The Kavanaugh Conundrum

There has been much in the news about women supporting and opposing Brett Kavanaugh. Republican women generally support him, Democrat women generally oppose him. One group particularly disturbs me, as an attorney who frequently represents men who have been falsely accused of sexual misconduct: female victims of rape. It appears that victims of rape, Republican or Democrat, have been speaking out against Judge Kavanaugh.

The Epoch Times

I have read blogs posts and stories with comments from all over. Invariably, there will be one woman posting "I believe Dr. Ford because I was a victim of rape! No one like that should sit on the Supreme Court." This comment will be followed by a second, then a third similar post. These women will go to their graves believing Dr. Ford was groped by Brett Kavanaugh 36 years ago.

What is disturbing is that these women do not believe Dr. Ford because the evidence weighs in favor of the charge; they believe Dr. Ford because they were victims of rape or some other sexual crime.

Looking at the facts which have been made public, and I have read the entire transcript of Christine Ford's tesimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, these facts have come to light:

1. Christine Ford says she is 100% certain Brett Kavanaugh was drunk at a party in a Maryland house by a country club, with 4-6 people in attendance.  (note: I have never seen a woman claiming to have been a victim of a sex crime claiming she is 27% sure of the identity of the one she claims victimized her)

2. Of the 4 people she named being in attendance, not one confirms her story, including the one she said was a close friend.

3. Her best friend in high school knows nothing of the party or her story.

4. She would have been 6-8 miles from home.  She says she left the party, at night.

5. She does not know how she got home.  She was too young to drive, so she did not drive.  Her mom did not give her a ride home.  No one at the party gave her a ride home.  No one has come forward claiming to have given her a ride that night.

6. She is alleging a criminal act.  To this day she has not reported this to the police in the jurisdiction where she says it happened, and the FBI has no jurisdiction concerning her allegations.

The Democrat Party, by its leaders' behavior, has cast doubt on the allegations because:

1.  Prior to her making the accusation against Kavanaugh, leaders in the Democrat Party vowed to force the Republicans to delay a vote in the Senate until after the mid-term elections.  As of this date, they have forced a delay into the beginning of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2018-2019 term due to this allegation by Dr. Ford.

2.  The Democrat Party used false allegations of sexual misconduct against Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991 to derail his nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court.  I used "false" allegations because a portion of the testimony of Anita Hill was found to have been taken from an E.E.O.C. file that Anita Hill worked on when she was an assistant to Clarence Thomas at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.  

3. The Democrat Party used accusations  of sexual misconduct against Judge Roy Moore to derail his run for the U.S. Senate in 2017 that was remarkably similar to Dr. Ford and the other women who were named at the last minute of his campaign.  The accusations had never been made before, were about alleged misconduct over 30 years ago, and the most prominent one involved a girl who had a high school yearbook signed by Moore--and the accuser later admitted to having added several things to Moore's signature, which made it look like Moore was sending her some message.  All of these accusations came out very late in the process and tipped the scales against Moore, giving a Democrat the victory in that race, and cutting the Republican lead in the Senate in half.

With there being no corroborating evidence in favor of Dr. Ford's accusation, and with the Democrat Party's habit of derailing key Republicans' futures by having women step forward and accuse them of improper sexual conduct that no one has ever heard of before, certainly the credibility of Dr. Ford is in question.  Without 100% credibility, her accusation should not be considered.

Dr. Ford has damaged her credibility in this way: when the Democrat Party needed additional delays to slow down the confirmation process, Dr. Ford claimed she could not make it to Washington, D.C., in time because she was afraid of flying and would have to travel by land.  That statement was false.  Under questioning by Rachel Mitchell, Dr. Ford admitted she was not truthful when she stated she was afraid to fly, and admitted that she had flown to Hawaii, Costa Rica, other locations outside the United States and flew frequently within the United States.  She made the false statement about being afraid of flying, she said, because she wanted to control where any questioning of her would take place.  

That false statement was made in lockstep with the wishes of the leadership of the Democrat Party who wanted to slow down the confirmation process.  

For all of these reasons, there is no reason to ascribe credibility to Dr. Ford's accusation.  

The question therefore is, why do so many women who have been raped or molested believe her story without corroborating evidence?

The answer lies in something all trial lawyers know:  bias.  Victims of rape or sexual abuse have a psychological bias in favor of the one making an accusation of rape, attempted rape, or sexual abuse. 

 In a rape trial, a jury is selected before any witness takes the stand.  The defense attorney (often the judge) will ask if anyone on the jury has been a victim of rape or sexual abuse.  Often these people are questioned further outside of the presence of the rest of the jury.  The first question then asked is, "because of this terrible thing that happened to you, are you more likely to believe what the accuser has to say than what the defendant has to say?"  The answer is invariably "Yes."  Each person who has had such an experience is disqualified from passing judgment on the accused.

That has not happened with Judge Kavanaugh.  To the contrary, some members of the general public think Dr. Ford should be believed because so many rape victims believe her testimony.  They are believed as though they have a special insight into the mind of a rapist, and a rape victim should know a rapist when they see one, right?

Just the opposite is true.  Rape victims have no special insight into the truth here, they have a bias burned into their genetic makeup which their brains will not let them shake.

I have had to tell some of these rape victims, who are insistent that Judge Kavanaugh is "guilty," that the Senate Confirmation Hearing is not about their rape, it is about whether a man who has a clean record and has never been accused of a crime should have his nomination stopped because of an uncorroborated accusation from someone who has been proved to have lied to the Senate Judiciary Committee at least once, in order to assist the Democrat Party.

The general public should consider this question when determining what to think about all of the rape victims who have come forward to say they believe Dr. Ford:  If you were falsely accused of rape, what do you think your chances of receiving justice would be if your jury were composed of rape victims?