I am disturbed and perplexed by Sen. Susan Collins’ vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court – not by her actual vote, but by the disingenuous and abusive statements she made on the Senate floor and later to the media. Despite her theatrics, I always assumed she would vote with her party for Kavanaugh’s confirmation. She is no moderate and could never fill Margaret Chase Smith’s shoes; that was just another fabrication she and her supporters perpetrated.

My angst rests mainly with Sen. Collins’ comment that she found the testimony of Christine Blasey Ford to be “sincere, painful and compelling,” that Dr. Ford was, “at some other time,” sexually assaulted and that “this trauma has upended her life,” but she questioned Dr. Ford’s veracity about her assailant. As Dr. Ford so aptly stated to the Senate Judiciary Committee, the assailant and experience are “seared into (her) memory.”

Survivors do not forget their attacker. As well, the experience stays with them for a lifetime. As a survivor of childhood physical abuse, I still vividly remember my attacker and the experience. While I may forget extraneous facts, I’ll never forget my alcoholic father’s angry face, his loud, screaming voice and his demonic eyes, but, most of all, his large fists that pummeled my face.

Contrary to my well-meaning friends, this is not something I can “just get over.” Sen. Collins’ invalidation of Dr. Ford’s recollection is another attack on her very essence.

Dr. Ford answered Sen. Dick Durbin that she was “100 percent” certain that Brett Kavanaugh was her assailant. Dr. Ford undeniably remembers the assault, the weight of his body, the sexual grinding, the hand over her mouth and the dreadful laughter, yet Sen. Collins sides with the alleged abuser. Sen. Collins’ comments and actions have once again traumatized the victim and rewarded the abuser. So much for Sen. Collins being a champion for women.

David Jones

Yarmouth

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