We know from research and our own experience that sexual assault and rape are the most underreported crimes. And part of the reason they’re underreported is that victims are concerned about whether they’re going to be believed or not. That prevents a lot of folks from coming forward, as well as the trauma of the experience.
.. The most common thing you hear, and the most common thing you see in the research, is that victims don’t think they’re going to be believed or supported.
.. One of the things you see in offenders who have been studied is a sense of entitlement. That they are entitled to exercise whatever power and control they have, and that they can do what they want.
.. Rape doesn’t happen, sexual offenses don’t happen, unless they think they can get away with it. Sexual assault and rape are choices.
.. The more power and control someone has, the more devastating it is for a single victim to feel like they could come forward and report this. It’s like, who the hell is going to believe me when it’s this big, powerful person?
So when one victim comes forward, it’s not at all uncommon to see others think, “Well, they came forward; now it’s not just my word,
(Part 3) Donald Trump accuser speaks to Anderson Cooper CNN CNN
A woman named Jessica Leeds who is alleging Donald Trump made unwanted sexual advances to her back in the 1970s told CNN Thursday the Republican presidential nominee touched her “wherever he could find a landing spot.”
Trump’s bizarre descent into vitriol
Trump responded with derision, mimicking Leeds and dismissing her story. “I was with Trump in 1980. I was sitting with him on an airplane and he went after me on the plane,” the Republican presidential nominee said, using the voice he often deploys to mock people.
.. In responding to his accusers with such malice and nothing tangible to discredit their allegations, Trump is further ceding the moral high ground to his opponent and recklessly imperiling Republican candidates down the ballot.
.. These are lies being pushed by the media and the Clinton campaign to try and keep their grip on our country,” Trump argued. “They are all false. They’re totally invented fiction. All 100 percent totally and completely fabricated. Never met this person, these people. I don’t know who they are.”
.. “When you looked at that horrible woman last night, you said ‘I don’t think so,’” Trump told his supporters. “I don’t think so. Whoever she is, wherever she comes from, the stories are total fiction. They are 100 percent made up. They never happened. They never would happen. I don’t think it happened with very many people, but they certainly aren’t gonna happen with me.”
.. Incredulous over his current plight, Trump posed a rhetorical question to his supporters—or, perhaps, it was a suggestion to the media he claims is so biased against him—about President Obama, who lashed the GOP nominee in another speech Friday morning and, in Trump’s view, has not been subjected to the same level of media scrutiny as himself.
“Why doesn’t some woman say what they say about me about him?” Trump said.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/donald-trump-vitriol-229819#ixzz4NAjYo4HE
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Trump suggests his accusers are too unattractive to assault
Trump also disputed the account of Kristin Anderson, who told The Washington Post on Friday that Trump slid his fingers inside her miniskirt to touch her vagina through her underwear while she was engaged in a conversation inside a Manhattan nightclub in the early 1990s.
Trump argued it was untrue because she claimed he was sitting alone in a club, saying that “I really don’t sit alone that much.”
.. He outright rejected any allegation against him, claiming to his supporters that they’re all a result of a conspiracy created by collusion between the media and the Clinton campaign designed to keep him out of the White House.
.. five Miss Teen USA pageant contestants told BuzzFeed that Trump would enter the contestants’ dressing rooms while the girls were changing. And in 1992 “Entertainment Tonight” footage released by CBS this week, Trump talks to a young girl and tells the camera he’s going to be dating her in 10 years.