Research suggests that family violence is two to four times higher in the law-enforcement community than in the general population. So where’s the public outrage?
Should the National Football League suspend or ban any player caught assaulting a wife or girlfriend? That seems to be the conventional wisdom since video emerged of running back Ray Rice knocking his wife unconscious in an elevator, even as reports surface that many more NFL players have domestic-abuse records.
While I have no particular objection to a suspension of any length for such players, the public focus on NFL policy seems strange and misplaced to me. Despite my general preference for reducing the prison population, an extremely strong person rendering a much smaller, weaker person unconscious with his fists, as Rice did, is a situation where prison is particularly appropriate. More generally, clear evidence of domestic abuse is something that ought to result in legal sanction. Employers aren’t a good stand in for prosecutors, juries, and judges.
Should ex-convicts who abused their partners be denied employment forever? I think not. Our notion should be that they’ve paid their debt to society in prison. Pressure on the NFL to take a harder line against domestic abuse comes in the context of a society where the crime isn’t adequately punished, so I totally understand it. Observing anti-NFL rhetoric, you’d nevertheless get the impression that other employers monitor and sanction domestic abuse incidents by employees. While I have nothing against pressuring the NFL to go beyond what the typical employer does, I fear that vilifying the league has the effect of misleading the public into a belief that it is out of step with general norms on this issue. Domestic violence is less common among NFL players than the general population.
And there is another American profession that has a significantly more alarming problem with domestic abuse. I’d urge everyone who believes in zero tolerance for NFL employees caught beating their wives or girlfriends to direct as much attention—or ideally, even more attention—at police officers who assault their partners. Several studies have found that the romantic partners of police officers suffer domestic abuse at rates significantly higher than the general population. And while all partner abuse is unacceptable, it is especially problematic when domestic abusers are literally the people that battered and abused women are supposed to call for help.
If there’s any job that domestic abuse should disqualify a person from holding, isn’t it the one job that gives you a lethal weapon, trains you to stalk people without their noticing, and relies on your judgment and discretion to protect the abused against domestic abusers?
The opprobrium heaped on the NFL for failing to suspend or terminate domestic abusers, and the virtual absence of similar pressure directed at police departments, leads me to believe that many people don’t know the extent of domestic abuse among officers. This is somewhat surprising, since a country shocked by Ray Rice’s actions ought to be even more horrified by the most egregious examples of domestic abuse among police officers. Their stories end in death.
There’s the recently retired 30-year veteran police officer who shot his wife and then himself in Colorado Springs earlier this summer. There’s Tacoma Police Chief David Brame, who perpetrated another murder-suicide in April. (Update: it’s in fact the tenth anniversary of this crime, which I missed in the ABC story.) Also in April, an Indiana news station reported on “Sgt. Ryan Anders, a narcotics officer,” who “broke into his ex-wife’s home and fatally shot her. He then turned the gun on himself.” In February, “Dallas police confirmed … that a Crandall police officer shot and killed his wife before killing himself.” Last year, a Nevada police officer killed his wife, his son, and then himself. And Joshua Boren, a Utah police officer, “killed his wife, their two children, his mother-in-law and then himself” after receiving “text messages … hours earlier threatening to leave him and take their kids and confronting him for raping her.” That isn’t an exhaustive survey, just a quick roundup of recent stories gleaned from the first couple pages of Google results. And statistics about “blue” domestic abuse are shocking in their own way.
As the National Center for Women and Policing noted in a heavily footnoted information sheet, “Two studies have found that at least 40 percent of police officer families experience domestic violence, in contrast to 10 percent of families in the general population. A third study of older and more experienced officers found a rate of 24 percent, indicating that domestic violence is two to four times more common among police families than American families in general.” Cops “typically handle cases of police family violence informally, often without an official report, investigation, or even check of the victim’s safety,” the summary continues. “This ‘informal’ method is often in direct contradiction to legislative mandates and departmental policies regarding the appropriate response to domestic violence crimes.” Finally, “even officers who are found guilty of domestic violence are unlikely to be fired, arrested, or referred for prosecution.”
