Ford’s long silence on Kavanaugh is normal

After two rapes, I kept quiet just like she did

Politicians and pundits are, predictably, questioning whether Christine Blasey Ford’s disclosures about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh should be believed in view of how long she was silent. But statistics put the lie to that. Ford’s silence is the norm, not the exception, and has nothing to do with her veracity. I was sexually assaulted twice while attending a small Catholic college in the late 1970s. Except for close friends from whom I sought comfort afterward, I told no one for decades. I broke this silence when my daughters were teens. They, like Ford, went to an all-girls school and socialized with boys, like Kavanaugh, who went to all-boys schools. My confession, precipitated by one of them returning from a mixer stumbling drunk, was intended to be a warning that things could happen when they were intoxicated that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. I hadn’t even told my husband about the assaults. It took a Mama-Bear moment for me to be able to tell them. As it took Dr. Ford. Except we’re her family. When I was a college sophomore, I was attacked in an off-campus dorm while emptying the trash late Saturday night. My apartment-building-turned-dorm was filled with jocks. Female students were sent to live there as punishment for their failure to conform to oncampus rules. I and my friends had been banished for starting a rogue sorority we named I Phelta Thi. I did not know the teenager who stifled my screams with one hand while he pinned me against the wall of the trash compactor room. He was visiting my neighbor. Things got out of hand, my neighbor said the next day, promising my assailant would never return. My second attacker I knew well. We had attended a study-abroad program together — the kind of experience where young people forge lifetime friendships by baring their souls after midnight. When I returned to school for my senior year, I moved to an apartment miles from campus. My friend returned to a dorm. One night, we bumped into each other at a noisy kegger. I suggested we leave; he suggested we go to my apartment. We drank and reminisced. He didn’t even try to kiss me before climbing on top of me. He whispered terrible things as he forced himself into me. “This is what happens to girls like you,” he said. I believed he had seen right through me. This was all my fault. I was friendly and blonde and liked to drink with the boys. That made me the kind of girl who deserved whatever I got. I was too ashamed afterward to tell anyone. I certainly was not going to expose myself to the humiliation and censure that would have come from telling campus authorities or the local police. And until I had daughters I wanted to protect from the same fate, I didn’t tell anyone who loved and respected me. I believed it would change their opinion of me as insidiously as these events had changed my opinion of myself. I and millions of others know exactly why Ford held her tongue until now. We knew that once we went public, people like the Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee would undermine our veracity and character however they could. The upcoming hearing, in the absence of an impartial investigation, is shaping up as he said, she said. GOP senators have already concluded that a detailed rendition of facts by professor Ford should not be given more weight than Judge Kavanaugh’s blanket denial. Who really knows what happened? That’s their fail-safe position. Professor Ford, this is what happens to girls like us. But every time we speak out, the weight of our words nudges the thumb off the scales of justice. This burden of proof imposed upon us by public opinion is gradually being lifted. Why else would Kavanaugh, who has spent more than 12 years determining whether litigants have received fair trials, not join in Ford’s request for minimal due process in the form of a professional investigation, followed by a hearing where all relevant evidence is presented and considered? Perhaps because he knows from his time on the appellate court that when all the facts are heard, the truth usually wins out.