“I don’t think [Clinton’s] for women or girls. I think she’s lying, I think she said anything she can to get in the campaign and win.”

Kathy Shelton was twelve years old when she was raped by a drifter in 1975. Thomas Alfred Taylor, her attacker, served less than a year in prison thanks to his defense attorney, Hillary Clinton.

Watching Hillary paint herself as a candidate that advocates on behalf of women and children was too much for Shelton who broke her decades-long silence to speak to The Daily Mail.

WARNING: Shelton’s interview provides graphic details of her rape and is difficult to watch.

Alana Goodman reports:

‘It’s put a lot of anger back in me,’ said Shelton, now 54, in an exclusive interview at her Springdale, Arkansas, home in August. ‘Every time I see [Clinton] on TV I just want to reach in there and grab her, but I can’t do that.’ In 1975, Clinton served as the defense lawyer for Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old factory worker accused of raping Shelton after luring her to his car. Taylor pleaded down to ‘unlawful fondling of a minor’ and served less than a year in prison after Clinton was able to block the admission of forensic evidence that linked her client to the crime. In a lengthy interview with the Daily Mail Online, Shelton said Clinton is ‘lying’ when she claims to be a lifelong defender of women and girls. Shelton said Clinton accused her during the case of ‘seeking out older men’, and demanded that the 12-year-old undergo a grueling court-ordered psychiatric examination to determine whether she was ‘mentally unstable’. ‘I don’t think [Clinton’s] for women or girls. I think she’s lying, I think she said anything she can to get in the campaign and win,’ Shelton said. ‘If she was [an advocate for women and children], she wouldn’t have done that to me at 12 years old.’ While Shelton gave an anonymous interview to the Daily Beast in 2014, she said wants to start speaking out publicly, in part because ‘I think a lot of people would look at [Clinton] in a different way’ after hearing her story directly. ‘I want to speak to the world. Out there at the White House, so everyone can hear me,’ said Shelton. ‘That’s always been my thing since the anger’s built up. I want to speak out like [Clinton] does, and let the whole world hear it.’ For decades, Shelton said she had no idea that Clinton was the same woman as the lawyer who defended her rapist in 1975.

The details of Clinton’s defense are particularly disturbing:

During the case, Clinton accused the 12-year-old of ‘seek[ing] out older men’ and ‘engag[ing] in fantasizing’ in court affidavits, and later laughed while discussing aspects of the case in a recently-unearthed audiotape from the 1980s. On the audiotape, Clinton indicated that she believed Taylor, her client, was guilty, saying that his ability to pass a lie detector test ‘forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs’. She also laughed while describing how she was able to get a world-famous New York City blood expert to question the admissibility of forensic evidence that was misplaced by the crime lab after it was tested. The tape, which Shelton said discredits the notion that Clinton truly cared about protecting young girls, raises new questions that she wants to ask Clinton directly. ‘I heard you on tape laughing,’ said Shelton. ‘I just want to know, you’ve got a daughter and a grandbaby. What happens if that daughter of yours, if that would have been her [who was assaulted at age 12]?’ ‘You would have protected her. You don’t know me, so I’m a piece of crap to you,’ added Shelton, who lives in the same small northwest Arkansas town where she was raised by a single mother. ‘Who cares about me, as long as you can win your first case as an attorney?’

Shelton is hoping that speaking out will shed light on a side of Hillary often ignored. She said she always wanted to have kids, but due to the severity of the rape, doctors told her it would be very unlikely she could conceive. Shelton does not have children of her own.

Follow Kemberlee on Twitter @kemberleekaye



