Speaking Truth to Power (21 page)

Senator Alan Cranston of California summed up the danger of Senator Simpson’s dismissive assessment of my claims in the debate on the postponement of the hearing:

Needless to say, Simpson’s views on “real harassment” did not suggest that he was approaching the hearing with anything like an open mind. And if there was any doubt on that score, his reference to my claim on the second day of the hearing as “sexual harassment crap” extinguished it. Simpson’s statement played over and over in my mind during the next few days. I contemplated the prospect of experiencing “real harassment.” The statement became self-fulfilling—almost a call for the Republican senators to sink to the level of Simpson’s vision of the proceeding. Simpson set the tone for the hearing and his colleagues followed him. Ironically, their view of “real harassment” Washington style was quite similar to what many women who complain about sexual harassment in the workplace experience as well.

T
uesday, October 8, 1991, began early with an interview by the
Today
show’s Katie Couric. Even after the ABC and CBS interviews of the day before, the experience of being broadcast around the country lacked a sense of reality for me. Nevertheless, I approached the interview in the same way that I had approached my contacts with Senate staffers. I was simply trying to communicate information that was
relevant to the process. I had no established agenda, and I expected to be treated fairly and honestly.

Just before questioning me, Couric had questioned Senator Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, a former prosecutor and a member of the Judiciary Committee, who remarked that he had “looked Judge Thomas in the eye and questioned him. He denied these charges. Given the lateness of the allegation, the absence of any touching or intimidation, and the fact that she moved with him from one agency to another, I felt I had done my duty and was satisfied with his responses.” I told Ms. Couric that Specter had not bothered to look
me
in the eye and that he had done nothing to follow up on my statement personally. With the exception of Senator Simon, whose call had come in just before the leak, no one, not even the chairman of the committee, had bothered to talk to me.

Senator Specter was the third member of the “fact-finding” tribunal, after Senators DeConcini and Simpson, to declare that he did not believe my statement about Thomas’ behavior.

Specter claimed that he had reached his conclusion about my claim when Thomas looked him in the eye and denied the allegation. To consider this method in perhaps the most positive light, Specter was demonstrating that he was sufficiently self-impressed to believe that Thomas could not mislead him and that he, Specter, would know if Thomas tried. A more cynical interpretation suggests subterfuge: by posing the question to Thomas, Specter gave the appearance of an inquiry but was in fact playing a game whose outcome he already knew.

Specter’s readiness to rely on the word of the very man accused of harassment seems inconsistent with the instincts he must have had as a former prosecutor, yet it is typical of cases involving sexual misconduct. Women who accuse men, particularly powerful men, of harassment are often confronted with the reality of the men’s sense that they are more important than women, as a group. Consequently, the man’s word is often lent more credence than that of his accuser or even observers. An example that has received some media attention springs to mind.

In January 1990, Edward A. Brennan, chair of the board of the United Way of Americans, received unsigned letters on UWA stationery
accusing UWA President William Aramony of having an illicit sexual affair with a teenager and of misusing UWA funds. Shortly thereafter, Brennan met with the sixty-three-year-old Aramony, who told him that the allegations were unfounded. Brennan was convinced of Aramony’s truthfulness and in turn convinced the board. Neither Brennan nor the board called for any further independent inquiry, and Aramony continued as UWA president until his resignation in 1992.

However, in September 1994, in a 182-page indictment, a grand jury charged that Aramony had diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars from UWA before he left the organization, and that he had used some of the misappropriated funds to support a relationship with a young woman who was seventeen years old when their affair began. The indictment also included charges of sexual harassment stemming from accusations that Aramony told certain female employees that they would “get nowhere in UWA” if they rejected his sexual advances.

Brennan, like Senator Specter, had an impressive record. While he headed the UWA board, he was also chair of Sears, Roebuck. Yet neither Brennan nor Specter is so talented that he is beyond being deluded by other intelligent or powerful men. Moreover, neither seemed to appreciate the high stakes involved in the particular situation or the lengths the accused would go to defend himself. In both cases the stakes involved placing or keeping an individual in a position of power and authority and preserving the trust of the public.

That otherwise very impressive men are capable of misleading friends and the public, and even of lying under oath about their sexual improprieties and poor judgment, has become all too familiar news. Ben Chavis of the NAACP lost his position as that organization’s director because the board learned of his use of NAACP funds to settle a sex discrimination and reportedly a sexual harassment claim. In the face of highly incriminating tape-recorded conversations, President Bill Clinton’s first-term secretary of HUD, Henry Cisneros, is under investigation to determine whether he lied to the Federal Bureau of Investigation regarding “conscience money” he paid to a woman with whom he had formerly been romantically involved.

Two lessons can be gleaned from these situations. Though not all men misrepresent such episodes of their lives, many are evidently capable of doing so. What is even more apparent is that it is often impossible, particularly with a cursory inquiry that involves questioning only the person accused of the misconduct, to determine the truth of a matter with certainty.

But beyond the initial assessment of the situation in which each found himself, parallels between Mr. Brennan and Senator Specter diverge. Brennan chose not to pursue his own investigation, but appears to have cooperated with a grand jury conducting an independent investigation of the charges against Aramony. Specter, on the other hand, approached the “fact-finding” hearing already sure of his own conclusion. Similarly, in many cases involving sexual harassment, employers marshal their efforts behind a conclusion that charges are false without pursuing a genuine investigation or inquiry beyond taking the word of the alleged harasser. In addition to doing little to stop an individual from repeating unwelcome behavior, this sends a signal to others, potential harassers and victims alike, that the behavior is protected. Moreover, institutionally, the person bringing the claim becomes the party in the wrong. These are dangerous messages to convey to the public when, even by conservative estimates, no fewer than 40 percent of workingwomen will experience sexual harassment.

