for using their names without permission, saying the names were provided to them by victim advocates. 

“We recently discovered that several of the women’s names who were provided to us did not authorize their names to be shared or were not survivors of abuse,” Heitkamp said in a statement.

“I deeply regret this mistake and we are in the process of issuing a retraction, personally apologizing to each of the people impacted by this and taking the necessary steps to ensure this never happens again,” she added. 

Zhorela on CNN said Heitkamp has not reached out to her yet. 

“I was told that she was going to reach out to every one of the women that was put in this without our consent but she has yet to reach out to me,” Zhorela said. “The damage has kind of already been done.”

“The names that didn’t want to be put out there are already out there for the world to see and you can’t really retract that,” she added.