AIBU in thinking a drunken 18 year old boy should not be called to account for behaviour 35 years later?

[longwayoff]

I'm conflicted. Brett Kavanaugh, nominated by Trump as a Supreme Court judge, has been accused of locking Dr Christine Blasey Ford in a bedroom and sexually assaulting her. This happened in the early 1980s when they were teens at a party and he was very drunk, she hadnt been drinking. She says she is 100 percent certain he did this. He says wasn't me guv.
Her televised evidence was upsetting and convincing. I believe what she says and feel she should have whatever she needs to help her. BUT. Drunken 18 year old boy/man. All these years later? Is that fair? To wreck his career now? Personally, I loathe Trump and all his works, so politically I'm glad to see a fail. But this is not sitting well with me. I feel I should feel better about this. Convince me please.

Caught up with muellers investigation
Sorry i pressed send to quick

To wreck his career now?

You seem to be suggesting wrecking his career is something other people are doing?

If he did this, HE wrecked his own career, several years before it started. He did it to himself.

I saw something quite apt online: young men like Brock Turner turn into men like Brett Kavanaugh who make the laws for young men like Brock Turner.

If he did this, HE wrecked his own career, several years before it started. He did it to himself.

Absolutely!

"That bill should be picked up by the tax payer and not a political affiliation." Why not? I'm pretty sure his are!

Celebelly - exactly!

Eh? The vast vast majority of 18yo young men do not lock women in rooms, assault and half strangle them.

At 18, I got spectacularly drunk many times. My worst crimes were tasteless comments and stumbling into a bush to pee on the way home.

Most people don't act like this. If he did, it's a serious statement about what kind of person he is.

Paraphrasing someone on Twitter-
At 18-oh, he's got his whole life ahead, don't ruin it for him.
In middle age-oh, he's got a career and family-think of the effect on them.
In his later years-oh he's an old harmless man, don't punish him for the sins of his youth.
The whole thing is just another sign that how Trump and his ilk feel about women. The man, accused and refusing an fbi investigation to prove his case, this man will be pushing through an agenda that will destroy women's reproductive rights in the us.

Yes Celebrity ! Her lawyers are working pro bono I heard.

If you commit crimes as an adult they can impact on your career long term.

Interestingly, I think Plato said that if you commit a crime when drunk you should be punished twice, once for committing the crime and once for putting yourself into such that you lost inhibitions/gained Dutch courage sufficiently to actually commit it. (He puts it better than I, but you get what I mean.)

Sadly, we'll never know whether it is a case of mistaken identity on her part, or a consequence of a drunken lifestyle (perhaps quite short-lived) on his, as they're not going to try to find out, are they?

OP I had this conversation with my DH last night ...well similar...I have the view that times have changed and hopefully for the better.I lived through the 70s when some behaviour was normalized and tolerated and there is no way it would be now...In the 70s squeezing a womans bum was seen as a sign of affection..same with the grabbing of a boob ...it was so normalised you saw it in everyday life from all sorts of people ...also the mother in law jokes...the racism.... all hidden in humour ...these days there is no way on this earth that it would be tolerated,We live in different times now and neither men or women should expect to be treated in any way other than a respectful way,I do get what your saying and its been interesting looking back through different eras...times are changing all the time and standards are rising ...it can only be a good thing..the 70s especially were rife with ignorance and crudeness funny at the time maybe but hopefully never to be repeated...thats my view anyway.

So we should put him in a position of power where he will try and undo legislation which permits abortion in USA?

want I find it most odd that you think that she needs sone kind of approval of timeline method is just of people to report and deal with her own trauma. And that it should some how be convenient for him

Dont you get it? Don't not you think that merely by owning a vagina and daring to have do sensual sex at any time in her life that she would have been fucked in the sense of people's opinons of how when and why whatever she had chosen to do?

I think she is incredibly brave

You also have to consider how fucked up the law was 35 years ago when it came to sex attacks.
Chances are he would have been found not guilty. Even if there was a room full of witnesses. Why? Because of what she wore, or was flirting with him or some other fucked up reason.

So it's all good people saying oh she should have reported at the time. Reporting rape 35 years ago as is the case today is fucking hard. Talking about it to the police and often more than once, the examination, and that's if it actually gets to court. And this is just after you have been assaulted and you don't trust anyone, yet you are supposed to let a stranger touch you intimately. When all you want to do is scrub yourself and get rid of that person's scent, and protect yourself and try and heal any physical pain.

This man will make decisions about what women can and can not do with their body.

He feels it is ok to touch a women against her will and he gets to decide if all American can have an abortion.

Fuck off.

Consensual

Stuoid auto correct

Also, why the FUCK should she be concerned with moderating her actions in any way at all to consider his career? At what point should she have spoken up to have the least possible impact on his life? When would it have been most convenient for him to have had to face charges of rape? Why is HIS life, comfort, convenience, career, success in ANY way relevant to this?

I think sadly what he is alleged to have done was not unusual at that time and I wouldn’t be surprised if many of the other people in those kinds of positions had done the same thing. I can see kind of where the OP is coming from - should we be judged on what we did at 17 but I think he has to be judged on it as he has never taken any responsibility or received any consequences for what he allegedly did.

But it’s his absolute denial of any culpability that I find disgusting. Dr Ford is not the only woman to allege that he sexually assaulted her but his aggression last night in claiming he was a quiet virginal college boy who enjoyed a couple of beers with his friends is completely at odds with how others describes him. But there’s no chance he’d get the job if he even said “there’s a possibility I could have done this when I was under the influence of alcohol” so he thinks it’s better to deny the whole thing. And the NRA and the Republican Party are desperate to get him in before the mid terms so they’ll not want it to be investigated.

Yes bri ging up historic sexual assault is such an inconvenience for men isn't it 😕

Ideally he would have been held account for it at the time - the first time he ever sexually assaulted someone should have been the last time. I doubt it was,
This is my problem - he's being accused of something that can't be proved either way because of the long gap & now people are pronouncing him guilty of not only that supposed incident but more besides! And the timing?
Besides, I thought the statute for rape in the US was 5 years?
Don't get me wrong, justice should be done in rape cases like any other. But I'm afraid I doubt her story because she can do a lot of damage to him and he can't prove otherwise even though he could quite easily be completely innocent.

Agree with the idea that it should ruin your life if you sexually abused someone. It should be a fear of any man looking at a public/high profile role. It should ruin you.

Because telling boys it's wrong doesn't work with a lot of young men. They don't believe the argument that it's morally unacceptable is a good enough reason not to abuse woman and girls. So I'll accept them behaving well out of terror of the long term concequences. I'll accept parents telling their boys as they leave home for uni etc that if they aren't respectful, it might seem like they've got away with it now, but will distroy their long term career plans.

Right now, it doesn't. We are seeing that he'll probably still get elected. It's been unpleasant for him, but he's still going to get the job.

She was only 14 or 15 at the time, and was minding her own business, going to the loo. I was listening to a radio show when driving earlier, and loads of women phoning in saying 'poor men, will nobody think about how hard it is for them...' and variations on that theme. Why are so many women jumping to exonerate a man before they know anything about his behaviour in the intervening years? Who knows what else might come out of the woodwork, although it seems like women have been successfully sidelined.

If it can be proven that he did something wrong, fair enough, but I'm not in favour of wrecking someone based on one person's say-so. Anyone could say that a guy did something they didn't want but that doesn't mean they did, or that the guy should be punished just cause we're on a 'me too' wave right now. Everyone and their granny is claiming sexual assault and I'm sceptical of what is truly real. You can't start shouting about it the better part of 30 years down the line...

If you believe he did it,then it's fair.