What struck me as I read through the information sheet’s footnotes is how many of the relevant studies were conducted in the 1990s or even before. Research is so scant and inadequate that a precise accounting of the problem’s scope is impossible, as The New York Times concluded in a 2013 investigation that was nevertheless alarming. “In many departments, an officer will automatically be fired for a positive marijuana test, but can stay on the job after abusing or battering a spouse,” the newspaper reported. Then it tried to settle on some hard numbers:
In some instances, researchers have resorted to asking officers to confess how often they had committed abuse. One such study, published in 2000, said one in 10 officers at seven police agencies admitted that they had “slapped, punched or otherwise injured” a spouse or domestic partner. A broader view emerges in Florida, which has one of the nation’s most robust open records laws. An analysis by The Times of more than 29,000 credible complaints of misconduct against police and corrections officers there strongly suggests that domestic abuse had been underreported to the state for years.
After reporting requirements were tightened in 2007, requiring fingerprints of arrested officers to be automatically reported to the agency that licenses them, the number of domestic abuse cases more than doubled—from 293 in the previous five years to 775 over the next five. The analysis also found that complaints of domestic violence lead to job loss less often than most other accusations of misconduct.
A chart that followed crystallized the lax punishments meted out to domestic abusers. Said the text, “Cases reported to the state are the most serious ones—usually resulting in arrests. Even so, nearly 30 percent of the officers accused of domestic violence were still working in the same agency a year later, compared with 1 percent of those who failed drug tests and 7 percent of those accused of theft.”
The visualization conveys how likely it is that domestic abuse by police officers is underreported in states without mandatory reporting requirements–and also the degree to which domestic abuse is taken less seriously than other officer misconduct:
The New York Times
For a detailed case study in how a police officer suspected of perpetrating domestic abuse was treated with inappropriate deference by colleagues whose job it was to investigate him, this typically well-done Frontline story is worthwhile.
It would be wonderful if domestic violence by police officers was tracked in a way that permitted me to link something more comprehensive and precise than the National Center for Women and Policing fact sheet, the studies on which it is based, the New York Times analysis, or other press reports from particular police departments. But the law enforcement community hasn’t seen fit to track these cases consistently or rigorously. Says the International Association of Chiefs of Police in a 2003 white paper on the subject, “the rate of domestic violence is estimated to be at least as common as that of the general population and limited research to date indicates the possibility of higher incidence of domestic violence among law enforcement professionals.” Their position on the evidence: “The problem exists at some serious level and deserves careful attention regardless of estimated occurrences.”
An academic study highlighted by Police Chief Magazine relied on newspaper reports for its universe of 324 cases of officer involved domestic violence, or OIDV in their report.
The cases involved the arrest of 281 officers employed by 226 police agencies. Most of the cases involved a male officer (96 percent) employed in a patrol or other street-level function (86.7 percent). There were 43 supervisory officers arrested for an OIDV-related offense. One-third of the OIDV victims were the current spouse of the arrested officer. Close to one-fourth of the victims were children, including a child or a stepchild of the officer or children who were unrelated to the arrested officer. There were 16 victims who also were police officers. Simple assault was the most serious offense charged in roughly 40 percent of the cases, followed by aggravated assault (20.1 percent), forcible rape (9.9 percent), intimidation (7.1 percent), murder/non-negligent manslaughter (4.6 percent), and forcible fondling (3.7 percent).
Data on final organizational outcomes were available for 233 of the cases. About one-third of those cases involved officers who were separated from their jobs either through resignation or termination. The majority of cases in which the final employment outcome was known resulted in a suspension without job separation (n = 152). Of those cases where there was a conviction on at least one offense charged, officers are known to have lost their jobs through either termination or resignation in less than half of those cases (n = 52). More than one-fifth of the OIDV cases involved an officer who had also been named individually as a party defendant in at least one federal court civil action for depravation of civil rights under color of law pursuant to 42 U.S.C. §1983 at some point during their law enforcement careers.
