Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh, the Seriousness of Accusations, and the Presumption of Innocence

I should probably be using my down time at work to be working on homework right now, but I am just too angry and I have to get this off my chest.

A few minutes before I began writing this, I was on patrol at a local college where I work part time as a security officer. I passed by some faculty offices and outside one of the offices, on a bulletin board was a piece of paper with the words “WE BELIEVE WOMEN” printed on it. That was the final straw for me.

Over the past few weeks, I have watched this country degenerate into the worst political state imaginable. It’s not just Republicans and it’s not just Democrats. It’s both and their followers who blindly line up behind their “leaders” lockstep like lemmings and they have all gone over the edge together.

Since I used to be a Republican several decades ago and I still typically vote Republican, I’m going to start with Republicans and people on the right. But don’t worry Democrats and people on the left, I have plenty of juice for you and I am going to give it away for free tonight.

Over the past few weeks from Republicans, Republican voters, so-called conservatives, and way too many Libertarians, I have seen some of the vilest, hateful, ignorant, sexist, and misogynist comments I have ever seen spewed forth from the fingertips and out of the mouths of you people in the name of “questioning the accuser.” It hasn’t been just men either. Even worse, many of them should freaking know better!

“Do all women wait 40 years to report a rape, or is it just Democrats?”

I saw that question in meme form posted on a woman’s Facebook page. But don’t worry guys. A lot of you posted this nonsense too. It’s shameful and it’s ignorant. Here’s a better question: How many women who are victims of sexual violence never report the crime to police? And the answer is about 70%. That’s right, about 7 out of every 10 women who are raped or otherwise sexually assaulted will never tell authorities and their attackers will likely never face justice. EVER! The only reason why we have statistics on this is because women do tell people—friends, family, therapists, clergy, and other people they trust. The reality is, though, that many women may not tell anybody and take the information to the grave with them, so the real number could be higher. Much higher.

I will throw another statistic out there for you women who may be thinking about climbing on your high horse. Men are also victims of sex crimes and while the numbers of men who are sexually assaulted are lower, the number of men who report sex crimes to authorities is only about 10%.

Why would a woman not tell the police they have been sexually victimized? The answer to that is for women have already been victimized, the process of bringing their accuser to justice forces them to be revictimized. They have to go to a doctor who is going to swab every inch of her body for evidence. After a sexual assault, most victims don’t want to be touched at all. They want to shower, close and lock their doors, pull their drapes, and cry themselves to sleep. Then of course, there are the lawyers who are going to question their reputation, their actions, how they dressed. Yes, it is the job of defense lawyers to try and place the blame on the victim if there is solid evidence that the accused did sexually assault the accuser. Then, of course, there is the shame that comes with having been violated that way: What will friends and family think, and if this becomes a big enough deal, what will the public think? Do you want to have your name and reputation dragged through the mud? I don’t think so. Anyone who comes forward, even in a clear cut case is very courageous. This is why we take accusations of rape or sexual assault seriously. Notice that taking an accusation seriously is not, nor should it be synonymous with belief, or disbelief for that matter. But I’ll get back to that in a bit.

“If Christine Blasey Ford was so afraid of flying, why did she fly to Hawaii, the South Pacific, and the Caribbean?” and similar idiotic questions.

The questions about her travel habits may be a clever tactic to convince the weak-minded that there is a problem with her story, but in reality, there are many people who are afraid of flying who do so because it is the only way to quickly get somewhere where they need or want to be. Sean Bean of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones fame doesn’t like flying, but do you think he took a boat to New Zealand to film Lord of the Rings? Nope. He flew. During one filming sequence, the crew needed to take a helicopter to get on set. During the first trip, some of the cast played a prank on Sean Bean and got the pilot to do some “fancy flying” and it scared Sean Bean. So, for the rest of the filming on that set, he got to the site early, got into full Boromir costume, took a ski lift part of the way up the mountain, and then hiked the final few miles. The whole trip took him two hours each direction every day. And yes, he did it multiple days.

Could it be that Ford wanted to avoid unnecessary travel?

I know lots of people who are afraid of flying. I am not one of them, but I have a family member who is afraid of flying. She has flown all over the world with a white-knuckled death grip on the armrests the whole way. But still she flies and I believe she has gotten better about her fear of flying, but I haven’t asked her about it lately. The point is that people who are afraid of flying will avoid flying unless they have to or the rewards for flying outweigh the drawbacks. For Ford to testify in the Senate hearings, she could take a week-long trip by car or a three day trip by train or bus, which would be extremely inconvenient, or she could suffer through the shorter albeit more stressful inconvenience of flying in one day. She’s an educated woman and I believe she made the educated choice. Facing your fears to do what you love or feel is important is pretty brave.

Brett Kavanaugh has many great character witnesses that say he’s a great guy.