When women began to say that the senators “just don’t get it,” they meant among other things that they did not understand the impact their comments regarding me had on
all
women’s claims of sexual harassment. Clearly, they were so intent on confirming Thomas that they were willing to sacrifice not only me but other women as well.

According to accounts of the hearing, the Republicans designated Specter “chief prosecutor” in an event the administration viewed as “The People v. Anita Hill.” Perhaps Specter was chosen because of his prosecutorial skills and because he went into the hearing convinced that I was not telling the truth. Accounts suggest that he himself had a political stake in destroying me as a credible witness, now seeking the favor of conservatives who’d been outraged by his opposition to the nomination
of Judge Robert Bork and his generally liberal position on “women’s issues.” All of which suggests that Specter had no intention of participating impartially in a fact-finding hearing. His conduct during the hearing only confirmed this. And Senator Cranston’s message was lost on Arlen Specter as he and his Republican colleagues planned their strategy for the hearing.

After the
Today
interview on Tuesday morning, I tried to keep to my teaching schedule and to ignore the discussions taking place in Washington. I soon concluded that I had carved out an impossible task for myself. Though campus security had to escort me through the press barrage on my way to class and later that evening to my home, I did meet with my class that afternoon. It was important that I do so for two reasons, one altruistic, one selfish. First, I wanted my students to be disturbed as little as possible. Second, the classroom was the one place where my life still felt real to me; outside, it was all press conferences and television and newspaper interviews.

The two parts of my life came together on Tuesday afternoon. Though my students and I didn’t discuss the day’s events in class, they were on our minds. And as I concluded my introduction of the Material on Warranties in Contracts for Sales of Goods, Ovetta Vermillion interrupted my lecture to let me know that the Senate had voted unanimously to postpone the confirmation vote on Thomas and hold a hearing on my claim. I finished my lecture.

Afterward, I attended my second press conference. This time, following my own instincts, I declined to answer any questions except to say that I would cooperate with the committee and preferred that the matter be resolved in the hearing. To a disappointed press, anxious to get started on their own analysis of the content of my charges, I refused to say more. This was not a matter to be tried in the media and reduced to twenty-second sound bites.

The members of the Senate, however, thought differently. In addition to Senator Specter, who had concluded that no harassment had taken place and that my statement must therefore be false, Specter’s colleague
John Danforth, Thomas’ friend and mentor, stated that he had asked his friend if the allegations were true and that he believed Thomas’ denial.

Earlier that afternoon a group of women legislators from the House side, including Representatives Patricia Schroeder of Colorado, Eleanor Holmes Norton of the District of Columbia, Barbara Boxer of California, and Louise Slaughter of New York, appeared at the regular luncheon of the Democratic senators. In a scene reminiscent of
The Wizard of Oz
, in which Dorothy Gale and her friends seek an audience with the Wizard and are turned away at the door, the congresswomen were told to go away and come back later, when Senator Mitchell had finished his dessert. In the meeting that followed, Mitchell advised the women to focus on Democrats like David Boren of Oklahoma, who had pledged to vote for Thomas, and try to enlist their support for a delay. Mitchell himself still seemed to want to avoid an active role in addressing this increasingly volatile issue. His reluctance would later provoke one woman to observe, “So much power and so little leadership.”

T
he sentiments expressed in the senators’ comments fell far short of demonstrating any responsibility to the confirmation process or to the upholding of the law. Instead Senator Orrin Hatch attacked the law governing sexual harassment itself, saying that it is “so broad that a person can accuse someone at any time and ruin their reputation.”

The scope of the law of sexual harassment was alternately exaggerated and reduced by the senators in the days before the second round of the hearing. In contrast to Specter, who in effect limited the law to sexual assault or battery when he cited “the absence of any touching or intimidation” as a reason for disregarding my claim, Hatch perpetuated the idea that the law gives anyone license to challenge an individual’s reputation on virtually any grounds.

Senator Hatch’s baseless assessments tapped into a growing sentiment of distrust of civil rights laws. The law governing sexual harassment, found in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, is undoubtedly the law to which he was referring. The Supreme Court recognized sexual harassment claims as valid in 1986, and the EEOC has promulgated specific guidelines for the investigation and evaluation of harassment claims. Federal law provides sanctions against a party who files a frivolous lawsuit. Statistically, the rate of frivolous sexual harassment claims is the same as for other types of claims: only about 3 percent. When investigators dismiss
harassment complaints after a thorough investigation, they most often do so because of insufficient information as opposed to a conclusion that no harassment existed or that the claim was unfounded.

Hatch’s statement harks back to an oft-quoted and equally erroneous statement made by an English judge who said that an accusation of rape is easy to make but difficult to disprove. A litany of facts about the crime of rape shows the total lack of merit in that claim. Many women who are victims of rape or sexual assault do not even discuss the matter with close friends because of the social stigma attached to being raped. Only one of ten rapes that occurs in this country is reported to law officials, making rape the most underreported crime. Convictions in rape trials are the most difficult to obtain of all criminal convictions, and sentencings for sex crimes the most lenient among sentencing for violent crimes. In 1995 a Pennsylvania court found that the prosecution had not proved the elements of rape, though it successfully showed that an intruder had broken into the complainant’s home, thrown her to the bed, and assaulted her. The complainant resisted throughout, constantly saying, “No.” The court based its findings of insufficient evidence on the fact that the assailant did not force the act upon her with a gun or a knife. In 1990 the jury acquitted two of five defendants in a notorious New York case involving the sexual assault of a woman whose assailants drugged her during the encounter. One juror, polled after the verdict, explained that his vote for acquittal was based on his belief that the nineteen-year-old plaintiff was a “scorned woman.”