Judge Kavanaugh has gone from generic prep school douche to criminal mastermind in two weeks?

September 16: “Woman Accusing Kavanaugh of Sexual Misconduct Comes Forward” (nytimes), alleging a clothed multi-person drunken wrestling event 36 years ago.

September 26: “New Kavanaugh accuser Julie Swetnick details parties where girls allegedly were drugged and raped” (CNBC)

In less than two weeks, Judge Kavanaugh has gone from generic-prep-school-douche-turned-moral-scold to criminal mastermind.

(see “How did Christine Blasey Ford make it back and forth to Hawaii?” for why the moral scold part made me unenthusiastic about this guy even before September 16)

The new allegations:

  • “spiked the drinks of girls at house parties with grain alcohol” (because it is easier to find grain alcohol than vodka?)
  • “Kavanaugh lined up with other boys, including his close friend Mark Judge, waiting to rape those girls at many parties” (did the girls who were raped keep coming back to these purported parties? or if there were “many” parties at which gang rapes were featured activities, were new girls found for each one?)

Some longer excerpts:

Swetnick said she “witnessed efforts by Mark Judge, Brett Kavanaugh and others to cause girls to become inebriated and disoriented so they could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.”

“I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room,” Swetnick said. “These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh.”

She also said in her affidavit sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee that in approximately 1982 “I became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.”

“Shortly after the incident, I shared what had transpired with at least two other people,” Swetnick said.

“During the incident, I was incapacitated without my consent and unable to fight off the boys raping me. I believe I was drugged using Quaaludes or something similar placed in what I was drinking.”

She says that she shared the story of her own rape with “at least two other people” shortly afterward.

So there were gang rapes at “many” parties over a period of months and the teenagers involved kept it all secret for 36 years.

I wonder if we can draw some parallels between this and the day care abuse trials of the 1980s. The allegations began with some inappropriate touching and escalated quickly to ritual sacrifice of animals and humans. Some quotes from a Boston Globe Best Book of 2015 within “Window into American criminal justice system from the daycare sexual abuse trials of the 1980s“:

Things briefly calmed down for Judy Johnson. She and her husband made their separation permanent, and she also found a job in retail. In the summer of 1983, however, Johnson became concerned about the condition of her son’s anus. …

Matthew had revealed more details of his abuse and that McMartin teachers other than Ray had been involved. Babette Spitler, Johnson said, made Matthew vomit by stepping on his stomach, and there was a stranger, an old woman, who came to the school and held Matthew’s feet down while he was sodomized. Matthew had also been forced to perform oral sex on Peggy McMartin Buckey, the school’s administrator. According to Detective Hoag’s report on the call, Matthew also told his mother about “being taken to some type of a ranch far away where there were horses and he rode naked.” Ray took pills. Ray gave himself a shot. Ray killed a dog and put a cat “in hot water.”

Matthew feels that he left L.A. International in an airplane and flew to Palm Springs. . . . Matthew went to the armory. . . . The goatman was there . . . it was a ritual type atmosphere. . . . At the church, Peggy drilled a child under the arms, armpits. Atmosphere was that of magic arts. Ray flew in the air. . . . Peggy, Babs and Betty were all dressed up as witches. The person who buried Matthew is Miss Betty. There were no holes in the coffin. Babs went with him on a train with an older girl where he was hurt by men in suits. Ray waved goodbye. . . . Peggy gave Matthew an enema. . . . Staples were put in Matthew’s ears, his nipples, and his tongue. Babs put scissors in his eyes. . . . She chopped up animals. . . . Matthew was hurt by a lion.

(See also “Why did Americans want to target daycare workers back in the 1980s and 1990s?“)

This dispute is kind of ironic because, like the Silicon Valley VCs who were taken down by women, Kavanaugh imagined himself to be a champion of those with a female gender ID: “I am proud that a majority of my law clerks have been women.” (law.com) In theory, the U.S. runs gender-neutral laws due to the Equal Protection Clause (it is just by happenstance that Census data show that 97 percent of the custody and child support winners in Massachusetts and 98 percent in New Hampshire are of one gender!). The guy was supposed to be enforcing these gender-neutral laws. If he couldn’t say he was “proud that a majority of my law clerks have been men,” why is it okay for the gender-neutral judge to say “proud that a majority of my law clerks have been women”?

[Finally, do the last-minute accusers have any exposure to libel lawsuits? Kavanaugh is a public figure, but accusing someone of organizing gang rapes, if there is no evidence other than a headline-seeker’s heartfelt testimony to support the accusation, seems like it might step over the line even in the U.S.]

