Vanessa Tyson, the woman accusing Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of sexual assault, is a political — and perhaps legal — wrecking ball for the Democratic rising star who until this week was positioned to take over as governor.
Fairfax risks not only his political career but also criminal charges, with Tyson alleging an assault at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where a 15-year statute of limitations allows five more months for Tyson to pursue the case.
The lieutenant governor has denied Tyson’s claim, saying the experience was “100 percent” consensual and asserting that the Washington Post’s decision not to publish an earlier investigation was exonerating. The Post said, however, that Fairfax in his assertion falsely claimed inconsistencies in Tyson’s account, rejecting his description of the accusation as a political smear.
Tyson, a graduate of Princeton University who works as a politics professor at Scripps College in California, holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and currently is a fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.
In a statement Wednesday, Tyson for the first time publicly described her allegation, saying that “consensual kissing” turned into forced oral sex in a Boston hotel room.
After befriending Fairfax at the convention, Tyson said he invited her to accompany him to retrieve documents from his room. Tyson said she was “utterly shocked and terrified” when Fairfax “pushed my head towards his crotch” and “forced his penis into my mouth.”
“As I cried and gagged, Mr. Fairfax forced me to perform oral sex on him,” she said.
Although an expert on politics and minority political engagement, Tyson has a long record of assault survivor advocacy, co-founding and serving on the Survivor Speakers’ Bureau of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center for three years in the early 2000s. A leader of the group declined to comment on her involvement.
Fairfax, 25 at the time of the alleged assault, spent the summer of 2004 as a “body man” to then-Democratic vice presidential candidate and North Carolina Sen. John Edwards. Tyson describes herself on her website as having worked on three presidential campaigns — though she does not specify the campaigns — as well as on two U.S. Senate campaigns.
At Scripps, she has taught courses focused on African-Americans and women in politics, as well as environmental policy. She previously taught at Dickinson College in Pennsylvania. In 2016, she published her first book, Twists of Fate: Multiracial Coalitions and Minority Representation in the US House of Representatives.
In Boston, authorities say they are ready to investigate if a complaint is filed against Fairfax.
“We have prosecuted many sexual assault cases dating back decades,” said Jake Wark, spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office in Boston, noting the 15-year statute of limitations.
Tyson has hired attorney Debra Katz, who assisted Brett Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford.
Katz did not return a request for comment on Tyson’s legal plans.
The accusation first emerged from a social media message shared by a Richmond peace activist, with Tyson’s permission. Another current Stanford fellow, University of Oregon psychology professor Jennifer Freyd, said Tuesday that Tyson told her and others in the fall about a forced sexual encounter, before later accusing Fairfax.
The bombshell allegation came as Fairfax, who is African-American, appeared poised to become Virginia governor after a racist yearbook photo emerged in the medical school yearbook of Gov. Ralph Northam, also a Democrat.
Northam denied being either subject in the photo, which depicted one man wearing blackface and another wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. But he admitted wearing blackface while imitating Michael Jackson during a 1980s party. On Wednesday, the third in line for Virginia governor, Democratic Attorney General Mark Herring, admitted that he, too, had dressed in blackface decades ago.
