One of the reasons Colorado GOP Senate nominee Ken Buck
declined to prosecute the rape of a 21-year-old college student in 2005 was that he believed she had previously had an abortion of a child fathered by the suspect. According to Buck, that abortion gave the victim motive to lie about the suspect "to get back at" him.
Of course, Buck's theory made no sense -- given that an abortion would have been the victim's choice, it would be the suspect who would have a revenge motive, not the victim. Moreover, Buck himself is an outspoken foe of abortion, opposing it even of cases of rape and incest, giving Buck himself a plausible motive to want to punish this young woman.
But perhaps the most obvious problem with Buck's theory is that he did not have enough facts to support it. The only evidence that the victim had an abortion came from the suspect himself. The victim denied it, saying she had had a miscarriage. Yet Buck chose to believe the suspect. From Colorado Independent's transcript (their story here and excerpts from the audio conversation here):
BUCK: There are a lot of things that I have a knowledge of, that I would assume (name of possible suspect redacted) knows about and that they have to do with, perhaps, your motives for (unintelligible) and that is part of what our calculation has been in this.
VICTIM: I’m interested to hear more about that, my motives, for what this has been.
BUCK: You have, you have had HIS baby, and you had an abortion.
VICTIM: That’s false, that’s just false.
BUCK: Why don’t you clarify?
VICTIM: I did have a miscarriage; we had talked about an abortion. That was actually year and a half ago. So ...
BUCK: That would be something that you can cross-examine on, that would be “something that might be a motive for trying to get back at somebody.” And it would be a (unintelligible). And it’s part of what we have to take into account whether we can prove this case or not. And there are a lot of things that, um, you know, for as why weren’t not prosecuting the case. We’ve got to weigh all that, and it not something that I feel comfortable with, but something I have to be.
What makes this so infuriating isn't just that Buck partly based his decision to forego prosecution on his unfounded belief that she had previous had an abortion of the suspect's child -- it's that he also threatened her with public humiliation if she hired a lawyer to compel prosecution.
M#2 [An unidentified male who attended meeting with victim]: We’ve talked about a motion to compel prosecution, and that’s the only other option. Ultimately that’s going to be [Name redacted] decision. But that’s really the only option.... Whether or not we’re going to do that, I don’t know. Incredibly high burden .
BUCK: Be aware of something, if this, if you file this motion, it will be very public, publicly covered event.
The irony, of course, is that Buck was probably right about the case becoming "very public." But he probably never imagined that he would be the one who was getting burned. If that happens, there will at least be some measure of poetic justice in this case.