Okay, herés the thing. Some 40 years ago I was sexually assaulted while I was on duty at the University of Connecticut’s Poison Information Center, in 1978 (when it was still called that…). I remember without a single shred of doubt who the man was, a dental student with whom I had been friendly when I attended the medical school at UConn. That DI  – his initials- would recall this too, I believe is the case, because I believed him when he said he thought my “No!” meant that I really wanted sex with him. And we talked about his aggression against me afterwards.

But I also know that the security guard who heard my  crying out  and my struggles behind the closed locked door of the PIC and knocked to ask if I was all right’ definitely did not believe me when I opened the door and told him I was okay…yes, DI had stopped his assault when the guard knocked on the door, and he did not recommence anything after I Assured the guard that all was well.  He got the point, that I was not interested in the sex he had tried to force on me…

But I was also not okay, certainly not with DI’s behavior. I told the guard all was well because I felt to blame, I felt guilty for being female and “bringing DIs attack on myself.” Not guilty for anything I did, but because of my body, because my body was a woman’s body and so that in and of itself made me “seductive”…I felt I deserved what i got.

This sexual assault happened, and I know it and who the perpetrator was without a shadow of any doubt and I have always remembered it.  But could I prove it to anyone? I did mention it, later but not immediately. I had no female friends close enough to trust with my shame…but I did speak of it to several people over the years, whether or not they remember my doing so. I played down the attack as “date rape” rather than a “real attack” because I had been taught that attempted rape by a friend was somehow “less serious” than rape or attempted rape by a stranger…Let that sink in, please.

i do not know precisely what became of DI nor what sort of person he became after the event I describe, but I have always assumed and hoped that it was, as they say, a one-off Incident and Was not repeated. I assumed and hoped that DI learned from my reaction that No means No. and that he became a better person for knowing  this. I gave him credit for apologizing or at least explaining why he attacked me…and I gave him credit for the ability to change and never do such a thing again.

So I KNOW that a woman like Christine Blasey ford would remember such an attack in detail and that her attacker esp if stumbling falling down drunk would have every motivation not to…

BUT I must say I did NOT believe Ford’s tearful voice or her tears. I found them utterly fake and rehearsed and it irked me no end. How disgusting that after nearly 40 years she felt it necessary to pretend to be afraid and to fake tears in her voice, high thin and fake fake fake…why would she believe this? Is a woman’s recounting of an assault only credible if accompanied by tears? How disgusting if so. But while I believe her story, i do not believe the tears were real and I found that just as disgraceful, the demands by Democrats that she put on such a fake tearful voice just to convince them of her credibility? Shameful that she could not trust her own words to be comvincing and all those senators and newscasters that fawned and cooed over her tearful voice are the ones who are guilty, forcing her to pretend to be overcome with emotions just in order to be believed that what happened did in fact happen.