Think about that. Domestic abuse is underreported. Police officers are given the benefit of the doubt by colleagues in borderline cases. Yet even among police officers who were charged, arrested, and convicted of abuse, more than half kept their jobs.
In the absence of comprehensive stats, specific incidents can provide at least some additional insights. Take Southern California, where I keep up with the local news. Recent stories hint at an ongoing problem. Take the 18-year LAPD veteran arrested “on suspicion of domestic violence and illegal discharging of a firearm,” and the officer “who allegedly choked his estranged wife until she passed out” and was later charged with attempted murder. There’s also the lawsuit alleging that the LAPD “attempted to bury a case of sexual assault involving two of its officers, even telling the victim not to seek legal counsel after she came forward.”
Evidence of domestic-abuse problems in police departments around the U.S. is overwhelming.
The context for these incidents is a police department with a long history of police officers who beat their partners. Los Angeles Magazinecovered the story in 1997. A whistleblower went to jail in 2003 when he leaked personnel files showing the scope of abuse in the department. “Kids were being beaten. Women were being beaten and raped. Their organs were ruptured. Bones were broken,” he told L.A. Weekly. “It was hard cold-fisted brutality by police officers, and nothing was being done to protect their family members. And I couldn’t stand by and do nothing.”
Subsequently, Ms. Magazinereported, a “review of 227 domestic violence cases involving LAPD officers confirmed that these cases were being severely mishandled, according to the LAPD Inspector-General. In more than 75 percent of confirmed cases, the personnel file omitted or downplayed the domestic abuse. Of those accused of domestic violence, 29 percent were later promoted and 30 percent were repeat offenders. The review and the revelation led to significant reforms in the LAPD’s handling on police officer-involved domestic violence.”
Will these incidents galvanize long overdue action if they’re all assembled in one place? Perhaps fence-sitters will be persuaded by a case in which a police officer abused his daughter by sitting on her, pummeling her, and zip-tying her hands and forcing her to eat hot sauce derived from ghost chili peppers. Here’s what happened when that police officer’s ex-girlfriend sent video evidence of the abuse to his boss:
Here’s another recent case from Hawaii where, despite seeing the video below, police officers didn’t initially arrest their colleague:
There have been plenty of other reports published this year of police officers perpetrating domestic abuse, and then there’s another horrifying, perhaps related phenomenon: multiple allegations this year of police officers responding to domestic-violence emergency calls and raping the victim. Here’s the Detroit Free Pressin March:
The woman called 911, seeking help from police after reportedly being assaulted by her boyfriend. But while police responded to the domestic violence call, one of the officers allegedly took the woman into an upstairs bedroom and sexually assaulted her, authorities said.
Here is a case that The San Jose Mercury News reported the same month:
Officer Geoffrey Graves, 38, who has been with the Police Department for six years, was charged by Santa Clara County prosecutors with forcible rape in connection with a Sept. 22 incident. The incident began when Graves and three other San Jose officers responded to a family disturbance involving a married couple about 2 a.m., prosecutors said. The officers determined that both spouses had been drinking and had argued, but that no crime had occurred, authorities said.
The woman, who works as a hotel maid, told officers that she wanted to spend the night at a hotel where she had previously worked. About 2:30 a.m., Graves drove the woman to the hotel, where she went to her room alone and fell asleep, authorities said. Fifteen minutes later, the woman heard knocking and opened the door.
Then he allegedly raped her.
There is no more damaging perpetrator of domestic violence than a police officer, who harms his partner as profoundly as any abuser, and is then particularly ill-suited to helping victims of abuse in a culture where they are often afraid of coming forward. The evidence of a domestic-abuse problem in police departments around the United States is overwhelming. The situation is significantly bigger than what the NFL faces, orders of magnitude more damaging to society, and yet far less known to the public, which hasn’t demanded changes. What do police in your city or town do when a colleague is caught abusing their partner? That’s a question citizens everywhere should investigate.
I was actually surprised that the cops agreed to his request to get out of the car and check the light; particularly since the stop did appear to be pre-textual. More often than not, cops typically will refuse such a request “for their own safety,” of course.
