Earlier tonight, Congresswoman Katie Hill announced she will resign in the face of an ethics investigation into allegations she had an improper relationship with one of her congressional aides—allegations driven in part by revenge porn. Apparently someone got their hands on nude pictures of her and gave them to RedState.
Anyone who wonders why she didn’t stand and fight should read her resignation letter.
The message here is obvious. Hill has every intention of bringing whoever plastered those pictures of her to justice. However, she believes that as long as she stays in Congress, she and those around her will be in undue danger, and she isn’t willing to put innocent third parties in harm’s way.
Moira Donegan of The Guardian sums up pretty well how monstrous this is. She notes that by weaponizing these pictures, RedState and those who gave RedState those pictures “have brought the tactics of domestic abuse into our politics.”
As a domestic violence survivor myself, this brought tears to my eyes. I know how it feels to have to walk away from a fight. As many longtime Kossacks know, I was married to an emotionally abusive and controlling woman for three years. A year after I left her, and right when I could legally file for divorce, she got the bright idea to send me obviously bogus divorce papers. No tracking number, nothing.
I was literally thisclose to starting the process of filing charges against her for mail fraud. But owing to North Carolina’s backwards community property laws, she could still legally get into my bank account and theoretically take my car, among other things. Thus, the only way I would have been safe would have been if she were in jail—but mail fraud is not enough in and of itself to lock someone up either with no bail or on bail high enough to ensure you stay behind bars during trial. It would have meant that I would have been on cash-only for who knows how long.
As much as I wanted to nail my ex to the wall, it simply wasn’t worth the risk to my safety and that of those closest to me. Even though I knew I was probably saying goodbye to a chance to take a dangerous woman off the streets, it wasn’t worth the danger to innocent third parties.
What’s happening to Hill is no different. Apparently the bilge and pigweed are such that she concluded staying in Washington is not worth the danger to her safety and those of innocent third parties. This is why victims of domestic violence don’t come forward—they often face this kind of pigweed.