The Kavanaugh controversy hits close to home

The confirmation part is over, but what’s not over is the pain and the mistrust that is tearing apart America and my neighbourhood

President Donald Trump’s nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court exacerbated America’s deep partisan divide. It has also profoundly affected my neighbourhood and my church. My family has lived in north-west Washington, DC for almost four decades. During all this time, we have gone to the Catholic church that’s a few blocks from our home. My five children attended the neighbourhood Catholic school, where for 17 years I coached basketball. After graduating, all five went to three different local Catholic high schools. The elementary school from which my children graduated is the same school that Kavanaugh’s children now attend and where he coaches basketball. We go to the same church. And the high school he attended is the same school where my oldest son went for four years.

With this much in common, you might think that my neighbourhood, my church, and I would be overjoyed. To the contrary, I am distraught and my church and neighbourhood are deeply divided. When Kavanaugh was first nominated, the local reaction was mixed. We fully expected that the debate over his nomination would focus on partisan divide over issues like: healthcare reform, women’s rights, voting rights, and environmental protection. But by the time Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee were to begin another set of concerns came to the fore. The Democrats on the committee had asked to review all of the nominee’s official communication during his time in the Bush White House. In response, the Trump Administration and the Republican leadership of the Senate refused to release 90 per cent of this material.

Nevertheless, from the emails and other correspondence that were made available, it became clear that Kavanaugh had lied under oath during an earlier Senate hearing. These matters were of concern to the Democrats. This was where the matter stood until the public disclosure of allegations by a Dr Christine Blasey Ford, who in a sworn affidavit stated that while in high school she had been sexually assaulted by a drunken Kavanaugh. What followed were more allegations of excessive drinking and other instances of degrading or sexually aggressive behaviour toward women while he was in college and law school. These new charges exposed two related and deeply felt grievances that virtually exploded into the public consciousness, both of which also played out in my neighbourhood.

But there was another more subtle yet still deeply unsettling dimension to this drama that played out here. Thousands of young men and women who had graduated either from the all-male high school attended by Kavanaugh or one of its nearby sister schools were forced to relive their teenage years, and what they remembered wasn’t pretty. It was as if, in one instance, decades had been erased and they were back in high school recalling their experiences of having to deal with a small privileged group of athlete stars and/ or those who belonged to the elite clubs, who had too much money, too little self-restraint, and operated with a sense of impunity.

A few tone-deaf Catholic clergy decided to give interviews vouching for the nominee’s good character. As a neighbourhood friend noted “it’s not as if our church doesn’t have enough on its hands dealing with the clergy sex abuse crisis. Why are some so blind that they can’t see the damage they are doing and understand that they are only making the crisis worse?”

As of today, Brett Kavanaugh has been sworn in as an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. That part is over. What’s not over is the pain and the mistrust that is tearing apart America, and my neighbourhood and my church, as well.