The latest accuser speaking up about Kavanaugh has a horrific tale to tell, but the most horrific thing about it is that it seems entirely plausible.
Swetnick, in the affidavit posted on Twitter by Avenatti, claims that she saw Kavanaugh, as a high school student in Maryland in the early 1980s, and others spike the drinks of girls at house parties with grain alcohol and/or drugs to “cause girls to lose inhibitions and their ability to say ‘No.’ ”
Swetnick said these efforts by Kavanaugh and his buddy Mark Judge were done so the girls “could then be ‘gang raped’ in a side room or bedroom by a ‘train’ of numerous boys.”
“I have a firm recollection of seeing boys lined up outside rooms at many of these parties waiting for their ‘turn’ with a girl inside the room. These boys included Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh,” Swetnick said.
She also said in her affidavit sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee that in approximately 1982 “I became the victim of one of these ‘gang’ or ‘train’ rapes where Mark Judge and Brett Kavanaugh were present.”
I’ve mentioned that I was ‘rushed’ by a fraternity once upon a time. It was a whole house packed full of these guys, so I can believe it.
You mean guys don’t join frats for their warm companionship and sing-a-longs?
That is quite horrible, to say the least. The described behaviour is evidently not a “youth’s mistake”, it is premeditated and planned and repeated with full knowledge that it is morally wrong.
I find it outrageous that conservative Republicans are rejecting all of these allegations of sexual improprieties and assaults against Kavanaugh, yet swallow without thinking all of the claims of miracles and whatnot in the New Testament, which they deem as reliable testimony. Hey, these allegations are also testimonies, so why aren’t they being seriously considered?
I’ve certainly never encountered anyone like this, and I’ve taught boys of this age for years. Though I see no reason to disbelieve it, given how many witnesses there are in this case. Very disturbing. Very disturbing indeed.
Premeditated gang rape and/or sexual assault of some kind. Premeditated. Planned. A pattern of behavior.
Worth noting that if she lied in a sworn affidavit she’s subject to perjury charges, and would probably lose her security clearances and therefore her government career.
busterggi@1:
My recollection was that, when justifying their existence in public, frats always pushed hard on the “we do lots of charity work!” angle. But privately, I never heard one frat guy cite that as a reason he joined; it was always the usual litany of parties, girls, and an instant pack of loyal bros.
That last bit was probably as much of a turn-off to me as anything else. I kind of need to get to know someone a bit before I consider them a friend. Whether it was team sports, or dorm floors, or any other grouping, I’ve never been comfortable pretending that these 20 or so strangers who I was more or less randomly assigned to are now my new best buds for life.
This sort of thing makes me glad I never joined a fraternity.
I witnessed exactly what Ms Swetnick describes, at a Brown University frat house party: both spiking the punch and the line outside the door. It was shocking and monstrous, to say the least.
I never joined a fraternity or witnessed anything like that, even though I’ve been to some pretty wild parties, especially as a musician. I heard about stuff like that in college, though. But this Kavanaugh bit was in high school.
Not that this sort of thing doesn’t happen in frats, but these parties happened when they were all in high school.
@10 and @11,
Yes, but the second accuser (Ramirez) alleged an incident during Kavanaugh’s time at Yale, where he was a fraternity member.
And I took PZ’s point to be not that being in frat caused the behavior, but rather that these kind of men did (and do) exist, as his own encounters with frat members taught him.
@ #6
If Trump has anything to do with it, that’s all going to happen anyway.
Latest? Poor word choice. We are now on #4. Need a better numbering system.
-not Michael Barton.
Oh I know they exist. I hope K gets booted. But even if he does, who’s next?
My first (now ex-) husband was a former frat guy. I learned the phrase “pulling a train” from him. That would have been in the 70s. Of course when I married him I didn’t think he had participated in any such events. That said, he didn’t call the police either. And in my youthful inexperience & ignorance of frat/sorority life I wasn’t completely sure it was ‘rape’, since the girl had chosen to drink. But then, that is how we were all raised in those days.
elite private prep school?
so this IS how our “betters” our future leaders are raised and educated? and they complain about MS13.
I hope he gets the appointment and gets all kinds of attention may he can go and visit Cosby.
uncle frogy
maybe
Two piss easy predictions everyone made:
1) More accusations will come (already come true but probably there is even more)
And everyday we will realize how much of a horrible person this Kavanaugh is.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/24/business/brett-kavanaugh-yearbook-renate.html
2) Republicans will confirm him anyways (soon).
“It was a whole house packed full of these guys, so I can believe it.”
Believe that she’s describing Brett Kavanaugh, specifically? Why?
Republicans will confirm Kavanaugh ?
The US are very hard to understand.
Would that not trigger riots ?
Riots? No, no riots. The best one can hope for is that a few more people come out to vote.
When I attended university I was in my radical individualist Randroid phase and looked down through my nostrils at Greek life as a bunch of lemmings drawn to lame collectivist pursuits and subverting their integrity to the dubious goals of the dimwitted group. I may have kicked Ayn to the curbed since then, but my impression of Greek life remains. Odd.
