Me too

I believe the woman, Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who accuses Supreme Court nominee Judge M. Brett M. Kavanaugh of having sexually assaulted her when the two were in high school.

My conviction has nothing to do with the fact that I opposed Kavanaugh’s nomination from the start because it would dramatically accelerate–and cast in stone for decades—a reactionary judicial philosophy hostile to workers, minorities and women.

I believe her because I have been there. Her reaction—not reporting the incident to the police, not telling anyone about it for decades– corresponds closely to my own experience.

Between the ages of 14 and 29, I experienced three separate incidents of attempted sexual abuse by older males. In each case, I escaped mostly (but not totally) unscathed but shaken. In each case, the attacks came as a surprise. In every case, I did not report the incidents to the police nor did I tell anyone, including my parents. Indeed, I did not talk about it for decades. Yet each incident is etched in my memory more strongly than anything that happened yesterday. I later understood why. It’s a typical reaction among people who have been subjected to this kind of trauma. That’s how I know President Trump’s tweet, claiming that if it had been “that bad,” Ford or “her loving” parents would have reported it is a crock of manure. Not to mention that the attempted exculpation comes from a man who has been there many times—in the role of the aggressor.

I was in the eighth grade the first time. We were living for a few months on Miami Beach before the area became cool and the rents skyrocketed. A man in his 20s approached me and began talking as I tossed a tennis ball against the wall of a shuttered bathroom with a hole for a window. Then the ball went through the window into the bathroom, the door of which was nailed shut. I jumped through the window to retrieve it without a second thought.

At first I couldn’t understand why the man had jumped in too. He said he wanted to help me find the ball, which in the tiny bathroom had taken me five seconds to find. The outrageous lie made me realize there was something wrong and I climbed on the wash basin to jump through the window ASAP. As I frantically tried to pull myself up and out the man “helped” me—by briefly fondling my genitals. But I made it out and sprinted all the way home, frightened and shaken although relieved that it hadn’t been even worse. I didn’t call the cops, tell my parents or talk to my friends about it.

The second time was worse. We were back in Miami. I was one of a group of teenagers who delivered the afternoon newspaper, the now-defunct Miami News. Our base, where we folded the papers and bagged them on rainy days only, was the garage of Mrs. Thorpe, the kind woman who supervised us. One afternoon, I was one of the two last boys to finish folding. The other was the biggest boy in the group, a football player at a Catholic high school. I weighed less than 120 pounds. Suddenly the guy moved to the garage door, rolled it down and closed it, then turned around and exposed his erect penis. He was large and clumsy and I was small and agile, so I managed to evade him to reach the door, open it, and flee.

This was even more frightening than the stuff on Miami Beach. And this time I was not only in shock but also furious. This was a guy I worked alongside every day. His actions combined attempted violation and betrayal.

When I came to Mrs. Thorpe’s the next day I found the pedophile on his knees weeding the woman’s garden. He must have thought he hadn’t done anything wrong or realized my anger was volcanic, for he wasn’t on his guard when, still on my bike, I went up to him and started a conversation. I saw a cinder block nearby and dropped it hard on him. After howling in pain, he picked himself up and ran after me. I was too fast for him with my bike.

I won’t go into the third incident in detail since I am running out of words and by the time that it happened I was a man able to defend myself. It was more of an attempt at coercive seduction than an assault. And for me the biggest problem was getting out of the situation without having to pummel the fellow, who was a respected Catholic deacon in the small Dominican Republic town where I was carrying out research. I managed to get out of it without violence and since have kept mum about this incident too.

As I recall the symbolic gang rape of Anita Hill, and dread that the same might happen to Dr. Ford, I only wish those male Republican senators had spent some time in her shoes—or mine. But I am not sure it would help. They are political opportunists, ideological zealots on a Crusade to take the Holy Land. And, if there are some rapes along the way? They will plow right through. If there is one thing this GOP band of barbarians has proven—on everything from healthcare to food stamps—is that they have an infinite threshold for other people’s pain.