One Woman’s Continuing Fight To Stop Serial Abusers
In August 1976, Ellen Smith Foley, then 15, got caught outside in a fierce summer storm. She accepted a ride home from a man she knew. Instead of taking Foley home, the man drove to a parking lot and forced her to perform oral sex on him. Afterward, he told her the assault was her fault, that she’d teased him all summer, and that no one would believe her if she reported him. He dropped her off in the rain down the street from her home, and as she huddled under a tree, Foley, of Wethersfield, tried to imagine telling her big Irish Catholic family what just happened. Every 98 seconds, according to RAINN (Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network), an American is sexually assaulted. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that at some point in their lives, 1 in 3 women, and 1 in 6 men will experience sexual violence.
That’s a large crowd. You might even call it a constituency.
In 1991, Anita Hill told the Senate Judiciary Committee that Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas had sexually harassed her. Thomas was put on the bench, anyway, 52-48.
In September, Christine Blasey Ford told the Judiciary Committee — with some of the same members who heard Hill’s testimony — that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had tried to sexually assault her while both of them were in high school. Other women came forward with similar credible stories about the nominee, but only Ford testified. Kavanaugh was put on the bench anyway, 50-48.
Kavanaugh’s climb to the bench included testimony that gave rise to a new word “testerical,” as in “a testerical fit.” There were fits and there was invasion. We saw multiple videos of Republican senators dismissing (and worse) women who tried to share their stories of rape. Women stood in the Capitol hallways screaming their truth and the response included, in no particular order:
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, waving adult women away and saying he’d listen to them once they grew up.
Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., refusing to listen to women as he shuffled through an airport. But he was quick to shake the hand of a guy standing nearby. He later called protesters a “mob.” Donald Trump has since taken up that cry. If there’s one thing Republicans do well these days, it’s pretend victimhood.
Sen. David Perdue, R-Georgia, hiding in the bathroom so women couldn’t talk to him about sexual violence.
Those saggy old white men can run, but they can’t hide. The truth will always out.
A few days after her assault, Foley tried to tell the man’s supervisor, who suggested she “work things out” with her assailant. She was 15. She stopped there. Foley only told years later, when she discovered her assailant working with children in a nearby town.
The man who attacked her had been able to move from job to job thanks to confidentiality agreements. He would lose a job and, in an attempt to protect themselves from litigation, his municipal bosses signed agreements that said they wouldn’t share details around his firings. Foley called it “passing the trash.” Once she told her story as an adult, Foley was relentless. In 2006, with the help of supportive legislators, Foley introduced a bill — later passed — that restricts the use of confidentiality agreements when a child or adult has been harassed or assaulted. Foley’s assailant eventually accepted responsibility, and Foley was given an hour in her lawyers’ office to explain the wound his assault left. Foley didn’t get her day in court, but she did her best to make passing the trash less likely in Connecticut.
Like the rest of us, Foley watched the Kavanaugh hearings with a growing sense of rage. On Nov. 6, that rage will move an army of women and men to show fossils like McConnell the difference between a mob, and an enraged and active constituency.
And then after this midterm, maybe the next time a politician who thinks to confront an angry woman with a pat on the head and a there-there will know better. Go vote. Vote as if your life depends on it. Susan Campbell teaches at the University of New Haven. She is the author of “Dating Jesus: Fundamentalism, Feminism and the American Girl” and “Tempest-Tossed: The Spirit of Isabella Beecher Hooker.” Her email address is slcampbell417@gmail.com.