There was a hint of this in the way the Washington Post covered the story earlier this week about the phone message left for Anita Hill by Virginia Thomas (wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas) asking for an apology. They included a quote from a woman, Lillian McEwen, described as a woman who had dated Clarence Thomas in the past who was now working on a memoir of her life, and who said that the harrassing behavior Anita Hill described in her testimony was consistent with the Clarence Thomas she used to date.
And now Lillian McEwen is speaking out -- and the Washington Post has the article.
This is explosive.
Washington Post story on Lillian McEwen
Lillian McEwen says that she dated Clarence Thomas for about four years in the early 1980's, ending several years before he was nominated by the U.S. Supreme Court. But, she says, when she heard Anita Hill's testimony about Thomas's behavior at the federal Department of Education and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission -- asking women who worked for him for dates and making lurid comments about sex and pornography -- it rang completely true for her.
And she "scoffs" at the indignation displayed by Clarence Thomas about Hill's charges.
Because, she tells the Post, the Clarence Thomas she knew was "obsessed" with pornography and liked to talk about particular scenes and items that caught his attention. And, she says, he was always scrutinizing the women he worked with for potential sexual partners: "It was a hobby of his," as she puts it.
And it wasn't only Anita Hill's testimony that rang true for McEwen. A second former EEOC employee, Angela Wright, was interviewed and was prepared to testify but (for various reasons, in the midst of the tense and politically supercharged atmosphere of the Judiciary Committee hearing) she was not permitted to testify live. Instead of actually testifying, the transcript of Angela Wright's interview with Committee investigators was entered into the written record. In it, she said that she had become uncomfortable with the frequent sexual remarks and attention from Thomas, which included one incident where he asked her for her breast size as they were walking into an EEOC seminar. (Keep in mind: Clarence Thomas at that time was THE HEAD OF THE EEOC -- THE TOP FEDERAL AGENCY CHARGED WITH COMBATTING WORKPLACE DISCRIMINATION!). Wright's story at the time was generally corroborated by another EEOC employee, who said that Wright told her then that she felt uncomfortable with Thomas because of his constant remarks about her appearance.
McEwen says that Thomas was particularly taken with women with large breasts, and would often tell her about the women at work. And, she says he even told her once that he had asked a woman at work her bra size.
McEwen herself says she had no problem with Thomas's fascinations, but didn't particularly share them. Unlike him, she says she found pornography boring.
She didn't come forward at the time, and has kept quiet until now, because she saw "nothing good" coming from talking about her former romantic partner. But she's retired now, and she's finally free to talk.
So that probably explains Virginia Thomas's motive for making the phone call to Anita Hill. She'd probably gotten wind that an old girlfriend of her husband was working on a book that would include her impressions of him -- and she knew that would be probably be devastating to whatever shards of credibility he still retained.
So, if any further evidence were needed, it seems crystal-clear now: Anita Hill told the truth.
Clarence Thomas sexually harrassed her, and other female employees, when he was the head of the top federal anti-discrimination agency. And then he lied about it under oath, before Congress and the nation.
There's certainly little doubt left now.