Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer of the New Yorker have provided details of a woman’s allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her during their high school days. The woman said Kavanaugh and a friend, who had been drinking, pinned her down, turned up the stereo to hide her protests, and that Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth before she eventually freed herself. Extremely troubling for someone who could be confirmed for a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court.
But, Farrow and Mayer also reported this detail:
A source familiar with the committee’s activities said that Feinstein’s staff initially conveyed to other Democratic members’ offices that the incident was too distant in the past to merit public discussion, and that Feinstein had “taken care of it.”
Let me lend a personal story here to shed some light on exactly why it is so troubling that Sen. Feinstein and/or her staff reportedly brushed this off as being “too distant to merit public discussion.” If you are triggered by such accounts, please move on.
When I was in high school, I was home sick and lounging on the couch. I vividly remember that I was watching "Days of Our Lives" when I heard someone knocking on the door. I opened the door to see a classmate standing there, someone I had known a long time. I was shocked to see him; we had a lot of mutual friends, we were often hanging out at the same places, but we weren't the kind of friends to randomly stop by each other's houses to hang out.
I asked what he wanted and he said that he noticed I hadn't been in class, and so he decided to come by and check on me. OK, weird. We weren't friends like that, but by now he was walking into my house and telling me he wanted to hang out. I remember vaguely protesting because I was sick, but he insisted and plopped down on my couch. Not quite having the confidence or maturity to demand that he leave, I sat back down and turned my attention back to the show.
My parents had a large marble ashtray on the coffee table (80s!) and he took out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one before lighting one up. Merits. I distinctly remembered they were Merits, most of my friends smoked Marlboros. As he took a long draw on that Merit cigarette, he looked at me and said, "when I'm done smoking this, we're gonna wrestle." As kids, I had occasionally wrestled with the boys. As a 17-year-old woman, I had no interest. I told him I was not interested. He repeated it while he smoked, counting down even.
Eventually he put the cigarette out in the marble ashtray and said, “It's wrestling time.” And in a blink of an eye, he was on top of me, pinning me down on the couch. I struggled and yelled. He used both of his legs and his arms, one of which had a plaster cast, to hold me down. Eventually he reached down to unbutton his jeans. I mustered every ounce of energy and rage I could find and somehow managed to wiggle out of his pin. I began screaming at him to get out of my house. He began chasing me around the house.
I ran through one room after the other eventually coming to the end of my options, my sister's bedroom. I slammed the door and locked it behind me, still screaming for him to leave. I yelled that my mother would be home soon. I yelled that I had a phone and I was going to call 911. He put his shoulder into the door and broke into the room, again attacking me, this time throwing me onto my sister's bed. We wrestled again, and I managed to throw him off of me. This time he landed on the corner of the bed and fell to the ground, landing hard on that broken wrist, the one already in a cast. He grabbed his cast and yelped in pain and said, "What the fuck?!" I was screaming "get out of my house!" as I ran to the front door and out into the driveway with my sister's cordless phone. He followed me out and walked to his car, yelling for me to "Calm down! I was only kidding! Geez!"
The truth is, I didn't call 911 because I already knew that this would turn into a "he said, she said." I was terrified I was going to get into trouble with my mother because I had let him in. I'd let him smoke in our house. I was rightly afraid that friends would begin parsing and questioning *my character*. After all, I'd made out with that guy at a party one night. Everyone knew about that. Had I deserved it? Would the police be asking me similar questions? Would I have to confess to my mom about making out with that other guy? Oh, God. Surely they would. He'd preemptively told some of our mutual male friends a version of the story that included the usual "She's crazy! I was just joking around!" I was so traumatized by it. In the end, I just tried to move on, because the stress of reporting it seemed to be as great or greater than the stress of the attack itself.
Thirty years later, I deeply regret not coming forward. Did he go onto college and do this to other women? I have thought about this my entire life. On top of the trauma of the assault, I have carried the scars of regret and shame for not having the courage to speak out. For what it's worth, this man has tried to friend me on social media multiple times in recent years. Does he think we can just reconnect like it never happened? I have no idea what is going through his head, but I can tell you this—if he were sitting before the United States Senate waiting to be confirmed to the highest court in the land, a lifetime appointment to be the keeper of womens' rights, I'd like to think that I too would come forward, to tell my story with the benefit of distance and maturity and confidence that only age can bring.
It's been 30 years since my attacker got in his sports car and drove off. Does it sound like I'm over it? Does it sound like it is something that is too far in the past to be considered?