Mark — I agree with your point that it’s always a good idea to be skeptical about false precision. But in my opinion the Gore sex complaint doesn’t fall under that heading.
You noted the sometimes stilted quality of the accuser’s statement. “Let’s not forget that three years went by between the alleged encounter and the composition of the report,” you say. “Usually time is the enemy of detail. But, as any good story teller will attest, time can also ‘enhance’ memory with details that make for a more interesting, though not necessarily more accurate, story.”
I don’t think three years elapsed between the encounter and the composition of the accuser’s version of the story. The incident allegedly occurred on October 24, 2006. The Portland Police Bureau statement on the matter says that about two months later, in December 2006, a local attorney got in touch with police and “said he had a client that wanted to report an unwanted sexual contact by Mr. Gore.” The police statement says investigators tried repeatedly to interview the woman, but she did not cooperate. A short time later, in January 2007, the lawyer told them his client was “pursuing civil litigation.” Then, in January 2009, she changed her mind and talked to police investigators.
The woman’s attorney — so far unnamed — would have been negligent had he not had his client record her best memory of the incident, in as much detail as possible, as quickly as possible. I think that likely happened sometime before the lawyer first contacted police in December 2006. The statement the woman gave police in January 2009 — investigators say she was reading from a prepared statement, which is obvious from listening to the audio recording — would have been based on recollections written down earlier. Time is the enemy of detail, but the details were likely committed to paper shortly after the alleged incident occurred, not three years later.
I’m also told by people who have had massages at hotels and spas around the country that the questions the masseuse says she asked Gore before the massage — about any health issues, problem areas, etc. — are common practice in the business. In the police statement, the woman was careful to stress her professional credentials, probably in an effort to show that she was a serious person with a serious complaint.
There are other parts of the woman’s story that tend to support her credibility. She says she told other people about the incident at the time. She says she saved the slacks she was wearing the night of the encounter when she noticed there was a stain on them. Sources close to Gore have told reporters Gore was at the hotel that night and did have a massage, likely with the masseuse who filed the complaint, although Gore remembers it ending without incident. And when Gore’s lawyers were confronted with the complaint in 2007, they called it “completely false” and offered as evidence the “integrity” of his “37 year marriage.”
None of that proves this case. But it points toward further investigation, if that is what the accuser wants.
