Rachael Denhollander, an evangelical Christian, was the first woman to speak out against former USA Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. In a tweet thread on Sunday, she said that part of the reason she waited so long to come forward was that she had watched friends and family members “eviscerate” victims who spoke out against much-loved candidates, pastors, teams or ministries.
“That showed me what they REALLY thought about abuse and what they REALLY thought about victims,” Denhollander wrote. “I knew it meant if faced with a choice between a survivor and their favorite ‘whatever,’ they’d attack the survivor.”
.. Amy Smith is an advocate for abuse survivors who runs Watch Keep, a blog that tracks reported incidents of sexual abuse in Christian communities. She called Graham’s comments “irresponsible and reckless” — and insensitive toward Blasey.
“The message he is conveying to anyone suffering from sexual abuse is clear: After a number of years, your pain is irrelevant and should be disregarded,” Smith told HuffPost.
.. She said Graham’s argument reflects a mentality she has commonly found among pastors ― that sexual assault is a sin to be handled quietly among the parties involved rather than a crime that should be reported to law enforcement. It’s no longer acceptable for people to wave off abuse allegations as irrelevant, she said, because the criminal nature of a sexual assault doesn’t change, no matter how much time has passed.
Christa Brown, a clergy sex abuse survivor who blogs about church cover-ups of abuse, said that Graham’s dismissive comments send a “dreadful” message to teenage boys and girls.
Sexual assault is not some ordinary “teenage” thing, Brown said. And it’s not appropriate for anyone to dismiss allegations of violent behavior.
Mark Judge’s Name Keeps Coming Up. Here’s What We Know.
Weeks later, Dr. Blasey testified, she saw Mr. Judge working at a Safeway grocery store in Potomac, Md. In his memoir, Mr. Judge mentioned that he had worked for a few weeks at a supermarket in the summer before his senior year, helping people load groceries into their cars. He wrote that he often showed up at his early-morning shift hung over from the night before.
.. Some former classmates of the two men have said that aspects of Dr. Blasey’s recollections of Mr. Judge rang true.
The book describes a person named “Bart O’Kavanaugh” as having “puked in someone’s car the other night” and “passed out on his way back from a party.” A former classmate of Judge Kavanaugh’s said that the judge earned the nickname “Bart” after a Georgetown Prep teacher garbled his name.
.. Judge Kavanaugh about the “Bart O’Kavanaugh” passage. Mr. Kavanaugh said that the book was a “fictionalized” account and that only Mr. Judge could answer about his intention.
.. statement by Ms. Swetnick painted a similar portrait of the two young men as “attached to the hip” in high school and made allegations of parties where women were drugged and “gang raped.”
.. Under questioning Thursday, Judge Kavanaugh said that he and Mr. Judge became friends in ninth grade and that they shared the same group of friends. Mr. Judge was popular in school, Judge Kavanaugh said, and a talented writer.
Man Up, Grassley. Question Blasey Ford Yourself.
Outsourcing this responsibility to female aides or an outside female lawyer because of bad optics is sexist and cowardly.
.. Dr. Blasey and her lawyers have pushed back, demanding that Mr. Grassley and his colleagues question her themselves. They are right to do so. The Republicans’ attempt to outsource the questioning of Dr. Blasey is cynical, sexist and cowardly.
.. Let’s start with the cynicism. Mr. Grassley said, “We reserve the option to have female staff attorneys, who are sensitive to the particulars of Dr. Blasey’s allegations and are experienced investigators, question both witnesses.” The chairman knows the optics are bad for him. Mr. Grassley and his 10 Republican colleagues on the judiciary committee are all white men. Their median age is about 60; Mr. Grassley and his colleague Orrin Hatch of Utah are in their mid-80s.
.. But the solution isn’t to remove men from the script. It’s to ask that they embody different characters: people who can pose respectful, probing questions, rather than bullies intent on shaming and demeaning the witness.
.. Many people think that’s impossible, which leads to the second point: The Republicans’ plan is sexist. Handing off the questioning of Dr. Blasey to female staff members would be a gross departure from Senate practice and based on the risible idea that the questioning of sexual assault survivors is “women’s work.”
.. I have written about the entrenched gender bias against female litigators. After a year of reporting, what stood out was a phenomenon of women being steered, often explicitly, into specialties where the cases turned on proving or disproving injuries to women’s genitals and reproductive organs.
.. Quite rightly, female Senate aides are “appalled” by the idea of having Dr. Blasey questioned in this fashion. “They always have to bring a woman in to save their bacon,” one told Britt Peterson
.. Which brings me to my final point. Cowardice.
