Exposure: A word that can mean something one dies of—and Christine Blasey Ford is indeed in fear of her life now:
washingtonpost/kavanaughs-accuser-thought-her-life-would-be-upended-she-was-right/2018/09/18
In a letter late Tuesday to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R), Ford’s attorneys said that she wants the FBI to investigate the incident first, and that “her worst fears have materialized” as a result of her coming forward.
“She has been the target of vicious harassment and even death threats,” they wrote. “As a result of these kind of threats, her family was forced to relocate out of their home. Her email has been hacked, and she has been impersonated online.”
This is what Dr Blasey was trying to avoid. She is a sexual assault survivor who is now being ruthlessly attacked.
After Dr Blasey sent her letter July 30, asking to remain anonymous, Senator Feinstein had explored ways to make Kavanaugh answer for what he did without exposing his victim against her will:
washingtonpostt/why-didnt-she-bring-it-up/2018/09/18
Feinstein said she sought to honor Ford’s request for privacy, and Ford’s attorney Debra Katz said she believes Feinstein did that. On Tuesday, Feinstein said she explored ways to discreetly investigate the accusation.
“We were looking for a way to get it investigated by an outside investigator,” she told reporters. Her spokesman, Tom Mentzer, said her staff spoke with the Ethics Committee about whether the Judiciary Committee could hire an independent, outside counsel to assist an unnamed individual.
Officials advised the aides that the Senate Rules Committee would have to approve such a request, Mentzer said, which would have meant alerting leading Republican senators and therefore running afoul of Ford’s request to remain confidential.
This was all happening behind the scenes. Then, the initial Intercept piece Sep 12 revealed the existence of a letter, and included anonymous Judicial Committee staffers speculating on Feinstein’s motives for withholding it. Feinstein issued a statement Sep 13 making it clear she handled it the way the victim wanted it handled. Ronan Farrow and Jane Mayer’s Sep 14 piece in the New Yorker quoted more anonymous staffers, who thought Feinstein’s reticence was very weird. The irony of anonymous leakers wondering why they were left out of the loop was left unexplored.
Dr. Blasey’s original interview with the Washington Post published Sunday, September 16, lays out the timeline of events, and makes it clear that she only came forward because she was forced into it:
washingtonpost/california-professor-writer-of-confidential-brett-kavanaugh-letter-speaks-out-about-her-allegation-of-sexual-assault
By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh’s confirmation. “Why suffer through the annihilation if it’s not going to matter?” she said.
Her story leaked anyway. On Wednesday [September 12], the Intercept reported that Feinstein had a letter describing an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while they were in high school and that Feinstein was refusing to share it with her Democratic colleagues.
Feinstein’s tight control of the letter has been vindicated by what happened when it got out:
Ford had begun to fear she would be exposed. People were clearly learning her identity: A BuzzFeed reporter visited her at her home and tried to speak to her as she was leaving a classroom where she teaches graduate students. Another reporter called her colleagues to ask about her.
Some people seem ready to believe that this forced exposure was what Dr. Blasey wanted, and she should have been shoved earlier:
As the story snowballed, Ford said, she heard people repeating inaccuracies about her and, with the visits from reporters, felt her privacy being chipped away. Her calculation changed.
“These are all the ills that I was trying to avoid,” she said, explaining her decision to come forward. “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.”
Katz said she believes Feinstein honored Ford’s request to keep her allegation confidential, but “regrettably others did not.”
New York Times followed up the same day, laying out the same sequence of events:
nytimes/2018/09/16/brett-kavanaugh-christine-blasey-ford-sexual-assault
But Ms. Katz said that throughout August, Ms. Feinstein’s aides had checked back with Ms. Katz from time to time to see if Ms. Ford would go public. But Ms. Ford, fearing she would be attacked, wanted to remain private, and the senator respected her wishes, Ms. Katz said.
She said Ms. Ford decided to reveal herself only because journalists began contacting her, and inaccurate stories about her began circulating.
“We do think that Feinstein did well by her, and we do think that people took this decision away from her, and that’s wrong,” Ms. Katz said. “If the #MeToo era teaches us anything, it’s that a person gets to choose when, where and how, and now this person is going to be injected into a life-altering blood bath.”
Dr. Blasey’s uncertainty and fear about what her letter could unleash on her had been shared with friends:
mercurynews.com/2018/09/17/metoo-spurred-christine-blasey-ford-to-open-up-about-alleged-attack-year-before-kavanaugh-nomination-friends-say
They were on the beach when she first told him about having sent a letter about the alleged assault to her congresswoman, Anna Eshoo, and that she had left an anonymous tip on a Washington Post hotline. A few days later when they met again with another parent at a Capitola restaurant overlooking the beach, Blasey Ford said she worried that, if her name came out, Kavanaugh supporters would try to assassinate her character, and her life would be upended.
“She started having second thoughts,” Gensheimer said, “like, ‘Oh my God, what have I done?’ ”
Statements by Dr. Blasey’s lawyers, Debra S. Katz and Lisa J. Banks, have made it clear that Feinstein honored their client’s wishes, and that Dr Blasey was robbed of her agency by the media frenzy that forced her to go public.
Sep 17 Katz explained on CNN Monday morning:
In this moment,victims need to be able to control when and whether their stories become public. She went to her senator because she had information that she felt was very important and that had bearing on the fitness and character of this nominee. And throughout that period of time Senator Feinstein's office was eager for her to come forward if she felt comfortable coming forward, there was no effort to dissuade her from coming forward..This was entirely this woman's decision, and I think that was appropriate; I think that's how victims of sexual trauma and violence must be treated.
(Interviewer: Was the letter shared with the committee before the hearing?)
No, it was not shared. And honestly, we made the request, my client made the request, that Senator Feinstein treat her allegations confidentially, and Senator Feinstein agreed to do so. I will say the door was always open, and the staff made it clear that if she changed her mind, she could come forward. As Dr. Blasey saw these hearings unfold, her choice became more clear in her mind that she did not want to come forward. She saw this as a very highly politicized and a very brutal process. And she was not wanting to inject herself into this. That decision was taken away from her after the hearings when her allegations were essentially leaked.
Video of interview below:
Note: Christine Blasey Ford has been referred to variously as (Ms) Ford, Blasey Ford, Dr Blasey, and Dr Ford in the media—and I have used all before—but here I tried to stick to Dr Blasey, because that is how her attorneys refer to her, and I assume that is her preference in this context.