The Kavanaugh sexual assault allegation: when we can’t know the truth

Last updated on: September 16, 2018 at 8:52 pm by Jane the Actuary

The Kavanaugh sexual assault allegation: when we can’t know the truth 2018-09-16T20:52:44-06:00 Jane the Actuary

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The accuser of Brett Kavanaugh now has a name: Christine Blasey Ford. And the details, such as they are, are now in a Washington Post article:

While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her back and groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over her mouth.

“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” said Ford, now a 51-year-old research psychologist in northern California. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”

Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh’s friend and classmate at Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself in a bathroom and then fled the house.

She reports never having told anyone but the time but

Years later, after going through psychotherapy, Ford said, she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life.

and therapist’s notes dated as 2012, appear to corroborate her story.

Here are some possible explanations:

1. She made it up entirely. Reports are that her social media presence has been erased — and so completely that even her Linkedin account is now “Christine B.” at Stanford. Is that because she wanted to not only eliminate the opportunity to harass her, but also to hide her political causes? There’s no way of knowing. But given the level of extreme rhetoric, that Kavanaugh would be the source of untold deaths due to the overturning of Roe v. Wade and finding for plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to end pre-existing condition insurance coverage protections, and would result in unchecked corruption at the White House, and all manner of other dire consequences, it’s not hard to believe that someone would be convinced that the situation calls for an accusation like this, with respect to someone that she had a passing acquaintance with in high school. Yes, her husband and therapist are in on it, too. Are the therapists’ notes provably from 2012?

Yes, I agree, this is unlikely. But there has been so much sensationalist rhetoric that I suspect there are a significant number of people who, if they thought they had the chance, would feel it perfectly justified to falsify a claim if they felt it would protect all of the potential victims of a Kavanaugh Supreme Court decision.

2. Something happened, with some boy whose identity she hadn’t really remembered, but she made the association with Kavanaugh so many years after the fact because of his appearances in the news, either prior to the 2012 therapist’s sessions (if she told him the name at the time) or just now (if she only connected the nameless high school boy to Kavanaugh when he made the news). Whether the details are even as she recalls them, or whether, with the passage of time, this event, which was a formative event in her life, unintentionally evolved into something quite different, we can’t know.

3. Kavanaugh was indeed the drunk boy, but he didn’t really get any further than first base and we can’t really say whether, had his friend not stopped him (because the details are confusing but it seems more like the friend was stopping rather than trying to join in on the whatever-was-happening), he would have actually raped her. As to his denial, he could be truthful, that is, have the intent of being truthful if (a) he was black-out drunk and/or (b) if his perception of what happened was so radically different than hers that it wasn’t a memorable event to him, so that in his mind, he never did any such thing.

4. Kavanaugh was drunk, but not so drunk as to not be in full control of his actions and remember everything, and intended to catch her alone and rape her, remembers everything and is lying now.

But how — how on earth — do we respond to this? If we believe her, but it’s actually not true, then an injustice is perpetrated on Kavanaugh, and we’ve created an environment in which people can fabricate 11th-hour accusations with impunity. If we believe him, and he’s lying then we have a Supreme Court justice who, in the worst case, was a rapist, and won’t own up to it (e.g., “I treated girls unjustly in high school, but then I learned this was wrong”).

Now maybe in the former case we say, “no one has a right to Supreme Court confirmation, so there’s no actual injustice happening,” but it sets a very disturbing precedent that one can destroy a potential confirmation with last-minute unproven accuastion. Where does this end?

And it doesn’t appear that we’ll get much corroborative or exculpatory evidence, either. The story doesn’t quite hang together: the therapist’s notes say four boys in the attack, she says the notes were wrong and there were merely four boys at the party. The other boy is described as being a second perpetrator, but the action of “jumping on” Ford and Kavanaugh reads more as disrupting than anything else. But I don’t think this proves that it’s a false accusation. There is no date other than probably summer of 1982. We know of no one else at the party, which is reasonable enough — some of us can just scroll through our Facebook friends list to find high school classmates, but it’s hardly evidence of anything if Ford can’t or didn’t. And the absence of other accusers doesn’t in itself prove anything, either.

But that also means that claims that “this should be investigated” aren’t really going to get anywhere. What is there to investigate? Maybe I lack enough imagination to see how an investigation could turn up more information. There’s so little to go on: some party in the summer, at someone’s house. Maybe someone’s already gone to the media saying, “I was there; I remember this” but one presumes that, if this was a party no different than countless others these teenagers attended, then these teenagers are unlikely to remember anything distinctive about this one, let alone anything as specific as “she went upstairs, the boys followed her, then she never came back.” Is it a matter of having Ford testify? — I’m not sure that this would be meaningful, if it just means that senators, and the public, are called on to make their decision based on how sympathetic a witness she appears to be.

So where do we go from here? Should Kavanaugh be pulled from the nomination for avoidance of doubt? Or would the Democrats find similar reasons to disqualify any alternative nominee?

I’m interested in what readers think — but not if you hated Kavanaugh and are happy for this matter to have come up, because that’s not particularly meaningful.

Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Judge_Brett_Michael_Kavanaugh.jpg; By U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Uncategorized

Brett Kavanaugh

sexual assault accuastions

Previous Post

September 14, 2018

Bad news from China - and the Vatican

Next Post

September 21, 2018 Motor voter and the perils of DMV incompetence

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Actuarial/Retirement Issues Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 December 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 August 2021 June 2021 April 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"?

Select your answer to see how you score.

John the Baptist Jesus Peter Isaiah