Justin Fairfax denies the allegation and says ‘a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A second woman has come forward to accuse the Virginia lieutenant governor, Justin Fairfax, of sexual assault, plunging the state’s politics into further chaos and capping a week of sudden turmoil.

The Virginia state government has now seen all three of its top statewide elected leaders facing scandal. Both Governor Ralph Northam and the state attorney general, Mark Herring, have admitted to wearing blackface while Fairfax now faces two allegations of sexual assault.

In a statement, Nancy Erika Smith, the attorney for Meredith Watson, a college classmate of Fairfax, said “she was raped by Justin Fairfax in 2000, while they were both students at Duke University. Mr Fairfax’s attack was premeditated and aggressive. The two were friends but never dated or had any romantic relationship.”

The statement said that Watson is not seeking financial damages, but is simply requesting that Fairfax resign from office.

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Within minutes, the former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe called on Fairfax to resign as well. “The allegations against Justin Fairfax are serious and credible. It is clear to me that he can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia as Lieutenant Governor. I call for his immediate resignation,” said McAuliffe on Twitter.

His call to resign was joined by Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton, a Democrat representing suburbs in northern Virginia as well as by several 2020 presidential candidates including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York.

In a statement, Fairfax said: “I deny this latest unsubstantiated allegation. It is demonstrably false. I have never ever forced myself on anyone ever.” He went on to say that “a vicious and coordinated smear campaign is being orchestrated against me”.

Watson is the second woman to accuse Fairfax of sexual assault following Vanessa Tyson, a college professor who said that he forced her to perform oral sex in 2004 in a hotel room at the Democratic national Convention. Fairfax has insisted that the encounter was consensual.

Less than a week ago Fairfax had been tipped to become the next governor of Virginia after Northam faced near universal calls to resign after it emerged that there was a racist picture on his medical school yearbook page. Northam eventually said that he didn’t appear in the picture, which featured one man in blackface and a second in a Ku Klux Klan hood. But he admitted to reporters that he wore blackface in a 1984 Michael Jackson dance contest.

Northam has ignored calls to step down and he told staffers earlier on Friday in a meeting that he would not resign from office.

Shortly afterwards, a rightwing website published a claim that Fairfax sexually assaulted Tyson. The Virginia lieutenant governor denied the claim in a late-night tweet.

Virginia’s crisis goes from bad to worse as scandals engulf top three Democrats Read more

Herring, the third-ranking elected official in Virginia, apologised for wearing blackface as a 19-year-old at a college party and said “the shame of that moment has haunted me for decades”.

The scandals have not left Virginia’s Republican party untouched. On Thursday local press reported the Republican senate majority leader, Tommy Norment, had been the managing editor of a 1968 yearbook containing several photos of students posing in blackface and racist slurs that referred to African Americans, Jews and Asians.

The scandals come as Virginia Democrats appeared poised to take control of the general assembly in the increasingly Democratic state in November’s off-year elections for the first time in over two decades.