A classic example of a cop fishing. So much for the 4th amendment and the oath the officers took to uphold the Constitution. Breaching the 4th amendment, especially in such a casual manner should mean being terminated from employment for both officers. How many times have you heard a cop say,’ignorance of the law is not a defense’. It should work both ways and corrupt government officials must be held to account
by The People.
Most people assume cop is being honest or is just to scared to question them. Love this guy checking ,we all know cops lie and bullshit to pull people over and then hemming them up . Love he recorded too ,if everyone did these little things that this guy did cops would maybe stop this shit .
I get that cops make mistakes, but the minute she pulled the car over and walked up on it, she could clearly see that there was nothing wrong.
I’m honestly shocked she agreed to let him check knowing she was lying, did she expect her partner to stall him or something?
She still ran your license after you indicated to both cops that the plate lamp was fine.This is not a mistake! This is phishing and harassment to try and get you on some other crime. The stop should have ended as soon as you showed the 2nd officer that the plate lamp was fine.
Never surrender your 4th amendment rights until you have verified the reason for the stop. Your plate lamp trick and the air freshener hanging from the rear view mirror are the cops favourite go to excuses.
A mistake may happen however, as a “professional” there is a certain level of due diligence which these cops MUST succeed. If in fact this cop authentically believed the plate light was out, she had substantial opportunity after turning around, pulling the vehicle over and walking up to the vehicle before speaking with the occupants. This may have been a mistake at first but once “negligence” entered the picture, it is no longer a mistake. It became a “breach” of these people’s rights.
After confirming the light was not out, the cops should have said, Sorry, provided their information and left these people alone but the female cop proceeded to run the license of the driver. This was egregious at this point. This becomes contentious and causes me to believe the female cop was deceitful from the onset and even before pulling the vehicle over. My assumptions cause me to think that the female cop literally made it up when the driver asked why she was being pulled over.
Notice how the officer quickly went to run the ID after plate lamp was discovered to be working. Should have ended right there.
This is the reason states are looking to abolish the practice of traffic stops for petty crap like this. Oregon (I could be wrong) even went so far as to end the practice of “fishing” by police. They can only ask questions that pertain directly to the reason for the stop.
And that, sports fans, is what we call an illegal traffic stop to conduct a fishing expedition.
Glad you got out to check the light, who knows how far they would of taken this!!
Case law has clearly established and states that a traffic stop is over immediately once the reason for which they pulled you over is established as incorrect/an honest mistake unless during the stop they find something else that is illegal that they can further detain you…like a seatbelt violation or drugs in the open, etc.
What a “B” she knew damn well their light wasn’t out. They didn’t think the guy would get out and check it. They wanted to hem them up on something else.
“sometimes we accidentally violate your 4th amendment rights, it happens get over it” this is why cops have lost their credibility and respect.
i’d like to give the cop the benefit of the doubt since she quickly owned up to her ‘mistake’ about the light, but with her probing the driver “why is he angry? is everything OK?” makes the whole stop seem like a fishing expedition.
Cop: “it happens sometimes. People make mistakes and we definitely were not targeting you. But mistakes happen all the time and sometimes those mistakes are intentional but it happens. No big deal”
“i apologize. i was mistaken.” but, she still took your information and ran you for wants and warrants, AFTER you caught her in the lie. cops like this not only deserve complaints in their files, but also deserve to be put on the brady list.
This is “dragnet” style policing, and they don’t care how many people’s rights are violated in the process. This is what you get when the police are desperate to account for their massive budgets, but have not the capability to prevent crime or actually keep people safe.
How are you a cop if you can’t see that the light was working while driving behind them and then even worse when walking toward the car.
It’s a tactic they use, talk to the wife when husband not nearby, and speak in a “concerned” manner to the woman. In all the auditor vids I’ve seen with wife/gf in the situation, cops always fish more aggressively with the woman.
Know you know we feel as black people, this shit happens all day, months, and years!!! We can’t even get out to check until they tell us too!! Only in America 🇺🇸
The driver asks the passenger why does he think this is happening if the plate lamp is not out but she’s the one who trusts the police, go figure.
