Kavanaugh case spurs revelations

LOS ANGELES — When the first woman came forward to allege that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her decades earlier, Kathy Gosnell decided it was time to share a painful secret of her own.

The retired Los Angeles Times copy editor, now living in DeKalb, Ill., made her story public on a private Facebook page popular with current and former employees of the newspaper.

“It’s time for me to speak up,” Gosnell, 73, wrote. “In the early 1980s, I was drugged, beaten and raped by one of our colleagues at the L.A. Times.”

She said she had told no one for three decades, but felt inspired last week to come forward to show support for Kavanaugh’s accuser and other women who said they too had stayed silent for years about abuse.

Gosnell’s post — about an unidentified male colleague she said has since died — inspired several colleagues to share their experiences of being harassed by men at the Times, in some instances having their complaints brushed off by supervisors. They recounted stories of drunken calls in the middle of the night, repeated unwelcome touching and watching men accused of sexual misconduct not only keeping their jobs but being promoted.

The discussion on the Times alumni Facebook page reflects a larger dialogue occurring across America in the wake of the Kavanaugh allegations and his supporters’ assailing his accuser’s credibility.

Times Executive Editor Norman Pearlstine said he was deeply troubled by Gosnell’s experience. It was unclear whether any of the accusations made on the Facebook forum involved people currently working at the paper.

As the 1991 testimony of Anita Hill against nowSupreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas sparked conversations about sexual harassment, Palo Alto professor Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh are prompting women to speak up about having been victims of sexual violence and about the social environment that kept them silent.

Gosnell said she was only a few years into her tenure at the Times, in her late 30s, when an older colleague she knew casually invited her over for dinner. He was respected and liked in the newsroom, and she thought of it as a nice gesture, she said.

When she arrived at his house, she sat down at his kitchen table and he poured her a drink. That was the last thing she remembered, she said, before she came to in his bed in the middle of the night, her clothes strewn around the room and her neck, shoulders and upper arms covered in bruises.

She got up, got dressed and left. She took shower after shower after shower and never told a soul. She did not think she would be believed at the Times — he was an established figure in the newsroom and she a fairly new hire. By speaking up, she thought, she would jeopardize her career.

“It never occurred to me that I would have had a prayer if I reported it,” she said in an interview. “I didn’t feel like I would be supported; he was very well liked by management I just figured it was his word against mine, and the upper echelons were all male.”