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29 thoughts on “Judge Kavanaugh has gone from generic prep school douche to criminal mastermind in two weeks?

  1. PhilG: Why did Americans want to target daycare workers? Perhaps out of guilt for putting the kids in the daycare in the first place?

  2. To summarize:
    1) Ford – named 4 people besides herself as witnesses – all of whom denied for an alleged incident at a party with no location or date. Believing her means that her (female) friend was left alone downstairs with the 3rd boy for a time – and when she (Ford) left the house – she left her friend alone at the house with 1 to 3 attempted rapists?

    2) Ramirez – can’t even be sure herself that he was there.

    3) Swetnick – as a college student attended a party of HS boys where gang rapes were occurring, and not only did she (or anyone else) *ever* tell anyone – but Swetnick continued to attend those parties.

    If someone can provide actual proof or credible witnesses that Kavanaugh is guilty, I’ll listen. But the timing of the allegations, their vagueness, and the fact that no one to this day will file a complaint with a District Attorney – makes this feel overwhelmingly like a frame.

  3. Isn’t it funny how often standing right there and witnessing the crime is characterized as not being evidence?

  4. philg—you were in education, didn’t you ever see (or more likely hear rumor of) anything like that? Would you go to the police if a friend of a friend told you he heard about such a thing a one of the frat houses?

  5. zzazz: So which is it: “standing right there” or “a friend of a friend told you he heard about such a thing”?

  6. “generic douche” LOL. If he had just played lacrosse and/or gone to Duke, he could have been a brand-name douche.

  7. Yeah, that’s interesting. Senators who oppose could say something like, “He may or may not have attempted to rape a girl. Who knows? I’m just going to vote against him because he’s a douche.”

  8. She’s going to these parties, she is standing right there, but until it happens to her, she doesn’t put together what has been happening all along. That, as well as peer pressure can account for ten parties. A lot of people never put it together. A lot of crime hinges upon never putting things together. Furthermore, the harder it is to put it together, the harder it is to go to the authorities, and the harder it is to interest them. I find all these allegations (three uncoordinated similar allegations from different people, different places, and different times!!!!!!!) more than believable—compelling—far beyond a reasonable doubt (and the standard for becoming a judge should be something far below even a preponderance of the evidence–there shouldn’t be the slightest suspicion!) . But, that’s not disqualifying, IMHO, because it is youthful, it might actually be in our nature (some of us anyway), and there is very often an element of cooperation involved; rather, it is the present day lying (perjury) that is present day on-going disqualifying character defect.

  9. I have a question. It is as pointless as any other speculations of what might or might not have happened, but once I heard that Trump = Hitler, anything goes. Right. So I have two questions.

    1) If a woman sexually assaults another woman and then denies it, how do we #believewomen and punish a perpetrator?

    2) If a quarterback decides to self-identify as a woman, can s/he accuse other players of “shoving a woman aggressively and sexually” on a football field?

  10. zzazz: “you were in education, didn’t you ever see (or more likely hear rumor of) anything like that? Would you go to the police if a friend of a friend told you he heard about such a thing a one of the frat houses?”

    Um… MIT fraternities are not known for hosting gang rape events, I hope. Certainly the dorms are pretty tame. Would I go to the police? That doesn’t seem to be the American norm following sexual adventures. Option 1 is talk to Rolling Stone (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Rape_on_Campus ). Option 2 is talk to a Democrat. We’re acting out a real-life version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baywatch_(film) , one of my favorite in-flight films. The new guy tells the lifeguards that if they observe a crime they should call the police rather than trying to investigate the crime and apprehend the criminals. The Rock explains that this is not how Baywatch works.

    MIT is not immune to national passions. See http://www.wbur.org/artery/2018/06/18/mit-junot-diaz-sexual-misconduct-allegations for example. There are also various private encounters between students that lead to later recriminations. But nobody has ever said “there were rape parties held every Thursday all semester at Fraternity Alpha Beta Gamma and so naturally I attended them all.”

  11. zzazz: I am trying to understand what you are writing, and I can’t understand how you can think what you write is plausible.

    You seem to believe that multiple boys raped multiple girls, on many separate occasions, and all of the following improbable things happened:

    1) None of the girls warned the other girls.

    2) None of the girls told anyone who went on to tell a parent or cop.

    3) None of the boys, who were apparently drunk on a regular basis, bragged to anyone who went to a parent or cop.

    4) None of the boys snitched on the group, out of fear someone else would talk.

    5) All of the victims just forgot about the whole thing for 35 years.

    #3 is particularly unbelievable. You assume a level of discretion and modesty that I do not associate with male teenaged gang rapists who are drunk on a regular basis. Do you know any sober teenaged boys who could keep that secret?