So what? Ted Bundy was liked by everyone who knew him. Jeffry Dahmer was described as a thoughtful, active citizen. Phillip Markoff was an honors student. Robert Lee Yates was an active member of his church. They were also all notorious serial killers. If enough evidence comes out to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that Kavanaugh did sexually assault Ford, none of his character witnesses will amount to a hill of beans, to coin the Humphrey Bogart line.

Okay Christine Blasey Ford supporters. I have finished flame spraying Kavanaugh supporters, let me aim my frustration at y’all for a while.

“Innocent until proven guilty.”

Need I say more? How about this?

“The burden of proof rests with the prosecution until it shifts to the defense.”

These are foundational beliefs in the American justice system and yet with just an accusation, the anti-Trump crowd has actually decided that a person accused of a crime should be considered guilty until proven innocent. Regarding Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings, former Vice President Joe Biden recently said, “For a woman to come forward in the glaring lights of focus, nationally, you’ve got to start off with the presumption that at least the essence of what she’s talking about is real, whether or not she forgets facts, whether or not it’s been made worse or better over time. But nobody fails to understand that this is like jumping into a cauldron.” It is almost as if Joe Biden is saying that if there is more publicity involved, the accusation should be taken more seriously. Really?

Here's another one for you:

“Equality before the law.”

I believe that what Joe Biden is saying has some truth to it. A person who has been sexually assaulted by someone prominent who is also willing to come forward is very courageous, but there could be other reasons why a person would make a false accusation against a person of prominence, but I’ll get to that. The fact is that a person is not more believable because they are accusing a person in prominence any more than a person in prominence is more likely to be a criminal. Sure, power corrupts, but that does not mean that we do away with the foundations of our whole legal system. If you think the prison population is a problem now, just go ahead and do away with equality before the law and innocent until proven guilty. A whole world of accusations will explode and so will the prison population.

But I digress.

“We believe women.”

That’s what got me here in the first place. Why are women more believable than men? Why is Christine Blasey Ford more believable than Brett Kavanaugh? But “we believe women.” Fine.

A young man who was a senior in high school, a talented football player, had committed to attend USC, and received a scholarship to attend. His star was on the rise. Then, a female classmate of his accused him of rape. He confessed to the rape in order to receive a plea deal and spent more than five years in prison. He lost his scholarship, while many of his high school friends went on to play professional football. The woman also received a $1.5 million settlement from the high school since the alleged attack occurred on the campus. Of course, a few years later she was found to have lied about the whole thing. Her family had to give back the money plus some, but the man, Brian Banks lost 10 years of his life, what likely would have been a promising, multi-million dollar football career, and who knows what other experiences were stolen from him because “we believe women."

In 2006, Crystal Gail Mangum accused three members of the Duke University Lacrosse team of rape. Women are to be believed right? Well, the case went to court and it was discovered that she had falsely accused the men of rape. That didn’t prevent the men’s lives from being thrown into chaos, having their educations interrupted for months, the mental strain, suspensions, distrust from friends, etc.

In 1987, Mike Pitassi a high school band teacher in Tuscon, Arizona was accused of sexually molesting two girls in the band. Women should be believed, right? Well, it turns out that they were going to receive a bad grade in band and wanted to get it changed. Either Pitassi would change the grade or they would go to authorities and he would be arrested and they would get their grade changed that way. It didn’t work out for them. Of course, it didn’t work out well for Mike Pitassi either. He resigned his position and I have no idea what happened to him. Sure, he was exonerated, but it hurt his career at the very least.

I have personally been the subject of false accusations at the hands of women for simply doing my job. They were believed. I was never accused of sexual assault, but I have still had accusations made against me. I was once accused of sexually harassing a woman. She accused me because I was her supervisor, and I caught her trying to get out of work and put her back to work. Fortunately, there were witnesses, both male and female, who came to my defense in the investigation, but it was a stressful time.

My story and the stories I listed above are not exceptional. They occur all too frequently because we have lived in a world for a few decades now where women are more often believed over men. Why? It’s low hanging fruit. It’s easy to pick and easy to eat. It doesn’t take much intellectual work, but questioning and investigating takes work. That work is made all the more difficult when the events being investigated are 40 years old. It's not just lacking in intellectualism, it is anti-intellectual.

The fact of the matter is that as much as politics plays a role in this issue because a Supreme Court nomination is at stake, this is not a political matter. It is a legal one. Because this is a legal matter, until Ford has a case that she can take to a court of law and try Bret Kavanaugh, Christine Ford’s accusation is just that and nothing more. It is a political maneuver by a woman who has been and still is an outspoken anti-Trump protester. Whether she’s making it up or it actually happened is a matter for a court of law to decide, not the general public, politicians or the media.

Why would anyone put themselves through this kind of a stressful situation where they’re receiving death threats and having to be victimized through the media again?

There are at least four possibilities.

