Screengrab from https://youtu.be/pJlxeysHm7k

Yesterday, as I posted a little earlier today, the website BigLeaguePolitics.com reported on an allegation of sexual assault made against Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax by a former acquaintance who is now a college professor.

CREDIT: BigLeaguePolitics.com https://bigleaguepolitics.com/stanford-fellow-hints-at-possible-justin-fairfax-sex-assault/

Fairfax’s office quickly denied the story and began talking major smack about suing people if they continued to talk about it.

The incident did reveal the Washington Post had been aware of the allegation, investigated it, and because of, as Fairfax says, “significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegations,” elected to not publish the story.

Now the Washington Post has responded. I suppose they were willing to cop to hiding the story from the public but claiming they had refuted the story was too much, even for them.

What was the allegation?

The woman and Fairfax first met in Boston at the 2004 Democratic national convention. During a conversation, the two realized they had a mutual friend. It was that commonality, she recalled, that put her at ease enough that on the afternoon Fairfax asked her to walk with him to his hotel room to pick up some papers, she thought nothing of joining him.

…

Fairfax (D), who was not married at the time, has denied her account through his attorneys and described the encounter as consensual. The woman described a sexual encounter that began with consensual kissing and ended with a forced act that left her crying and shaken. She said Fairfax guided her to the bed, where they continued kissing, and then at one point she realized she could not move her neck. She said Fairfax used his strength to force her to perform oral sex.

In Fairfax’s statement, he claims the Post investigated and discounted the allegations. The Post says otherwise.

The woman approached The Post after Fairfax won election in November 2017 and before he was inaugurated in January 2018, saying she felt like she had an obligation to speak out.

…

Fairfax and the woman told different versions of what happened in the hotel room with no one else present. The Washington Post could not find anyone who could corroborate either version. The Post did not find “significant red flags and inconsistencies within the allegations,” as the Fairfax statement incorrectly said.

…

The Washington Post, in phone calls to people who knew Fairfax from college, law school and through political circles, found no similar complaints of sexual misconduct against him. Without that, or the ability to corroborate the woman’s account — in part because she had not told anyone what happened — The Washington Post did not run a story. She said she never told anyone about what happened at the time or in the years that followed until shortly before she approached The Post. The Post reached out to the woman again Monday and she has not returned messages. The Post generally does not name alleged victims of sexual assault without their explicit permission. One person who knew both the woman and Fairfax and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the allegations, said he felt torn when he first heard the accusations. He spoke highly of both. “It doesn’t sound like anything he would do,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like anything she would lie about.”

Hidden in the Post’s story is this nugget:

Fairfax (D), who was not married at the time, has denied her account through his attorneys and described the encounter as consensual.

Again, going back to the Kavanaugh affair, had the Washington Post used their own guidelines they wouldn’t have covered the outrageous and pathetic charges made by Christine Ford. In this case, the Post had an admission from Fairfax that he had had sex with this woman, Vanessa Tyson, and the disagreement was over his use of physical force. That, it would seem to me, rates higher than “meh” on the scale of sexual assault allegations as careers are being destroyed based on allegations where the man says he doesn’t even know the woman.

Now, as we know, it is not the seriousness of the evidence but the seriousness of the charge that determines if we have to investigate. In this case, Fairfax stands accused of what seems to be either forcible rape or its very near relation. What will Virginia’s law enforcement establishment do about this?

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