Why the Kavanaugh Accusations Enrage Me

 

There is a certain class of topics which excite my passions. I get particularly vexed and exercised when encountering stories of injustice — particularly injustice done in the name of or under the aegis of supposed righteousness.

That’s why stories like Cardinal Wuerl’s complicity in hiding and abetting a vast number of cases of priestly abuse anger me so deeply. Here you have an organization which is supposed to be the representative of the Heavenly Father on Earth, acting no better than a New York City teacher’s union, which puts intractably bad teachers into “rubber rooms.” It’s arguable that the Church acted worse, by putting those priests back into circulation to abuse again and again … all while obfuscating and frustrating attempts to investigate that very criminality.

But I digress.

To put it bluntly, the sheer hypocrisy of such people and their acts make a mockery of justice, which adds an extra layer of pain to their betrayals beyond the initial wrongdoing. It robs the victims of the overriding hope that in the end justice will be served after having destroyed their innocence. But false accusations of such heinous acts are equally toxic, as they reduce the impact and importance of genuine claims.

You might be wondering: How did I develop such a finely tuned sense of outrage? I too was the victim of false accusations — the sort which Brett Kavanaugh currently faces on the national stage.

As many of you know, I am a divorcee. I have since remarried to a wonderful woman whom I consider to be my ideal partner and companion. But merely because I enjoy the fruits of a good marriage today doesn’t mean it was always so.

After the disintegration of my first marriage which involved a nasty custody dispute over our two children, there was considerable residual anger. So strong was the desire for revenge and domination on my ex-wife’s part that she cooked up and set into motion a plan to deprive me of my children not long after I remarried.

My wife was recovering from (successful) surgery on the Friday afternoon before Labor Day in 2010 when I received the call: it was my ex-wife. She proceeded to gloat to me that she had received a temporary order of protection against me and that the children were accusing us of various, outlandish forms of abuse, and that I would be lucky to see them again any time soon. Being as she is made of equal parts malevolence and cruelty, she timed this in such a fashion that the courts were already closed for the Holiday weekend and she further knew that I would be too occupied dealing with a recuperating wife to do much about it.

I’ve never had a longer weekend in my life. People sometimes talk about “the dark night of the soul,” and I can confirm: I had one long, dark, sleepless night that weekend.

We ended up being fortunate on two counts: one, that we were able to get into court for a supplemental hearing on that Tuesday after the children had been examined by a court-appointed child therapist. The second count of luck was, even though she is made of malice and cruelty, my ex-wife is essentially incompetent. The nature of the allegations which were being made was patently absurd — that I had “kicked my daughter across the room,” you know … like a ball. There were various other absurdities and claims which couldn’t be verified, and talking afterward to the county social worker, she let me know that it was obvious to her that the children had been “coached” into saying these things.

I say that we were “lucky” and in a certain sense, we were. We were lucky in who our enemy in this situation was. The problem was that our “luck,” such as it was, remained costly. After the associated lawyer fees and various other shenanigans, it turned into an expensive affair. That doesn’t even account for the fact that the relationship between me and my children was forever changed. You find yourself being extra-cautious in any interaction with them after such an incident and that leaves its own set of invisible marks.

The bottom line is that the accusations were false, through-and-through. Even so, that bell can never be unrung. So it is with Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser.

For the rest of his life and career, the stench of these allegations will no doubt appear as a sort of invisible asterisk above his head. The injustice of that alone is enough to give me pangs of sympathy for Kavanaugh and his family. I can only imagine what he and his wife are enduring right now, as fully half the nation leaps to the unwarranted conclusion that he is essentially a monster on the basis of uncorroborated accusations almost as old as I am.

It reeks. It is vile. It devalues the testimony of genuine victims of abuse.

As for the accuser, all I can ask her is: Why? Why now? Why not raise these allegations 20 or more years ago when an aspiring Brett Kavanaugh was being vetted for various, lower-level jobs? Is the value of your victimhood such that what he had allegedly done only mattered once your supposed attacker (and perceived political foe) was about to be seated on the nation’s highest court? The factor of convenience here cannot be understated.

If we as a society have a responsibility to listen to victims, victims have the reciprocal responsibility to tell us who the abusers are. That doesn’t mean “decades later during a heated national political contest.”

We can’t possibly know the truth of these matters, which essentially places the allegation itself into the realm of hearsay. Yet this sort of hearsay is a potential knife in the back for those falsely accused, who have little hope of recovering that which the knife kills: their reputation.

Published in Politics
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There are 4 comments.

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  1. MarciN Member
    MarciN
    @MarciN

    Excellent piece, but I want to point out that some of the priests who have been accused of abuse are victims in a similar way to what you describe with your ex-wife. I think the Church has acted cautiously, to its credit.

    We need to be talking about what evidence is, how and when charges should be brought against alleged wrongdoers, the statute of limitations, and justice for all. I hope that’s where the Kavanaugh case ends up in the grand scheme of things.

    • #1
  2. Eridemus Coolidge
    Eridemus
    @Eridemus

    I also think that if this thing doesn’t make the accuser stand out as a real heroine for bringing it up, that beyond a fringe willing to stay associated with such an action SHE ALSO will live out a life with a shadow over it, and her reluctance to testify may be an indication of that fact belatedly sinking in. He, on the other hand, doesn’t really have to recover among those who believe the allegation to be false or exaggerated for political reasons, and doubters probably weren’t his biggest fans in the first place. Political differences now run so deeply among us that we scarcely praise people on the other side no matter their personal virtues, and the vices of those sympathetic to our own side are overlooked or downplayed.

    • #2
  3. Curt North Inactive
    Curt North
    @CurtNorth

    I also thought this would be a cloud hanging over him forever, but the more this accuser seems to waffle and try to worm out of saying anything more, the more hope I have that Kavanaugh will emerge from this shinning brighter than ever.  This craven political hit job looks to be turning on the left as the truth, so far anyway, is looking far different than her initial claim. 

    If it does turn out that this woman is bearing false witness against a good and decent man, I hope SHE will be the one with a cloud over her the rest of her life.

    • #3
  4. SecondBite Member
    SecondBite
    @SecondBite

    Shawn Buell (Majestyk): ……a mockery of justice……

    Bingo!  Call it what it is!

    • #4
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