  12. The ignorance here is incredibly thick. How many examples of this kind of behavior one must see play out for years or decades before the patterns become credible to you? Listen to yourselves. It sounds just like the response to the first Bill Cosby accusers from decades ago must have received. Even after he was on record as drugging women people were defending the creep. Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein and countless others have gotten away with this behavior for decades because of the attitudes displayed in some of these comments. You are the problem and you enable this behavior. It’s no surprise that you’ve never heard first hand accounts of such things as your ignorance and oafish attitudes precede you. Who would want to confide in people only to face this kind of judgement? I’ve heard the stories and the rates are alarming. It all goes down just like they say. The ones who do speak out encounter hoards of ignorant and skeptical folks. And it comes from the people you’d least expect such as family members. I’ve even experienced it for myself, as a guy. Bunch of boys spending the night at a friends house, no one wants to share a pull out couch with one kid. Seems odd. In the morning I found out why. Creepy kid had roaming hands and everyone else knew about it but never spoke up and kept going back. Not one of them had the guts to tell me beforehand and let me fall into the same fate. When I brought it up, they all knew about it. I never understood why they continued to be friends with that kid. Lucky for me it was a rather harmless though super uncomfortable experience. There are many things in life which are counter intuitive and defy logic. You just can’t possibly appreciate it until you’ve experienced it for yourself, or are educated on the subject. The effects and response to traumas are at the top of the list of irrational. You geniuses explain to me why kidnap victims fall in love with their captors? Makes zero sense. Or, why many child molesters were themselves molested and yet they go on to repeat the behavior. Back pain is a more mundane and common example. You simply can’t appreciate it until you’ve experienced it. Don’t let your utter lack of understanding or experience with trauma be mistaken for evidence. You’re not qualified to speak on the subject and your contrarian opinions lack all relevance.

  13. Lesscapable: I’m not surprised that the “ignorance is thick,” given that people are trying to reconstruct events from 35 years ago that were, at the time, apparently considered not worthy of note by the folks who now say that they occurred.

    The comparisons to Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein don’t make sense. They were not involved in politics. With a Trump appointee, any of the 65+ million Americans who voted for Hillary (plus any additional Trump-haters around the globe) would have a political motivation to make a career-ending accusation. Since Trump = Hitler and resisting Trump is a noble end, an ignoble means (such as lying) would be justifiable. Just imagine how many lives could have been saved if a brave person had come forward to say that Adolf Hitler had misbehaved at a high school gathering, thus turning German voters against him.

  14. Lesscapable

    What’s the difference between Ford/Ramirez/Swetnick and Jackie Coakley / Crystal magnum / Tawana Bradley?

  15. Corindal–not one of your 5 bullet points is necessarily true, and you supply no evidence to support a single one. #4 seems most likely to be true–that one of the criminals didn’t “snitch” on the other criminal. That’s the only entirely believable point, and it is entirely consistent with the current accusations. Point 3, where you are careful to make it seem like bragging to any one would be the same as bragging to someone who would report the crime would have credibility if bragging to anyone was in fact the same as bragging to someone who would report the crime—but it isn’t. Point 2 has the same defect. I suspect that even you know that points 1 and 5 are just flat out lies.

  16. zzazz – fascinating that you want to talk about evidence. Five accusers, no evidence, and no corroborating testimony. If the crime is horrible enough, the accuser must be telling the truth? Is that the standard?

  17. This nomination is yet another clever ploy by the Trump administration to destroy our democracy, and now they are targeting the Supreme Court.
    Here is how their evil plan works:
    1) nominate a perp and refuse to withdraw his candidacy, accept a possibly multiyear FBI investigation;
    2) if more justices retire in the meantime build up a wait queue and insist on considering the candidates in order;
    3) if/when a Dem president is elected, sabotage their nominations: claim that the candidate molested a donkey that also happened to be a Russian citizen or property, open an FBI investigation as required. Just lie: Russia doesn’t extradite their citizens so good luck checking the accusations;
    4) sparks fly, Putin denies involvement, NY Times sees spectacular profits, the queue grows;
    5) eventually all current Justices retire and voila; we have dismantled the US Supreme Court.
    Clever!

