About a week ago, when Avenatti first tweeted his (then anonymous) allegations, I suggested people be careful about referencing them. Since that time, Swetnick has come forward and made her identity public and we’ve actually had more corroboration from other sources for the most salacious details. I now agree that these are really serious and credible claims that must be investigated. They may not implicate Kavanaugh directly, but it does seem like something very ugly was happening during that time period which involved at least some of the people in Kavanaugh’s social circle.
It’s worth reviewing three stories that lend credence to Swetnick’s claim, from the most direct to the most distant. First, there’s this from Farrow and Mayer’s article in the New Yorker:
After seeing Judge’s denial, Elizabeth Rasor, who met Judge at Catholic University and was in a relationship with him for about three years, said that she felt morally obligated to challenge his account that “ ‘no horseplay’ took place at Georgetown Prep with women.” Rasor stressed that “under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t reveal information that was told in confidence,” but, she said, “I can’t stand by and watch him lie.” In an interview with The New Yorker, she said, “Mark told me a very different story.” Rasor recalled that Judge had told her ashamedly of an incident that involved him and other boys taking turns having sex with a drunk woman. Rasor said that Judge seemed to regard it as fully consensual. She said that Judge did not name others involved in the incident, and she has no knowledge that Kavanaugh participated. But Rasor was disturbed by the story and noted that it undercut Judge’s protestations about the sexual innocence of Georgetown Prep. (Barbara Van Gelder, an attorney for Judge, said that he “categorically denies” the account related by Rasor. Van Gelder said that Judge had no further comment.) — www.newyorker.com/...
Then there’s this account by Alexandra Lescaze, who attended the National Cathedral School in the 1980s, in Slate:
I wish I were surprised. A week ago Sunday when Ford first shed her anonymity, detailing her sexual assault allegation against Kavanaugh to the Washington Post, I wrote a note in the Facebook alumni group of my high school, National Cathedral School. I told my 1988 classmates that Ford’s story was bringing back disturbing high school memories. Apparently, I was not alone. A lot of women now in their 40s and 50s, who went to these single-sex D.C. prep schools in the 1980s, have been reaching out to each other in fraught emails and chats over the past week. Not only did the Holton-Arms alumnae start a petition in support of Ford, their fellow alum; there’s also one for anyone to sign who survived that toxic time and place. [...]
Every June, we had Beach Week—a tradition also described in a Washington Post piece about Ford—in which teenagers actually rent houses to party at the beach, something I still don’t quite comprehend. I distinctly remember being at a Beach Week party with my then-boyfriend when it dawned on us that there was a drunk girl in a room down the hall, and boys were “lining up” to go in there and, presumably, have their way with her. We didn’t know for sure, but my boyfriend and my friend’s boyfriend went to interrupt it and sent her on her way down the stairs. All I remember about her is that she was in the class above us and had dark hair. My friend has told me she remembers boys saying, “I’m next,” which was why our boyfriends went to stop it. That was the only time I can clearly remember a situation that was so obviously a “lineup,” as it was referred to by some at school. My friend remembers witnessing another, and though there weren’t lineups of this nature at every party, they happened often enough that we had a term. We didn’t call it rape.
It was not always so formal a queue. I remember another time when boys were sitting in kind of a campfire circle that could have started as a game of spin the bottle. But by the time I walked through the room there was a girl who was drunk and in the center of the circle, and the boys were taking turns putting their hands up her skirt instead of kissing her. — slate.com/...
So there are three women, Swetnick, Rasor and Lescaze, who relate similar stories of multiple young men assaulting drunk, drugged or passed out women at parties involving boys from the elite school Kavanaugh attended at the same time. As Ms. Lescaze recounts, a number of other boys knew this was happening and stopped it when they saw it. All these people should be interviewed by the FBI. People who have information about the events should do their civic duty and go to a FBI field office to make a statement.
We also know that Kavanaugh has been lying about multiple things, a fact ably demonstrated by Current Affairs in this article.
About thirty miles away from these elite schools attended by the children of the privileged and wealthy, was another school, attended by far poorer students, in Baltimore. Several years ago HuffPo reported on a priest who served there. Several students report him sexually abusing them, and they suspect he was responsible for the murder of a nun. The piece is staggering, and it notes that the Maryland and Baltimore police covered up for Maskell, as did the church authorities. They did this partly because his brother was a police officer, but also because the Catholic church had been covering such crimes up for decades.
Wehner said that during her senior year, Maskell began driving her to St. Clement Church, where he preached, after school, and that a string of men abused her in his office there. She does not know who the men were, but they referred to each other by generic names — Brother Ed, Brother Ted and Brother Bob. She said some of the men gave Maskell money in exchange for the abuse. “He was prostituting us,” Wehner said. [...]
Maskell in particular was a difficult target. At the time, he served as the chaplain for the Baltimore County police, the Maryland State Police and the Maryland National Guard. Maskell kept a police scanner and loaded handgun in his car, drank beer with the officers at a local dive bar, and often went on “ride-alongs” with his police friends at night to respond to petty crimes or catch teenagers making out in their cars. — www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Given all the various corroborating stories and the clear understanding we have that powerful institutions covered up such abuse routinely for decades, it’s absolutely clear that this requires a complete investigation. The parents of many of these boys were at least as well connected as the priest in Baltimore. It’s entirely possible that police investigating any such reports at the time were pressured to keep them out of the legal system. We know that victims who might have come forward would have been treated poorly and might have been blamed. I hope such an investigation includes a complete review of the records of the many elite schools in the area. They can start with asking why administrators warned parents of such parties in 1990 and what they were aware of at the time.
A thorough investigation should probably be conducted by the Marlyand authorities as well. Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland flatly refused to order such an investigation. After receiving a lot of flak, Hogan called for a delay in the nomination and an investigation. Hogan should be voted out in November and replaced with the Democratic candidate for governor, Ben Jealous.
— @subirgrewal