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Brett Kavanaugh case: With a Supreme Court nominee accused of sexual misconduct, it's like 1991 all over again

Two Republican members of the 1991 committee that questioned Anita Hill are still members and will be present on Monday to question Christine Blasey Ford

Andrew Buncombe
Washington DC
Tuesday 18 September 2018 19:59 BST
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Anita Hill's testimony of sexual assault in the workplace, October 11, 1991

In October 1991, a 35-year-old African American lawyer sat before a panel of all white senators and told them the man set to become the next Supreme Court justice had sexually harassed her.

Anita Hill claimed that Clarence Thomas had told her about his love of pornography, even that involving animals and rape scenes, and bragged of his own sexual prowess. She said he had done so 10 years earlier when he was her boss at the US Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“It is only after a great deal of agonising consideration and a sleepless number – a great number of sleepless nights that I am able to talk of these unpleasant matters to anyone but my close friends,” she said, dressed in a turquoise blouse, her eyes fixed on her written statement.

Thomas adamantly denied the accusations, and many in the country believed him. A number of senators certainly did; he was eventually confirmed in a narrow vote – 52 to 48 – and remains a justice on the court, still denying the accusations made of him. He is now aged 70.

Next week, 27 years later, the Senate Judiciary Committee is set to hold a rerun of sorts. Christine Blasey Ford, 51, a professor from California, is set to tell the committee about an incident at a high school party in Maryland three decades ago, when the latest nominee for the court, Brett Kavanaugh, allegedly pinned her to a bed and tried to take off her clothes. Kavanaugh has denied the alleged 1982 incident took place, and will do so again on Monday.

“This is a completely false allegation. I have never done anything like what the accuser describes – to her or to anyone,” he said.

The questioning of Hill has come to be recognised as one of the ugliest moments in a city where politics frequently turns sordid and distasteful. Many senators appeared to fawn before Thomas and act in a dismissive manner when speaking to Hill. Republican Arlen Specter asked her why she would have been upset if Thomas had spoken to her about “women’s large breasts”. “That is a word we use all the time,” he insisted. “That was the most embarrassing aspect of what Judge Thomas had said to you?”

Joe Biden, the former vice president, chaired the committee and is generally considered to have failed to protect Hill or permit testimony from witnesses who could have supported her. He has frequently voiced regret, though never apologised.

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It would be tempting to think some things have changed and, superficially perhaps, they have. Race will be less of a factor. Ford is white, though three decades on, the committee questioning will contain only three people of colour.

The White House appears to know that in the #MeToo era, it needs to tread carefully. Desperate not to have Kavanaugh lose the support of two pro-choice female Republicans, senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, they need to ensure an orderly process. White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway said Ford “should not be insulted and she should not be ignored”.

But even before Conway had given this reasonable-sounding comment to Fox News, the knives were already out. Donald Trump Jr posted on Twitter remarks that appeared to mock a confidential letter Ford had passed to her local congresswomen and Senator Dianne Feinstein. “Oh boy, the Dems and their usual nonsense games really have him on the ropes now,” wrote the president’s eldest son.

Elsewhere on the internet, conservatives were posting Ford’s personal details – including her address – and suggesting she had been motivated by a case in which Kavanaugh’s mother had ruled against her family on a foreclosure case in Maryland. The Daily Beast pointed out Sebastian Gorka, a right-wing nationalist and former Bretibart editor and Trump administration official, had tweeted: “Why has Blasey Ford’s social media profile been scrubbed?”

It said, elsewhere in the bowels of the internet, QAnon 8chan conspiracy theorists found a Facebook pornbot named Christine Ford and attacked it as though it were Kavanaugh’s accuser herself.

Donald Trump’s words were reasonably measured, though he made clear he believed his nominee’s denial. “This is something that should’ve been brought up long before this … That’s a long time ago and nobody mentioned it until the other day … It’s very unfortunate that they didn’t mention it sooner.”

Two Republican members of the 1991 committee who questioned Hill are still members and will be present on Monday – chairman Chuck Grassley and Orrin Hatch.

In 1991, Hatch said he believed “Hill was working in tandem with slick lawyers and interest groups bent on destroying Thomas’s chances to join the court”. This week, he told CNN he had spoken to Kavanaugh, that he believed his denials and assumed Ford must be “mistaken”.

Some worry that Ford – who has said she did not talk about the alleged 1982 incident for years and did not want to speak publicly as she feared the backlash already under way – is going to be similarly badly treated.

“I am stunned that this is happening again,” Barbara Boxer, a former Democratic senator from California who, as a representative in 1991, marched across Capitol Hill to demand their own party give Hill a fair hearing, told the New York Times. “But it is not surprising because our culture has not completely dealt with inequality between men and women.”

One person with insights about how things might be different is Hill herself, who continued to be attacked years after her testimony and was even the subject of a 1993 book, The Real Anita Hill, by Republican-turned Democrat David Brock, who claimed to reveal her true motives for testifying. He has subsequently admitted the book was a piece of “character assassination” and apologised.

Writing in the Times on Tuesday, Hill, now aged 62 and a professor of social policy, law, gender and sexuality studies at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said there was “no way to redo 1991, but there are ways to do better”.

“With the current heightened awareness of sexual violence comes heightened accountability for our representatives. To do better, the 2018 senate judiciary committee must demonstrate a clear understanding that sexual violence is a social reality to which elected representatives must respond. A fair, neutral and well thought out course is the only way to approach Dr Blasey and Judge Kavanaugh’s upcoming testimony,” she wrote.

Clarence Thomas continues to deny the accusations against him
Clarence Thomas continues to deny the accusations against him

She added: “Finally, refer to Christine Blasey Ford by her name. She was once anonymous, but no longer is. Dr Blasey is not simply “Judge Kavanaugh’s accuser”. Dr Blasey is a human being with a life of her own. She deserves the respect of being addressed and treated as a whole person.”

Trump is desperate for his nominee to succeed and be confirmed before November’s midterms, so he can deliver another gift to evangelical Christians and conservatives who may not otherwise support him. He apparently believes the 11th-hour testimony from Ford is a Democratic-hatched plot to derail his man. His candidate spent nine hours at the White House on Monday, meeting with lawyers and strategists to plan their approach. One key element will be testimony from women who worked for him; already a letter signed by 65 women who said they had worked with the judge and supported his candidacy, has been circulated by his supporters.

Two other things are worth pointing out. Clarence Thomas was a hugely popular candidate. A poll taken after his 1991 nomination by George HW Bush suggested 52 per cent of Americans supported his confirmation, with 17 against. Kavanaugh, by contrast, is an unpopular choice; a poll taken in July by Fox News suggested only 38 per cent of voters supported him.

And as the website FiveThirtyEight pointed out, three decades later, and after revelations of sexual abuse about everyone from Harvey Weinstein (which he denies) to celebrity chefs, people’s attitudes about sexual harassment have markedly shifted.

One 1986 Time poll found only 17 per cent of Americans believed sexual harassment was a “big problem” for women in the workplace. A 2018 poll by ABC News/Washington Post, suggested 72 per cent of Americans said sexual harassment was a serious problem for women in the workplace.

While Hill’s story was not believed and Thomas was confirmed, the following year saw a backlash against what transpired and the way she was treated. In 1992 – the so-called Year of Women – more women were elected to Congress than ever before.

Analysts believe 2018 is going to break the record again, with as many as 100 congresswomen entering the House of Representatives. The midterm elections are just 50 days away.

If Republicans fail to listen to Christine Blasey Ford’s claims with dignity and sensitivity, they could find themselves being punished very badly at the polls in November.

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