The first I have already discussed. She is making a political maneuver to prevent a conservative judge from getting on the Supreme Court. The circus involved, even if he is eventually found innocent may be enough to get him to pull his name from consideration and let another nominee have his name put forward. Wash, Rinse, Repeat. If you’re a conspiracy theorist, someone might even be offering her some kind of monetary reward for doing this.

The second is attention. She may be looking for her fifteen minutes of fame. Sure, she’s a published Ph.D., but that’s not famous. She’s a household name now, though. Democrats and leftists, politicians and celebrities, and just every day people have rushed to her defense by the millions. She’s been automatically believed. For every negative e-mail or letter, or death threat she has received, there have been equal amounts, if not more support lavished upon her. A person who craves attention doesn't care if it's positive or negative. Sure, positive is preferred, but everything is good.

The third is a case of mistaken identity. I want you to think back to your time in high school, especially if you went to high school decades ago. Did you go to any parties? I did. Did you meet people from other schools? I did. Members of the opposite sex? Yep. Lots. What were their names? Uh oh. I went to a ton of parties. I met people from different high schools. There were a lot of people whose names I knew at the time because I swam with them for USAA, SAA, or AP&R for years. I also knew people from different high schools because we lived in the same neighborhood or went to the same schools at other times. I can only remember a few of their names now and only two of the females from other high schools. I remember them because I attended junior high school with them. Of the boys’ names from other high schools that I remember from high school parties, there is only one I remember because we swam on the same AP&R team and later the same USAA team. Other than the people with whom I am friends on Facebook, I couldn’t tell you what any of the rest of those people looked like today.

The point I am making is that it might be easy to remember a face, but it can be difficult to remember the name of a person you don’t see on a regular basis. If you throw in alcohol, drugs, or just plain being tired from being up late, you might forget a face, too. Add 20 years to that memory and you see a person who looks familiar, you check the name, and yep they’re from your town, yep, the name rings a bell, that must be the person! Of course, that person now looks like the older version of  another person who victimized you, or your mind is connecting that person to the memory of your victimization, and yes, that happens. In fact, it has been shown that people can be wrong about very simple and seemingly obvious details just moments after a crime has been committed. Adrenaline, fear, and other stressors can cloud details even further. Time does not help you gain clarity.

Then, of course, there is a fourth option: She remembers the whole thing vividly, Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her and he and Bill Cosby should be sharing a cell together. If enough evidence is found to take him to court (no such thing has happened yet), then go to court. What if he’s already been confirmed? The Constitution has the “good behavior” clause and if he is found guilty, he would be removed from the court and jailed.

The veracity of Ford’s claims, or the guilt or innocence of Brett Kavanaugh is not for me to decide, or you, or the media, or politicians, or anyone else for that matter. It is up to a court of law.

Does that mean I disbelieve Ford’s claims and believe Kavanaugh’s claims? No. I take all claims of all crimes very seriously but taking a claim seriously does not mean I believe it or disbelieve it. It means that I believe that the claims should be looked into by law enforcement and if evidence is found to indicate there is a case against Kavanaugh, he should be taken to trial with an unbiased (good luck with that!) jury of his peers and the judicial system should handle the case.

I will not pass judgment on either Ford or Kavanaugh because I was not at the party where the sexual assault occurred. Neither were any of the people who are likely reading this, so for those who are passing judgment on one or the other, I am passing judgment on you: You're being stupid!

I will finish by asking a couple of questions to those who have pushed through their anger to read this far:

Ford supporters: Why are you supporting her? Is it because you believe all women without evidence or is it because you hate President Donald Trump so much that you will grab on to anything to hamper his administration and block his agenda?

Personally, I can’t stand Trump. I did not vote for him in 2016 and I have no plans to vote for him in 2020 either. I will even be honest and say I am not particularly fond of Brett Kavanaugh either. Sure, I love his libertarian and pro-constitution stances on the 2^nd amendment and government regulation. However, he has very problematic views concerning presidential impeachment. He supported government metadata collection in violation of the 4^th amendment, and there are other 4^th amendment opinions he holds that I take issue with. If I had a vote, I would not vote for him. However, does that mean I am willing to call him a sex predator because someone claims he did something almost 40 years ago? Nope.

Kavanaugh supporters: Why are you more willing to support him? Is it because you think that Ford’s accusations lack merit or are at least suspicious, is it because you love Trump so much that you are willing to overlook any possibility of malfeasance on the part of his nominees, or is it because you hate Democrats or anyone who opposes Trump so much that you automatically assume anything they say is a lie?

I am also not fond of most Democrats. However, I am not willing to just dismiss out of hand an accusation of sexual assault simply because of the timing or because it is made by a Democrat, nor am I willing to simply dismiss a claim because it was made 40 years after the fact since most sexual assaults are never reported.

Because of most of the arguments I have seen on the internet and in the media, I do not think either side is thinking about this from a non-partisan and logical perspective. Mostly, it’s just hate, vitriol, politics, and worse, feelings.

In other words, you’re both wrong and I'm not sorry if I hurt your feelings.