Editorial of The Times

What happened between two teenagers at a suburban Maryland house party on a night more than three decades ago? Since one of them has been identified by the other as Brett Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge who is now up for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, the Senate correctly decided to hear from Kavanaugh and his accuser next week before proceeding with his confirmation.

The accusations are detailed and appalling. Christine Blasey Ford, now a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, says she was 15 years old on the night in question when a “highly inebriated” Brett Kavanaugh, then 17, pushed her into a bedroom, locked the door and turned on loud music to mask her cries for help. She says he climbed on top of her, held a hand over her mouth and tried to take her clothes off. “I feared he may inadvertently kill me,” Blasey wrote in a July letter for her congresswoman to pass along to Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

Kavanaugh has flatly denied any wrongdoing. “I did not do this back in high school or at any time,” he said in a statement.

This is the sort of denial that an innocent man would offer. It is also increasingly the modus operandi in the age of Donald Trump, regardless of the accusations at hand: Don’t engage with the specifics, just deny, deny, deny.

This game plan flows directly from the top, where President Trump has consistently met a growing list of allegations of sexual misconduct with combative denials. At last count, more than 15 women have claimed to have been harassed or abused by Trump in the years before his presidency. He has attacked some of his accusers individually. Some he has claimed never to have met. But he maintains that they are all, without exception, liars.

In contrast, consider the response of Kavanaugh’s friend and high-school classmate Mark Judge, whom Blasey identified as the other person in the room with her and Kavanaugh. “I have no recollection of that,” Judge told The New Yorker in a story published Friday — which sounds reasonable coming from someone who wrote a memoir, “Wasted,” about his struggles with teenage alcoholism. (The memoir includes a character, “Bart O’Kavanaugh,” who is also described as drinking to excess.) Judge later changed his answer to a straight-up denial, only to return to the no-recollection line on Sunday.

As in the case of so many he-said/she-said scenarios, there’s much we don’t know and probably never will with certainty. But there are two things we do know.

First, there is no upside for women who come forward with stories of sexual harassment or assault, especially when the accused is a famous or powerful man. It doesn’t matter how credible the story is. Simply by telling it, a woman can expect to be pilloried in the press and suffer far worse on social media, if not in real life.

Blasey, who initially asked Feinstein to keep her identity confidential, told The Washington Post that the alleged attack changed her life for years and contributed to long-term anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. She knew that putting her name to the allegations — which she felt forced to do after news of her letter was reported last week — would change her life again, and not for the better.

Kavanaugh’s defenders have already launched a fusillade of victim-blaming counterattacks, from the predictable to the preposterous:

She’s making it up. (If so, she doesn’t fit the profile of a false accuser.)

The charge is too old, and anyway, why didn’t she report the assault immediately after it happened? (More likely a girl in the early 1980s would have blamed herself than report it.)

This is a coordinated hit job by Senate Democrats desperate to stop Kavanaugh’s confirmation. (If so, Feinstein didn’t get the memo. She had the letter for more than a month and didn’t notify her colleagues of it until last week.)

If it’s not a partisan plot then how do you explain Blasey’s political donations? (From 2014 to 2017, she gave $72 to Democratic candidates and committees.)

Kavanaugh’s mother, also a judge, once oversaw a home-foreclosure case involving Blasey’s parents. (Misleading.)

Blasey is behaving like a schoolgirl who’s upset that a boy in her class made a pass at her. (This one came from that paragon of decency, Donald Trump Jr.)

If anyone is still wondering why women don’t speak up about sexual assault sooner, or at all, you have your answer.

The second thing we know is that, while Blasey has not given the public any reason to doubt her credibility, the same can’t be said of Kavanaugh, who has given misleading or inaccurate testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee over the years. Is he telling the truth now when he says nothing happened?

The bottom line is that Brett Kavanaugh is up for a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land, and there is now a credible accusation of sexual assault against him.

The next steps are for the FBI to interview Kavanaugh, Blasey, Judge and possibly others about the accusations under oath, and for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hear from all parties, however long it takes.

This is the only acceptable approach. Americans should hope that in these hearings the Judiciary Committee acquits itself better than it did the last time it confronted a woman accusing a Supreme Court nominee of sexual misconduct. That was 27 years ago, when some members of an all-male committee gave little credence to Anita Hill’s testimony that Clarence Thomas harassed her when she worked for him. Her testimony was never convincingly rebutted, and yet nearly twice as many people believed Thomas’s story as believed hers.

Twenty-seven years later, Clarence Thomas remains on the court and the Republican side of the Judiciary Committee remains all male. But this time, almost a year into the #MeToo era, a lot more Americans may be ready to believe the woman.