Republican senators have no problem trying Dr. Blasey in the court of public opinion. Senator Hatch has already made up his mind: Judge Kavanaugh is telling the truth and Dr. Blasey is simply “mixed up.” Lindsey Graham, another Republican committee member, told The Washington Post, “I’ll listen to the lady,” then immediately implied the opposite. “We’re going to bring this to a close,” he said and called the accusation “a drive-by shooting.”
.. And yet, they are apparently too afraid to speak to her face to face. It is true that Dr. Blasey may prove to be a formidable opponent. She holds advanced degrees from Stanford and the University of Southern California, enjoys the respect of her colleagues and has had numerous people attest to her good character. But that’s no excuse for Republicans to shirk their responsibilities and turn tail.
Come on, gentlemen. Man up.
‘Incredibly frustrated’: Inside the GOP effort to save Kavanaugh amid assault allegation
But Kavanaugh grew frustrated when it came to questions that dug into his private life, particularly his drinking habits and his sexual proclivities, according to three people familiar with the preparations, who requested anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. He declined to answer some questions altogether, saying they were too personal
“I’m not going to answer that,” Kavanaugh said at one point according to a senior White House official, who said that the questions were designed to go over the line and that he struck the right tone.
.. “The Republicans need women voters, but all hell will break loose (or it will be chaos) if this nomination unravels,” Dan Eberhart, an Arizona-based GOP donor, wrote in an email. “If we can’t get the nomination done, why vote Republican?”
.. Kavanaugh was calling Republicans on the Judiciary Committee and other key allies, urging them to publicly support him
.. In one key call, Kavanaugh told Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) that Ford had the wrong guy in mind, saying he had not attended a party like the one she described to The Washington Post. He and his allies also privately discussed a defense that would raise doubts that the attacker was Kavanaugh, rather than try to dispute that an incident involving Ford had happened.
.. Yet McGahn was originally opposed to a public hearing — as were many within the orbit of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — but it became clear one would have to happen
.. Ford, through her attorneys, said she would be willing to testify publicly, and several potential pivotal votes, such as Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) and Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), signaled that his confirmation could not move forward unless Ford was given a public airing.
.. McGahn has kept other key aides out of the process, afraid they would leak damaging material, relying on special counsel Annie Donaldson and spokesman Raj Shah. He has also talked on several occasions with McConnell, who is fond of McGahn.
.. His tweet on Friday morning in which he directly targeted Ford was not seen as helpful by White House aides, but Trump told senior officials that it was becoming a political issue that could affect the midterms. Republicans did not believe the woman’s claims, Trump added privately.
.. Republicans have also talked about enlisting female lawyers on the committee, who Grassley said would be “sensitive to the particulars of Dr. Ford’s allegations and are experienced investigators,” to the lead the questioning. They might also help the GOP avoid an optics problem of 11 men grilling a woman about her sexual assault allegation.
The hearing could end “without new conclusive evidence either way,” one senior Republican official said. “Members have to determine their threshold for credibility. And that will be the challenge.”
Senate Republican officials had repeatedly vented in private that it seemed, at least to them, Ford’s lawyers were doing more press than responding to their emails or requests for calls. Her attorneys would return that sentiment in kind, complaining in a late Friday letter to top Grassley aides that they would learn of the Republican hearing counteroffer “through the media” and got it officially through the committee “hours after those media accounts first appeared.” On Saturday they accused GOP senators of “bullying.”
.. Democrats are also plotting their own strategy for the hearing. Furious about Grassley’s decision to limit testimony to just Kavanaugh and Ford, Democratic aides planned to find other potential witnesses — such as a trauma expert — who could help bolster their case.
.. If they couldn’t be heard under oath, Democrats discussed holding news conferences where those other experts would speak, aides said. A top priority, according to Democratic officials, was ensuring Ford felt supported, whether it was having enough friends and family in the hearing room with her or finding people who can speak publicly about Ford’s character.
“We’re not accepting the premise that it’s going to be a he-said, she-said hearing,” one senior Senate Democratic aide said.
.. As for questions for Kavanaugh, Democrats planned to hold nothing back. Democratic staff have been researching the broader culture of the prep academy world in which Kavanaugh lived while reading the writings of Mark Judge
.. Judge, who has said he doesn’t want to testify, has written about how much alcohol he and his classmates consumed while in high school and details about other debaucherous behavior.
.. Democrats also planned to grill Kavanaugh on what he knew about a controversial Twitter thread from Ed Whelan
.. Ford’s July 30 letter outlining the allegations sent to Feinstein and Rep. Anna G. Eshoo (D-Calif.). Republican senators, initially cut off from accessing the unredacted version of the letter, prodded Feinstein repeatedly to hand over her copy so they could conduct their investigation.
.. “They want her to publicly testify . . . but the infamous letter is still not public. They won’t allow it to be.”