New York Times columnist Charles Blow used his traumatic experience to defend Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct and attempted sexual assault.
Blow made an impassioned plea for compassion toward Blasey Ford and other victims of sexual abuse while sitting on a panel for CNN's Cuomo Prime Time Wednesday night. Ford has accused Kavanaugh of attempting to rape her while they were teenagers. Kavanaugh claims the attempted rape never happened.
“We have to all take a step back and be respectful of Professor Ford," Blow said. "This is not only, if it is true, it is not only a sexual assault ― it’s a childhood sexual assault,” Blow said. “And if you have never been the victim of a childhood sexual assault, everybody needs to calm down and take a step back. Stop asking why she didn’t say anything.”
That very question has been on the lips of many Republicans, including the president, who has been accused of sexual assault by at least 19 women himself.
Donald Trump worked to discredit Ford Friday on Twitter:
I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents. I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 21, 2018
Blow criticized that argument and admitted he didn’t tell a soul about his assault until over a decade after it happened.
“The first time I told somebody was 17 years later, a stranger. Next time I told somebody was two years after that. Next time I told somebody was eight years after that. It was 37 years before I told everybody in the world in a book,” he said.
The Fire Shut Up In My Bones author also explained why a childhood sexual abuse survivor might have trouble recalling some details of an incident.
“I understand how if this happened to her and she can remember everything in that room and not the day,” he said.
“For us, it is a living thing that lives in our bodies. You wrestle with it all the time. I can’t say that I thought about [my assault] every day, but I thought about it all the time. It was a living memory. It didn’t move like other memories in my brain where it starts to fade. You’re thinking about it all the time, so all of that minutiae — he stood there, they turned the music on — all of that is alive in you.”
Watch the segment below:
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