All occupants should be on the same page. Notice how cops almost always take the same position; follow the tone set by one considered ‘in charge’… We should be like that too. Having one person stand up and one have a passive, go along to get along attitude is often very destructive as far as police encounters go.
Classic argument when an officer gets push back “why is he so angry?” Trying to make it seem like this guy is wrong for wanting proof before they get ticketed for something
Need to get Body Cams for this BS
I think every time they pull someone over in “error” they should pay a set fee out of their own pockets!
I got pulled over 20 years ago in Compton, California for having my front view mirror obstructed by a pair of dogs tags. Here’s the funny part… I was driving a lifted full size Ford Bronco with tinted window in the back. The cops pulled me over followed for over two miles… Explain to me, how the F$&k could they see what was hanging in my lifted truck 🤔 They couldn’t… and they just used that as an excuse to search my truck and feed off my ignorance. Give it that I was only 19 years old at the time. I now wish a Mofo would try to pull that BS now! 😡
Wow…..that was thee MOST heart-felt apology I’ve ever heard….”It happens”…..
Surprised they let him out look at the light. Most time when people ask they told no stay in car you can check after the stop is over.
I have had this happen a couple times , always late at night . Looking for DUI people on the road . That cop chick was lying her ass off . What is funny is apparently in her world lying is justified .
If she was behind them and thought she made a mistake that’s okay it happens,
But as soon as she walked up to the car she would have noticed it. The passenger and the cop’s partner were standing behind the car and both agreed it was on. The lady cop should have walked up to the window and said, sorry for the mistake I thought you plate light was out, now that I got up to your car I see it is working. Sorry again and have a nice evening. The fact that she walked up to while passing the plate and still asked for the drivers info, just proves that cop is dishonest.
So she wants everyone to believe that she didn’t know that the light was working fine although she walked right by it?
Bruh this is so perfect. One person completely trust the police. Totally respects the police and they are pulled for no reason. Even when the officer walks up to the car she can see the plate light is on. She should say hey my bad the plate light is on I couldn’t see it from my car. You are free to go. Instead they violate your rights and identify you with no cause. Lol. I will be filing a complaint which will do absolutely nothing. It felt good to say I’m sure
Once they saw the deputy was lying they should remain silent and not answer their questions. This was a BS stop to try and get a reason to search your car.
Ehh, it’s good they called them out. However the whole point was to run her license. At the time they recognized that the light was working fine it then became an illegal stop and she should have never surrendered her license. But at least she’s following up with a complaint.
Obviously a fishing expedition by the police. If the cops thought that her tag light was out, it would have been obvious to the cops that it was working as soon as they got out of their car and approached the vehicle. The stop should have ended there with an apology from the officer.. So then the cop started asking intrusive questions that insinuated that there might be some sort of domestic violence in progress. Very deceptive.. And the police wonder why the growing public has become increasingly negative towards the police.
This couple should FOIA dash cam and body cam footage of this incident. I’d give anything to hear the two officers’ conversation prior to and after the stop. This was clearly a pre-textual stop and it’s quite possible they would have discussed carrying it out prior to effecting it. And if they had any insight at all, they would know just how badly they had f***ed up, and that a complaint was incoming and they’d likely want to discuss ways to effect sme damage control. Depending on what’s there there could quite possibly be fruitful grounds for a civil rights law suit too. Kudos to the couple for putting these cops firmly in place.
As you see the metamorphosis of a citizen distrusting police.
Same thing happen to me .But the cop would not let me out of the drivers seat so i asked can my wife check .The cop went to his car and said it was a mistake. I left after shaking my head at him and said to bad your fish did not bite. We also had him on camera.
It’s funny to me that people still don’t understand that the police are not your friends
See how she intentionally lights the flashlight in to the camera when she sees that she is being recorded.
biggest potential victims would be the dogs that would be put down and taken away for a lie from a tyrant. they wonder why they are actually hated. with the full extent of the word.