  18. Sam: Are there not countless criminal convictions which hinge solely on eye witness testimony? It was that guy right there! Surely, in many of those cases, the subjects were complete strangers and the total elapsed time was negligible. At the end of the day, the jury decides. Where is your violin for those people? Do you have any memories from your childhood years? I can remember many things very clearly. Sometimes it’s people or places or specific experiences. Every suffer trauma? I have. At first the entire experience is fresh in your mind, much like anything, but more so. The experience replays in your mind over and over. With time, you begin to replay and hold onto the important details and the irrelevant ones fade away. These are guys whom she knew of. She knew their names and faces for perhaps some time. So when the assault happened, there was no mistake who it was. She was probably thinking something like, this asshole Bret is on top of me, and Mark is helping. And she held onto that, as well as other details about that night. 35 years, 70 years, she’ll remember that until she dies. That’s the way memory works. Especially trauma. Neither of you guys must have suffered any trauma–good for you. But as I said above, your lack of experience is not experience.

    Phil: See my thoughts on memory just above. 35 years is irrelevant. As for the comparisons to Cosby, etc. they absolutely make sense. It goes to your nonsensical assertion that if things weren’t brought up at the time, they’re never worth bringing up, or that they’re less credible over time. That’s demonstrates once again, your total lack of understanding of the subject. Politics has nothing to do with it. Gorsuch and most other nominees faced nothing similar. Kavanaugh is a creep who at a minimum has perjured himself about his drinking habits. Of course he has to do that, because he’s left himself no wiggle room on that. He’s said it absolutely never happened, which can’t possible be true if you know you’ve ever blacked out even once–unless you were alone in an isolated forest at the time. I’ve never seen a self proclaimed absolutely innocent man squirm and weasel and evade so much. Why no investigation? Why no testimony from the other person in the room? Because at a minimum, plenty of people will come forward and say Kavanaugh had a drinking problem, just like the book. The GOP went a bridge too far on this one and got burned. Plenty of other conservative judges.

  19. Less capable,

    I may have or may not have experienced your prerequisite trauma to understand the situation, but I have experienced three different women who threatened to give police false claims of abuse if I didn’t give in to their demands, and went through one trial over such false claims, so I don’t take the possibility of injustice through false accusations lightly.

  20. Sam: were those women acquaintances(like Dr Ford), or did they have an intimate grudge with you? Regardless, you might want to contemplate why that has happened to you three times! No doubt that it goes on and far too often. But three times is not haapenstance or bad luck and you’re the only constant. In Dr Ford’s case, 35 years is an awfully long time to hold onto an illegitimate or manufactured grudge against someone who claimed not to even remember her. It would have had to have been rather petty if he wasn’t even aware of it. It’s far more likely her portrayal is true in my opinion.

  21. I went to Yale with Brett Kavanaugh. I knew him a real douchebag’s douchebag. I also thought, having seen (only part) of his legislative and judicial history that he was ‘conservative’ (i.e. a shill for business and the GOP), but no longer a dangerously narcissistic douchebag. Having heard Blakey-Ford’s testimony, and after following each thread from Avenatti to Z, I was still unconvinced that he should be disqualified. And then I heard him respond. While I did have some hope that people can develop and evolve, his appearance left me with the clear impression that this was and is indeed the d-bag with whom I went to school. The man I saw stumbling, belligerently drunk on multiple occasions perjured himself before the US Senate and the American people. The perfect justice for the age of Trump: someone who should be disbarred. Whatever your feelings about he said and she said, whomever you believe, you should believe this: Kavanaugh proved himself unfit for the bench by letting himself be seen. Put your tribalism and ideologies in a very special place, because this man should not be on the Supreme Court. Period. How hard was it for those Senators to do the right thing? I just gave money to everyone who opposes them. 2022 is a long way for Grassley, but I can wait. I’m saving up, in fact.

  22. Lesscapable: “Sam: … you might want to contemplate why that has happened to you three times!”

    I’m going to guess that Sam has a reasonably high income! Otherwise it would have been economically irrational for even one abuse claimant to target him. One thing we learned from interviewing 200+ divorce litigators is that a lot of people imagine themselves to be especially virtuous or likable when in fact they simply aren’t worth suing.

    See https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/02/magazine/is-it-ok-to-press-your-spouse-to-have-a-vasectomy-before-you-ditch-him.html for example. The woman described would have been following her economic self-interest (if the guy couldn’t have any more kids she would be the sole authorized harvester of his wealth and income via family court). But the American readers assume that there is some sort of emotional or moral dimension to what need only have been a simple dollars and cents calculation.

  23. Rich: Thanks for sharing. Had I been a Senator I would have rejected the guy on the basis of his 1998 memo scolding Bill Clinton for romping with interns (and thus my opinion about Kavanaugh’s confirmation was unaffected by the #MeToo accusations that came after I’d read the 1998 memo). But, on the other hand, the senators were perhaps in a tough spot. How many of them could survive scrutiny of their own college years?

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