Last Thursday, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Professor Christine Blasey Ford took part in an official hearing to debate an alleged sexual assault that took place 36 years ago. Both Kavanaugh and Ford gave highly emotional testimonies while Democrats and Republicans took their turns accusing politically-charged ulterior motives.
Ultimately, the case ended in a he-said-she-said disagreement, similar to many sexual assault cases.
The hearing came at a peak moment of time since the accusation came out right before the vote that would move Kavanaugh closer to becoming a judge on the Supreme Court. This led many politicians to question possible underlying motives for the accusation, which left them asking Ford why she never reported sooner.
“I’m not ever telling anyone this. This is nothing, it didn’t happen, and he didn’t rape me,” Ford told the Washington Post when describing her feelings after leaving the party where she was attacked. She also stated during her testimony a few other reasons including that she did not want her parents to know she was at a party drinking beers with boys and that she was thankful to have gotten out of the attack alive.
There are many reasons why people do not report a sexual assault: shame, embarrassment, confusion, fear that nobody will believe them, fear that they will be blamed, fear of being powerless . . . with the list continuing on. Ford had her own reasons for not reporting. However, when she finally did come forward to tell her story, it ended in a hours-long hearing with inconclusive results. These results allowed her alleged assaulter to still be in the running to become a powerful judge on the most superior court in America.
According to the Huffington Post, 99 percent of perpetrators of sexual violence will walk free. This alarmingly high number comes from a deeper problem: people are not reporting their assaults.
According to the anti-sexual violence organization Rape Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), roughly 69 percent of assaults go unreported.
The accusations against Kavanaugh came forward at a time when there have been many movements to shine light on on sexual violence. Many women have been coming forward with their own stories via social media with hashtags being used as a powerful way to unite victims and show the staggering number of them.
In addition, the problem of not reporting, there is also a problem with how reported cases are dealt with. For the cases that do get reported, they rarely end with actual charges, and only 4 to 5 percent of reported sexual assault incidents resulted in conviction according to one study reported by the Daily Press.
After Trump directly tweeted out about Ford not reporting sooner, thousands of women and men began tweeting responses about why they never reported in support of Ford.
“#WhyIDidntReport because the first time I did for a serious sexual assault as a teenager nothing came of it, and later I felt that I wasn’t important enough to make a big deal over,” actress Mira Sorvino tweeted.
Many sexual assault cases end with few real consequences for the attackers, as the Ford and Kavanaugh story appears it will as well. People are questioning why so many assaults go unreported? That is why.
This case was important because it reminded abusers that their past can catch up with them, regardless of who they were, who they are, or who they could be. Whether the actions occurred an hour before or decades, wrongful behavior will always linger.
The Ford-Kavanaugh hearings should never have been made to seem like a partisan agenda. At the end of the day, whether democrat or republican, sexual assault is sexual assault and should be treated as such.