I wish all this existed back In the 90s and 2000s. So many times I got pulled over illegally and searched. Also passengers getting id for no reason. Now I know my rights
Meanwhile if she realized she pulled her over in error she should have just let her go but she just wanted to run her license so bad
“You have a plate lamp out” Although we can clearly read/scan your plate w/o lighting, we’re gonna need to steal both your time and money anyway. I continue to have no sadness in my heart when blue liners die.
Its 1:45am and she lied as pretext to pull you over, assuming you may be drunk. These kinds of traffic violations should not be subject to police enforcement. Make people get a yearly vehicle inspection and stop pulling people over for these types of things that often lead to worse outcomes.
Classic pretextual stop. She got busted and decided it would be a bad idea to do her usual fishing expedition. Not everyone is gonna get out to check if she’s telling the truth. My guess is that department has an illegal quota system.
copsplaining: ‘I would never pull you over for no reason.”
reality: I pull people over for made up reasons every day.
These types of stops infuriate me. I’ve had similar but only realized it later due to seeing the same lie here on YouTube.
I am shocked they allowed him to exit vehicle. Next time they will say no for “their safety”
She shouldn’t have taken her license further than the Jeep when she saw that the light was not out. This is plainly a stop and ID for warrants….
Just another fishing expedition for another corrupt police department… Thanks for honoring your oath !
They still got their I.D. fix. That’ll get them thru another half an hour maybe until they have to harass someone else. When an active warrant comes up, it justifies all the lying in their minds.
Back the BLUE till it happens to YOU.
Another citizen lost.
Lady Cop: why did you still run her name if there was no crime?
Man Cop: why didn’t you tell the lady cop to stop if there wasn’t a crime?
I live in my an they pull this shit all the time. I’m shocked they let you go look. But the moment they seen the light works the stop is over an you must be released. But they didn’t want on a fishing trip.
always film the police!!!!!
All these cops do try to do is give you extra traffic citations. She made a mistake and she apologized. Again a BS charge.
Reference: Kjærvik, S. L., & Bushman, B. J. (2021). The link between narcissism and aggression: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin. Advance online publication.
Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo is tired of the NRA and its corrupt politicians. Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian, hosts of The Young Turks, break it down. Tell us what you think in the comments below.
“A Texas police officer who was killed while responding to a domestic violence call may have been struck by a bullet that penetrated his ballistic vest, authorities said Monday. Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo made the disclosure about Sgt. Christopher Brewster’s killing Saturday in a note to officers, just hours after he denounced Republican Senators who he said have not reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act. Acevedo also berated pro-gun advocates who oppose new provisions in the law.”
The Epstein case is a reminder of the depraved milieu from which our president sprang.
On Monday, Donald Trump disinvited the then-British ambassador, Kim Darroch, from an official administration dinner with the emir of Qatar, because he was mad about leaked cables in which Darroch assessed the president as “insecure” and “incompetent.”
There was room at the dinner, however, for Trump’s friend Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, who was charged in a prostitution sting this year. Kraft was allegedly serviced at a massage parlor that had once been owned by Li Yang, known as Cindy, a regular at Trump’s club Mar-a-Lago. Yang is now the target of an F.B.I. inquiry into whether she funneled Chinese money into Trump’s political operation.
An ordinary president would not want to remind the world of the Kraft and Yang scandals at a time when Jeffrey Epstein’s arrest has hurled Trump’s other shady associations back into the limelight. Epstein, indicted on charges of abusing and trafficking underage girls, was a friend of Trump’s until the two had a falling out, reportedly over a failed business deal. The New York Times reported on a party Trump threw at Mar-a-Lago whose only guests were him, Epstein and around two dozen women “flown in to provide the entertainment.”
Epstein, of course, was also linked to the administration in another way. The president’s labor secretary, Alexander Acosta, was the United States attorney who oversaw a secret, obscenely lenient deal that let Epstein escape federal charges for sex crimes over a decade ago. On Friday, two days after a tendentious, self-serving news conference defending his handling of the Epstein case, Acosta finally resigned.
