Speaking Truth to Power - Anita Hill [72]
Tuesday, 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.