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The woman at the center of a sexual assault scandal involving Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is a Stanford University fellow scheduled to appear at a symposium next week on sexual violence and the #MeToo movement.
Professor Vanessa Tyson’s allegations, stemming from an interaction at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, and the explosive political fallout echo those of Christine Blasey Ford, another university professor living in Palo Alto, who last year accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers.
On Wednesday, Tyson issued a statement saying that the encounter caused her “deep humiliation and shame” and insisted she had no political motive.
“I am a proud Democrat,” Tyson wrote in the statement released Wednesday by her lawyers. “My only motive in speaking now is to refute Mr. Fairfax’s falsehoods and aspersions of my character, and to provide what I believe is important information for Virginians to have as they make critical decisions that involve Mr. Fairfax.”
Tyson’s Stanford colleague Jennifer Freyd told the Bay Area News Group on Tuesday that sometime last fall, at the start of their fellowship program, Tyson told Freyd and a couple of other colleagues about the 2004 encounter at the Boston convention. Freyd doesn’t remember whether Tyson named Fairfax, but said that she spoke about it while “illustrating a concept” they were discussing about sexual violence.
“It was not that remarkable in that many times I’ve sat with colleagues and they talked about being victimized and how it fits in with what we are talking about,” said Freyd, a University of Oregon psychology professor who is part of the same Stanford behavioral sciences fellowship program with Tyson.
Like Kavanaugh, Fairfax has denied the allegations. On Monday, he told reporters the encounter was consensual and that he was the victim of a “smear campaign.”
Fairfax was little known outside Virginia until the weekend, when it began to appear Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam might have to resign in a racial scandal, elevating Fairfax to the top office.
Although Tyson had not personally gone public with her account until Wednesday, she told Freyd in an email Tuesday that it was OK for this publication to identify her because “her name is public now” after she was identified in a conservative blog on Sunday.
“She’s super smart and thoughtful. I’ve experienced her as a person of enormous integrity, courage and authenticity,” Freyd said. Both are scheduled to be part of a Stanford symposium on Feb. 12 called “Betrayal and Courage in the Age of #MeToo.”
The latest scandal has led to an outcry among conservatives, calling the media and Democrats guilty of a double standard in its treatment of Democrats and Republicans accused of sexual assault or harassment.
Tyson, who earned an undergraduate degree from Princeton and a PhD from the University of Chicago, is an associate professor of politics at Scripps College in Southern California.
At Stanford, she is researching the political discourse surrounding sexual assault and the unique identities of sexual assault survivors. She has been a longtime advocate for sexual violence prevention and was a founding member of the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center Survivor Speakers’ Bureau, according to her biography on Stanford’s website.
In her statement, Tyson described the July 28, 2004, encounter when both were working at the convention.
“Mr. Fairfax suggested that I get some fresh air by accompanying him on a quick errand to retrieve documents from his room in a nearby hotel,” she wrote. “Given our interactions up to that time, I had no reason to feel threatened and agreed to walk with him to his hotel.”
As they stood in the entryway of his room, he kissed her. “Although surprised by his advance, it was not unwelcome and I kissed him back.”
But what started as “consensual kissing quickly turned into sexual assault,” she wrote. “Mr. Fairfax put his hand behind my neck and forcefully pushed my head towards his crotch” where she was surprised he had unzipped his pants. He forced himself on her, she said.
“Utterly shocked and terrified, I tried to move my head away, but could not because his hand was holding down my neck and he was much stronger than me,” she wrote. “As I cried and gagged, Mr. Fairfax forced me to perform oral sex on him. I cannot believe, given my obvious distress, that Mr. Fairfax thought this forced sexual act was consensual.”
She avoided him at the convention after that and never spoke to him again, she said.
“I did not speak about it for years and I (like most survivors) suppressed those memories and emotions as a necessary means to continue my studies and to pursue my goal of building a successful career as an academic.”
The encounter was particularly degrading, she said, because she regularly volunteered at a rape crisis center.
When she learned Fairfax was elected lieutenant governor of Virginia in the fall of 2017, during the height of the #MeToo movement, she contacted the Washington Post. After failing to corroborate her story, in part because she didn’t tell anyone at the time, the newspaper didn’t publish the story.
Tyson’s allegations surfaced Sunday after a conservative website, Big League Politics, wrote a story based on a private, cryptic Facebook post from Tyson, in which she laments that a man who attacked her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention was a statewide officer holder “3000 miles away” and was likely to get a “VERY BIG” promotion. That led to Fairfax’s denial Monday and assertion that the Washington Post had vetted her story a year ago and decided against running it.
— Justin Fairfax (@FairfaxJustin) February 4, 2019
His office went so far as to claim that the Post didn’t run the story because of “red flags” and “inconsistencies” in her story. Later Monday, the Washington Post denied that reporters found red flags, instead saying they found no similar complaints against Fairfax, and that they couldn’t corroborate her account in part because she had not told anyone at the time what happened.
Fairfax told reporters that Tyson’s allegations are “a complete smear” and “completely political.”
Freyd said the fact that Fairfax is attacking Tyson and making himself the victim is a classic — and often successful — strategy frequently used by men involved in sexual scandals regardless of political party, including Kavanaugh, President Clinton, President Trump and Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment by Anita Hill in 1991. Freyd calls this strategy “DARVO” — deny, attack and reverse the victim and the offender.
“People use this strategy because it’s effective at silencing truth-tellers,” Freyd said, and more likely leads victims to blame themselves.
In a statement, his office said that Fairfax “has an outstanding and well-earned reputation for treating people with dignity and respect. He has never assaulted anyone — ever — in any way, shape or form.”
But Virginia’s Democratic Party was taking a measured approach to the growing controversy.
DEMOCRATIC PARTY OF VIRGINIA STATEMENT: "All allegations of sexual assault deserve to be taken with profound gravity. We will continue to evaluate the situation regarding Lieutenant Governor Fairfax." pic.twitter.com/ae39YSXi69
— Virginia Democrats (@vademocrats) February 5, 2019
“All allegations of sexual assault deserve to be taken with profound gravity,’’ the party said in a statement Tuesday. “We will continue to evaluate the situation regarding Lieutenant Governor Fairfax.”