Even with Acosta gone, however, Epstein remains a living reminder of the depraved milieu from which the president sprang, and of the corruption and misogyny that continue to swirl around him. Trump has been only intermittently interested in distancing himself from that milieu. More often he has sought, whether through strategy or instinct, to normalize it.
This weekend, Trump National Doral, one of the president’s Florida clubs, planned to host a fund-raiser allowing golfers to bid on strippers to serve as their caddies. Though the event was canceled when it attracted too much attention, it’s at once astounding and not surprising at all that it was approved in the first place.
In truth, a stripper auction is tame by the standard of gross Trump stories, since at least the women were willing. Your eyes would glaze over if I tried to list every Trump associate implicated in the beating or sexual coercion of women. Still, it’s worth reviewing a few lowlights, because it’s astonishing how quickly the most lurid misdeeds fade from memory, supplanted by new degradations.
Acosta, you’ll remember, got his job becauseTrump’s previous pick, Andrew Puzder, withdrew following the revelation that his ex-wife, pseudonymous and in disguise, had appeared on an Oprah episode about “High Class Battered Women.” (She later retracted her accusations.)
Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, was once charged with domestic violence, battery and dissuading a witness. (The case was dropped when his former wife failed to appear in court.) After Bill Shine, a former co-president of Fox News, was forced from his job for his involvement in Fox’s sprawling sexual harassment scandals, Trump hired him.
The White House staff secretary Rob Porter resigned last year after it was revealed that both of his ex-wives had accused him of abuse. The White House speechwriter David Sorensen resigned after his ex-wife came forward with stories of his violence toward her.
Elliott Broidy, a major Trump fund-raiser who became the Republican National Committee deputy finance chairman, resigned last year amid news that he’d paid $1.6 million as hush money to a former playboy model, Shera Bechard, who said she’d had an abortion after he got her pregnant. (In a lawsuit, Bechard said Broidy had been violent.) The casino mogul Steve Wynn, whom Trump installed as the R.N.C.’s finance chairman, resigned amid accusations that he’d pressured his employees for sex. He remains a major Republican donor.
In 2017, Trump tapped the former chief executive of AccuWeather, Barry Myers, to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Then The Washington Post discovered a report from a Department of Labor investigation into Myers’s company, which found a culture of “widespread sexual harassment” that was “severe and pervasive.” The Senate hasn’t yet voted on Myers’s nomination, but the administration hasn’t withdrawn it.
And just this week, a senior military officer came forward to accuse Gen. John Hyten, Trump’s nominee to be the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, of derailing her career when she turned down his sexual advances. “My life was ruined by this,” she told The Associated Press. (The Air Force reportedly cleared him of misconduct.)
Trump will sometimes jettison men accused of abuse when they become a public relations liability. But his first instinct is empathy, a sentiment he seems otherwise unfamiliar with. In May, he urged Roy Moore, the theocratic Alabama Senate candidate accused of preying on teenage girls, not to run again because he would lose, but added, “I have NOTHING against Roy Moore, and unlike many other Republican leaders, wanted him to win.” The president has expressed no sympathy for victims in the Epstein case, but has said he felt bad for Acosta.
Trump seems to understand, at least on a limbic level, that the effect of this cavalcade of scandal isn’t cumulative. Instead, each one eclipses the last, creating a sense of weary cynicism that makes shock impossible to sustain.
It was just three weeks ago that E. Jean Carroll, a well-known writer, accused Trump of what amounted to a violent rape in the mid-1990s, and two friends of hers confirmed that she’d told them about it at the time. In response, Trump essentially said she was too unattractive to rape — “No. 1, she’s not my type” — and claimed that he’d never met her. That was a provable lie; there’s a photograph of them together. It didn’t matter. The story drifted from the headlines within a few days.
Since Epstein’s arrest, many people have wondered how he was able to get away with his alleged crimes for so long, given all that’s publicly known about him. But we also know that the president boasts about sexually assaulting women, that over a dozen have accused him of various sorts of sexual misconduct, and one of them has accused him of rape. We know it, and we know we can’t do anything about it, so we live with it and grow numb. Maybe someday justice will come and a new generation will wonder how we tolerated behavior that was always right out in the open.