Thread: Christine Blasey Ford's changing Kavanaugh assault story leaves her short on credibility

Put aside Christine Blasey Ford's emotional performance. Her testimony revealed her as a witness whose memories change at her convenience.

When Christine Blasey Ford testified last week before the Judiciary Committee, America witnessed a haunted woman recounting a devastating trauma. But putting aside Ford's emotional performance and focusing instead on the professor's testimony reveals numerous inconsistencies in her narrative that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her.

As a sex-crimes prosecutor, Republican questioner Rachel Mitchell is well-positioned to "know it when she sees it." But rather than see Ford as a victim of sexual abuse by Kavanaugh, Mitchell saw her as a witness lacking in credibility. And this conclusion comes from an expert who knows that there are many reasons victims delay reporting sexual abuse. Mitchell also recognized that victims may legitimately not remember certain details related to an attack.

But the problem for Ford is not that she doesn't remember everything: It is that everything she remembers changes at her convenience.

First, Ford's testimony that the assault occurred in the summer of 1982, when just 15, conflicted with both her therapist's notes and the text message Ford sent to the Washington Post. According to reporter Emma Brown, Ford claimed she had been assaulted in the mid-1980s; and the therapist's notes stated Ford had been the victim of an attempted rape in her late teens. But by that time, Kavanaugh was attending Yale, so Ford's recasting of the attack to the summer of 1982 is suspect...

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opini...mn/1497661002/