Ok, so here we have a woman who witnesssed many times other women being drugged and gang-raped. And she saw no problem with this, and she continued going to these rape parties, until it happened to her.
Am I the only one to find this behaviour unexcusable, making her an actual accomplice of the rapings?
An accomplice? So, she should be prosecuted for her own rape?
No, for the other ones. And I’m not saying she’s legally guilty of something, but for sure she’s from a moral point of view.
She saw, she said nothing, multiple times.
I don’t know you, but should I see a row of guys raping a woman I’d be calling the cops immediatly.
angela78, nah, many other authoritarians and regressive people share your opinion.
cf. #WhyIDidntReport
OTOH, it’s good that you believe her. Right?
Long ago I was approached by frat rats trying to get me to join and I immediately noticed two things:
1. They were academically disinclined and just plain stupid, bragging that by joining their frat I would be privileged to get access all of the midterm and finals test question answers that they kept files on. They claimed that the profs were lazy and rarely changed their exam questions. This could have been true, but hardly a justifiable reason for cheating.
2. Party, party, party seemed to be the main reason for their entire existence (I avoid all parties at all costs).
I managed to leave out a most important third thing: “pulling the train” was regarded as a “normal” activity within the fraternity, and they even paid some of the girls for that “service”. Sometimes even bragging about how ugly the girl was that she should wear a bag over her head. For some reason not one of those things ever appealed to me.
Gee, weird how angela78 has gone all quiet.
:)
@John Morales 27 – 28
The value of an opinion does not lie in who holds it, but on the facts and the logic it’s based on.
So if you disagree don’t rely on authority, say why for you it’s not horrible to see other girls raped and drugged and tell nothing, multiple times.
The fact that she too was raped later on does not excuses her behaviour. Or do you think that being raped gives you free ticket for being a nasty, selfish person?
angela78,
You’re confusing witnessing something with being an accomplice in that thing.
Suppose I see someone stealing things from cars parked on the street on a regular basis and then a month later that person steals something from my car, explain why that makes me an accomplice or why that means if I report the crime that happened against my car it shouldn’t be taken seriously.
angela78, my motivational skills are only mediocre, but sufficient.
Or why battered wives stay in an abusive relationship. Or why child brides don’t run away.
Because they’re victims, victimised. Not victimisers.
(You obs didn’t look at that tag, did ya? Plenty of info there)
Um, however bad she was in your estimation, are not the perpetrators worse?
(And why you single her out instead of her peers, I dunno. Because she is brave enough to speak up, unlike them, she is to be specially excoriated?)
—
You can’t get away from the fact that to condemn her as you have, you must accept her testimony. Deal with that, if you dare.
[apropos]
https://www.vox.com/culture/2018/9/27/17906644/sixteen-candles-rape-culture-1980s-brett-kavanaugh
and for you, angela78:
https://www.google.com/search?q=%23WhyIDidntReport
Awww, “angela78” is touchingly naïve about the police force’s reaction to privileged white frat boys being accused of rape.
Using Angela78’s nonreasoning, every single person at those parties was an accomplice.
Except those who were both accomplices and perpetrators.
If “pulling a train” was common and happened over and over, a lot of people might have assumed this was normal and accepted behavior in the privileged rich white subculture.
1. These are young adults being exposed to real life for the first time. There is a lot they don’t immediately know.
Times have changed. Consciousness has been raised by those feminists, feminazis, uppity women, and others that the misogynists deeply seriously hate.
After a lot of high profile gang rape cases by college sports teams among others, most (I hope anyway) people know enough to watch for and watch out for women who are drunk or drugged enough to be vulnerable to sexual abuse. Women don’t leave women behind.
Brett Kavanaugh and his band of rich, white privileged dudebros are just now finding out that the times have changed a few decades later than the rest of us.
I do have to say, that this Georgetown Prep HS and Yale college fraternity culture is something I might have heard about but nothing I ever actually saw in college.
It’s alien and disturbing. Xpost from a Dispatches thread a day ago.
I won’t say I haven’t heard of this sort of thing but I never actually was at a party like that in college.
.1. Which is saying a lot.
My university was a party school. What can I say, it was the 70’s and most universities were.
And, I went to at the very least my share of parties, too many probably.
.2. They weren’t all that sedate but I never saw anyone get sexually assaulted or any sort of attempts at such.
.3. Might be because our scene was peace, love, and rock and roll and that sort of thing didn’t fit in very well.
.4. Or who knows, maybe I just didn’t run with the “Right” (meaning wrong) crowd.
What is for sure is that I would not have liked or trusted Brett Kavanaugh and his friends or wanted to be around them.
@33 Saad
If you see a thief stealing multiple times, you know him, you know that he will do it again and you do not report him then for sure you are morally his accomplice.
