“Why didn’t you come forward sooner?”
The first criminal trial of Bill Cosby ended with a hung jury. So the prosecution re-filed the complaint, retried the case and this time did something that I thought was very clever. For their very first witness they called a psychologist as an expert. She instructed the jury about what kind of behaviour they can expect from victims of sexual assault.
She noted that a common question asked of such victims is “Why didn’t you come forward sooner?” Many people are surprised to learn that victims of sexual assault don’t come forward at all, or if they do, a lot of time passes first. Not coming forward at all, or not coming forward after a long period of time has passed isn’t the exception, she told the jury, it’s the rule.
Many people find this behaviour repellant and blame the victims for not coming forward right away. Such people need to learn empathy. Victims often pay a huge price for coming forward, and that price is frequently at the hands of the very people who demand that they come forward right away in the first place! Such people need to sit down, shut up and leave the conversation to the adults in the room.
Donald Trump has been credibly accused of literally dozens of instances of sexual predation including, but not limited to, everything from inappropriate touching, constant sexual innuendo, sexual harassment, unwanted kissing or touching, underage sex and rape.
Trump was recently confirmed in civil court as the rapist of E Jean Carroll. Trump is a despicable sexual predator and a danger to women everywhere, both from his actions and the example he sets, and he confessed to Billy Bush that he’s a sexual predator in the infamous Access Hollywood tape.
Wikipedia has an entire page devoted to Trump’s sexual assaults. It’s called “Donald Trump sexual misconduct allegations.” In the article, 27 separate accounts of 27 different women are listed, together with general accounts of Trump’s inappropriate behaviour toward women in general. Many of Trump’s victims came forward reluctantly, often because friends first advised them not to come forward at all because of Trump’s power. They feared they would be humiliated for bringing truth to power. They were right.
What a lot of people who support the nonsense that such accusations are politically motivated don’t like to hear is that most of Trump’s accusers can back their claims up with the testimonies of contemporaneous witnesses. Even though the women don’t always tell the authorities right away they do tell their friends and romantic partners right away, and those friends and partners also come forward and back them up.
Accusations of politically motivated slander have recently emerged because B-list celebrity Russell Brand has been accused of rape, sexual assault and extraordinarily aggression behaviour toward women. The idea that some big political machine is going after Brand in order to shut him up is absurd on its face.
First of all, Brand is an idiot, indistinguishable from other idiots who espouse anti-vaxxer conspiracy theories and other crypto-fascist causes. There’s nothing special about him. If anybody is going to go after anybody for such nonsense they will start much higher on the pecking order than Brand.
Like Trump, Brand is already fashioning a silly “persecution” defence. Meanwhile more and more women are coming forward alleging Brand committed rape, sexual assault and aggressive sexual misconduct. It doesn’t look good for Brand.
Expect hundreds of cretins to come crawling out of the woodwork to demand why Brand’s victims didn’t come forward sooner, just like they do with Trump’s victims. Now that you know the reason they don’t come forward sooner, shame on you if you’re one of the ones who asks. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.