From John Pavlovitz:
I’ve served as a pastor and caregiver for the past twenty-five years, much of that working with teenagers who’ve walked through the private hell that all survivors of assault go through.
And in the past few days, I’ve seen every single familiar cruelty hurled at Dr. Ford: victim blaming, public shaming, privacy invasion, vile insults lobbed from a distance, collateral damage to loved ones.
This is the reason victims often tell me they stay imprisoned in silence: because as painful as it is to suffer alone and inside your head, sometimes for decades—it often pales in comparison to the violence you experience if you dare to speak your truth.
The percentage of false abuse claims is so incredibly low for a reason—because survivors invariably lose so much by speaking.
There is almost no upside to claiming violation, no winning in exposing your pain to strangers, no reward for showing your scars.
One cannot help but wonder if Pastor Pavlovitz’s moral outrage would be anywhere near equivalent if the president was a leftist and the accuser was a conservative. Would he still make the same arguments that accusers in such cases almost never lie? Would he argue that an accuser with no corroborating evidence and who’s alleged four witnesses to the event, including a life-long friend of the accuser, ALL REFUTE the story of the accuser?
If not, then I would like to see his comments defending Juanita Brodrick of her FAR more credible claim of rape at the hands of President Clinton.
Ahem…
It is understandable that Mr. Paine offers some whataboutism regarding Clinton’s accuser and not Clarence Thomas’s accuser. It is a false equivalence. That case was not the same as knowing the circumstances of Professor Ford before the confirmation vote. The public didn’t hear Broadderick’s story before Clinton’s election. Not the same at all.
But his partisan intent is clear.
It is understandable that Mr. Paine would trust the words of drunken privileged white males over the victim. Conservatives never lie.
It is understandable Mr. Paine would ignore all the other women who say the Republican operative was abusive and a lush who lied about his heavy drinking. Republicans never lie.
It is understandable that Mr. Paine cannot cite the “65 women” supporters, as they are no longer 65 in number. It is understandable that Mr. Paine is unaware conservative Juanita Broaddrick takes the conservative man’s word over the woman. IOKIYAR.
Mr. Paine is no liar, but it is also understandable that Mr. Paine is unaware of his false information about “witnesses”. There were only three in the room. The woman host was not a witness in the room, and she does not “refute” Professor Ford. She believes her, as do most Americans. This is also understandable, since most Americans are NOT Republican operatives.
(CNN)Leland Ingham Keyser, a friend of the woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were at a party in high school, does not refute the veracity of the allegation, although she does not remember the alleged incident, her lawyer said in a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee…”Ms. Keyser does not refute Dr. Ford’s account, and she has already told the press that she believes Dr. Ford’s account,” Keyser’s attorney, Howard Walsh, wrote in the letter, which was sent to the committee overnight Friday. “However, the simple and unchangeable truth is that she is unable to corroborate it because she has no recollection of the incident in question.”
Walsh also said in the letter that Keyser will “cooperate fully” with an FBI investigation into the allegation.
Conservatives and Republicans cannot honestly answer the following question without somehow blaming the victim.
What would a reasonable person infer when the accuser passed a lie detector test AND welcomes an investigation, knowing it would be crime to lie to the FBI, while the accused and his defenders refuse to testify and oppose an investigation? Who looks like the honest party?
It is understandable that Mr. Paine and his fellow conservatives would not want to answer this question and prefer to accuse the woman of lying, and deflect to Bill Clinton.
It is also understandable that Mr. Paine accuses the woman of being a lying democratic operative and prefers to call the long time Republican operative abuser an honest decent man. For some unknown reason, we should trust his judgment on Kavanaugh’s character, and the female victims.
It is understandable that Mr. Paine trusts the word of conservative men who do not want to talk to the FBI and disbelieves a woman who knows it is a crime to lie to the FBI.
“This whole two-week effort has been a calculated and orchestrated political hit, fueled with apparent pent-up anger about President Trump and the 2016 election, fear that has been unfairly stoked about my judicial record, revenge on behalf of the Clintons and millions of dollars in money from outside left-wing opposition groups.” ~~ Judge Brett Kavanaugh, September 27, 2018
Those are words of an angry partisan Republican operative. Remember when the hypocrites denounced “activist Judges”? IOKIYAR of course.
His partisan rancor and resistance to investigation prove his extreme bias. An impartial judge welcomes evidence and witnesses. This Republican operative wants to suppress evidence and witnesses. Along with abusing women, that seems to be their authoritarian idea of making America great.
It is also understandable that Mr. Paine cares not that, according to a Marist poll, most Republicans WANT the man on the Supreme Court EVEN IF HE DID IT! Just don’t call them hypocrites when they say, “Character matters”. It doesn’t, of course. Power, not character, is all that matters. That is why Trump is president.
Only one belief is important. Privileged conservative white men never lie…only democrats do. It just makes common sense.