The woman who accused Virginia’s lieutenant governor of sexual assault warned Tuesday night that America is suffering from an epidemic of abuse against women.
College professor Vanessa Tyson said she and three other Stanford University fellows “shook” last year while watching Christine Blasey Ford accuse Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of attempted sexual assault, and said women are realizing that these sorts of things are happening to “everybody.”
“As she shook, we shook with her,” Tyson said of Blasey Ford. “As she told her story, we felt the pain that she so visibly demonstrated.”
Tyson has accused Virginia’s Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, a Democrat, of sexually assaulting her. Her remarks at an event at Stanford are the first time she has spoken since the scandal broke.
The moderator of the event said the panel would refuse to take questions about Tyson’s specific claims against Fairfax, who had appeared poised to become his state’s governor after a racist photo was found in the medical school yearbook of Gov. Ralph Northam. But Tyson raised the issue indirectly in the context of her reaction to the Kavanaugh hearing.
Tyson said that watching Ford’s testimony made her recognize the “empathetic absorption” sexual assault victims feel when others come forward, and said the #MeToo movement has helped unearth an “epidemic” of abuse previously detailed in statistics but not public accusations.
“With #MeToo that’s what we’re seeing, it’s this cognitive liberation of sexual assault survivors,” Tyson said. “When survivors more broadly start comparing notes, that’s when the light bulb goes off: ‘This has been happening to everybody,’ And that’s the most important part of #MeToo … It had to take off in a larger mainstream before everyone started comparing notes.”
Tyson cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics indicating that 19.3 percent of women and 1.7 percent of men will be raped in their lifetimes, while 49.3 percent of women and 23.4 percent of men experience other forms of sexual violence. A political scientist, she said there must be a significant net effect.
“This is drastically shaping how we see and interact with the world around us. Make no mistake, this is an epidemic, so to speak. It is a public health issue. It is not simply a crime issue, it is a public health issue,” she said. “It is killing us — slowly, quickly. But it’s killing us. It is taking every thing out of ourselves just to function in this world and try to make it a better place.”
Tyson, a graduate of Princeton University who holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago, described her assault allegation in a statement last week. She alleged that Fairfax befriended her at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston, before inviting her to help retrieve papers from his hotel room.
Tyson said she welcomed Fairfax’s advance when he kissed her, but then said the encounter became nonconsensual. She said she was “utterly shocked and terrified” when Fairfax “pushed my head towards his crotch” and “forced his penis into my mouth,” and said that “[a]s I cried and gagged, Mr. Fairfax forced me to perform oral sex on him.”
Fairfax denied the allegation, saying he and Tyson had a “100 percent consensual” encounter.
Tyson said she recognized that being highly educated “seems to be a source of credibility,” but that she believes it’s unfair that such credentials are considered amid sexual assault allegations.
“This is credibility that I think we need to get away from and move away from because every woman matters, every survivor matters, regardless of their background, regardless of where they come from — none of us are disposable and dispensable,” she said.
