The FBI has investigated allegations of sexual assault and misconduct dating back to the 1980s against Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice earlier this month.

For women who came of age in the ’80s, it’s bringing back some painful memories about the prevalence of sexual assault and how survivors weren’t always believed or supported when they came forward.

Business Insider interviewed three people who shared their recollections of attending Yale University at the same time as Kavanaugh and Deborah Ramirez, a former classmate who has accused him of sexual misconduct.

The controversy around allegations of sexual misconduct and assault against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who was confirmed to the nation’s highest court earlier this month, dominated the headlines for weeks.

For many women who came of age and went to college in the 1980s, it’s bringing back some painful memories of their own experiences with sexual assault – and of not always being supported in coming forward.

Deborah Ramirez, one of Kavanaugh’s classmates in Yale University’s Class of 1987, has accused him of exposing himself to her at a party during their freshman year in the fall of 1983. The FBI investigated her allegation as part of a supplemental background check into Kavanaugh.

Business Insider interviewed three people who attended Yale in the ’80s. They said that sexual assault and the stigma around discussing and reporting it were much bigger than the specific allegations against Kavanaugh, pervading both Yale’s campus and American culture at the time.

One of Ramirez’s acquaintances at Yale, who spoke to Business Insider on the condition of anonymity to candidly discuss the matter, said they believed Ramirez’s allegation based on their experience knowing her and given the climate at the time.

“Three words I think describe Debbie as I experienced her were guileless, genuine, and friendly. She was also shy, not attention-seeking or dramatic in any way,” the person said.

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“I just feel very strongly that Debbie did this out of a sense of duty and obligation and not out of political motivation,” they added. “If I had any way to know the actual truth, I would bet my house on it.”

According to her lawyer, Ramirez spoke to the FBI about her allegation and provided the bureau a list of witnesses who could confirm it. But a subsequent report in The New Yorker said the FBI ignored several witnesses who might be able to corroborate her story.

“Anyone who was a teen or a young woman in those days had experiences like that,” Ramirez’s friend continued. “Was it confined to Yale? In my experience, no. I think it’s taken a lot of us a long time to realize that things that occurred were misconduct. The concept of date rape, for example, was considered cutting-edge at that time.”

Julie Heller, who graduated from Yale in 1988 and also knew Ramirez, told Business Insider that while Yale wasn’t “a breeding ground” for sexual assault, in her experience, she didn’t have any reason to doubt Ramirez’s allegation or other former Yale students’ characterizations of Kavanaugh as a heavy, aggressive drinker.

“I didn’t see any bad behavior by [Kavanaugh] personally, but it’s hard for me to imagine all the things people are saying aren’t true,” she said. “I knew many people who drank at Yale, and most of them didn’t get belligerent or sexually assault anyone.”

In the wake of the Kavanaugh controversy, many survivors of sexual assault have gone public with their stories of why they didn’t initially report their assaults – and in many cases, of being revictimized or shamed when they did.

Heller said she believed that many survivors of sexual assault in the early ’80s didn’t report them because she and her peers “didn’t have the verbiage” to describe instances of assault that weren’t rape.

She said that when she was assaulted after a party during her freshman year, she didn’t believe that what happened was serious enough to bring to the police.

“I didn’t go to the police because I didn’t think what had happened to me rose to the level of what a police officer would handle,” she said, adding, “I thought to myself, ‘Well, at least I wasn’t raped.'”

‘Yale’s apparatus was there to protect Yale’

Foto: Yale fans at a football game against Harvard at Harvard Stadium in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in November 1988.sourceJon Chase/AP

Beth Almore, a schoolteacher in Virginia who also graduated from Yale in 1988, told Business Insider that, in her experience, since the Yale administration didn’t do enough to address sexual assault on campus, women had to take their safety into their own hands.

“During my freshman year, a group of women had made flyers on how to keep yourself safe from sexual assault on the Yale campus and distributed them around the dining halls, which was the best way to reach people before cellphones,” she recalled. “It named frats you shouldn’t go to, and what is likely to happen if you go to certain parties on campus, and which ones to avoid.”

Almore remembered Yale at the time as being “saturated in alcohol,” with parties every night of the week and both hard alcohol and drugs freely available. She also recalled that despite the stigma around discussing it, “sexual assault was more common than it should have been.”

“Everywhere we went, we had to worry about our safety,” she said.

Heller said that her experience showed that sexual assault could and did happen even to people who took extra precautions to ensure their safety on campus.

“He offered to walk me home from a party when it was late and I knew I shouldn’t be walking by myself,” she said of her assailant. “The ironic thing was that accepting a walk back to my dorm, which seemed like the smart thing to do, is actually what resulted in my getting assaulted.”

Heller remembered feeling “demoralized” when she went through the process of reporting her assault to Yale’s administration.

“I started to go through Yale’s grievance process, which at the time was incredibly demoralizing. I did not feel supported at all,” Heller recalled. “The professor I met with told me that since it was a ‘he said, she said’ situation, he and I could each bring three witnesses to back up our stories to the panel, but ultimately the worst thing that might happen to him was being put on academic probation.”

She added: “It was mind-blowing to me. I was so traumatized, and hearing that completely demoralized and revictimized me. So I didn’t pursue it.”

Almore said she and her friends not only had protection plans for parties, but made a pact to go straight to the New Haven police and not Yale if they were victims of a violent crime.

“Yale’s apparatus was there to protect Yale and Yale’s reputation, and to limit their own liability,” she said.

She added that while she didn’t have direct experience with Yale’s police, she recalled based on the experiences of many of her peers when she was a student that “women, or anyone who went to the [Yale] police with any type of reporting, not just potential sex crimes, felt unheard, silenced, or ignored.”

A representative for Yale said that while they could not comment on specific students’ experiences and memories, “the policies, procedures, and resources we have in place today reflect a great deal of experience, research, consultation, and input from our community, including our students.”

“As our response to sexual misconduct continues to evolve, we are committed to being a community free of sexual misconduct and providing resources and support that encourage everyone with a concern or complaint to come forward,” the representative added.