When in the end he steals from you and you go and report the theft, you should be taken seriously and the theft punished. But you are still a nasty person who let other people have their car stolen.
@34 Morales
Swetnick didn’t become a victim until later. She first watched other girls being gangraped and drugged, doing nothing, and only later on, when it happened to her, did she become a victim. Your problem is mainly with logic, not with communication.
Where did I write that she is worse than Kavanaugh, or that he’s not guilty, or that her rape was not a terrible thing? You still have issues with understanding.
@37 Raven
Either this behaviour was considered acceptable by Swetnick at that time, or not. If it was (I can’t see how), then she cannot complaint about it, if it wasn’t then she didn’t give a shit until it happened to her, so she’s a horrible person.
This isn’t true at all. You are wrong.
She was somewhere around 18-20 at the time.
She simply might not have known one way or the other.
As was true of the other young people at those parties.
People aren’t born knowing everything. They learn things as they grow up.
It’s obvious that Swetnick and the others hadn’t really thought through what was happening.
Using your nonreasoning again, Julie Swetnick and everyone at that party was and is a horrrible person.
Or just young, clueless, and confused.
There is a huge difference between being a young, clueless, confused observer and being an active gang rapist of young women drunk and drugged to the point of unconsciousness.
The fact that Angela78 can’t figure this out says a lot about her.
There is at least one horrible person on this very thread.
It’s obvious that angela78 is a horrible person.
.1. She is an apologist for serial gang rapists.
.2. This is just a derail.
Whether Julie Swetnick is a guilty accomplice (she isn’t) or a hapless bystander has no bearing on the subject of the thread.
Is Brett Kavanaugh a drunk with a history of raping drunk and drugged women or not?
Does such a man have any business being a Supreme Court judge?
Julie Swetnick isn’t the one being investigated for a Supreme Court appointment.
Julie Swenick isn’t being accused of being a rapist.
Brett Kavanaugh is though.
@raven
It’s so frustrating when people like you go in “man=bad, woman=right” mode, and in doing so actually harm what they should fight for.
We are talking about rape here: rape, and rape culture. Swetnick, from her own words and from your silly attempts to defend her, was neck-deep in rape culture. She accepted other women being gangraped as something normal, or at least not so bad to require actions on her side. This is exactly why rape is so hard to fight.
What would you say of a man in the same situation? A guy that stands looking to a girl being raped, doing nothing? He’ “confused”, maybe he’s only 20, he ” hadn’t really thought through what was happening”? I say the fuck, he’s an accomplice of the rape, and he contributed to avoidable suffering for the women raped.
(I don’t know where you live, but in my country taking no action when someone is being physically hurt is actually a crime in itself, unless you do it to avoid direct physical damage to you)
Angela78,
Don’t you think there is a difference between demanding behavior that is decent and demanding behavior that is exceptionally brave? I don’t think it is unreasonable to expect a person–even a teenage boy–to respect the bodily autonomy of other people.
On the other hand, while it may be desirable, I don’t think it is reasonable to expect an adolescent girl to take such a bold stand in the face of:
1) Peer pressure.
2) Incomplete knowledge of what was going on behind closed doors
3) Threats of ostracism or worse.
A person who is not directly involved and does not take action can rationalize his or her actions by saying that someone else will do it or that they don’t know enough or that it isn’t their business. Not all humans are brave. No human is brave all the time.
@43a_ray_in_dilbert_space
I cannot agree with you. You are right, no one can expect “exceptionally brave” behaviour from anyone. But we are not talking about this, here. Swetnick went to lot of parties, she was not threatened in any way, she saw girls being raped. She said nothing, she continued going to these parties: I cannot find excuses for this. And she was 20, not 14: if at 20 you cannot be held responsible of your behaviour then we can start excusing all those male idiots who behave in a sexually aggressive way.
I know that this thread is “Kavanaugh is a rapist”, and I hope I made my position on that asshole very clear. What I find wrong is that no one seems able to recognize that Swetnick’s behaviour is part of the problem, and a very relevant part.
They say that “No means no”, and it’s true: but I add that “I don’t care, go on with it as soon as it’s not to me” also mean “I don’t care, go on with it as soon as it’s not to me”.
angela78:
So, you acknowledge she is a victim. And you don’t think that the milieu within which she was embedded victimised such as her, until and unless she was personally raped.
But sure, tell me more about my problem with logic.
So, you do think Kavanaugh is worse, and that he’s guilty, and that her rape is a terrible thing.
And therefore, on that basis, your entire point was that she should therefore be prosecuted because she’s blameworthy in being complicit, in your view. Focus on her, seek to punish her for speaking out. Right.
(Your problem is that I don’t have issues with understanding you)
@John morales
Sorry, I hadn’t understood.Just remember to take your pills regularly, dont’ get too excited, be nice to those people clad in white around you and everything will be ok.
<smirk>
Got your number.
PS raven.
Um. It’s a login ID, nothing more. Not even (though presumably) necessarily presenting as a woman. FWTW.