Innocent Until the Evidence Says Otherwise

If a man's daughter was sexually assaulted by another man how likely would it be that the victim's father would tell the perpetrator's father that he supports the perpetrator's nomination to the highest court in the land? If such a conversation took place it would suggest, would it not, that the victim's father didn't really believe his daughter's allegations against the perpetrator?

This is precisely what apparently transpired in the case of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and his accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

Mollie Hemingway and Carrie Severino writing for The Federalist tell us this:

[I]t appears the Blasey family had significant doubts about what Ford was trying to accomplish by coming forward and making unsubstantiated allegations against Brett Kavanaugh. Within days of Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, a fascinating encounter took place. Brett Kavanaugh’s father was approached by Ford’s father at the golf club where they are both members.

Ralph Blasey, Ford’s father, went out of his way to offer to Ed Kavanaugh his support of Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court, according to multiple people familiar with the conversation that took place at Burning Tree Club in Bethesda, Maryland. “I’m glad Brett was confirmed,” Ralph Blasey told Ed Kavanaugh, shaking his hand. Blasey added that the ordeal had been tough for both families.

The encounter immediately caused a stir at the close-knit private golf club as staff and members shared the news. The conversation between the two men echoed a letter that Blasey had previously sent to the elder Kavanaugh. Neither man returned requests for comment about the exchanges.

Blasey never explicitly addressed the credibility of his daughter’s allegations, but he presumably wouldn’t have supported the nomination of a man he believed tried to rape his daughter.

Indeed. So why did Blasey Ford try to ruin a man's life and that of his family by making allegations she could not prove, which none of her closest friends could substantiate and which even her family evidently disbelieved? The answer lies, perhaps, at the end of the Hemingway/Severino column:

So what was the point of the cavalcade of unsubstantiated allegations? Ford’s attorney Debra Katz offered not so much a hint as a confession. Ford testified that she had no political motivation. But in remarks captured on video, Katz admitted that Ford’s allegations against Kavanaugh were at least in part driven by fear he might not sufficiently support unregulated abortion on the court.

“We were going to have a conservative” justice, she said, “but he will always have an asterisk next to his name” that will discredit any decision he makes regarding abortion. What’s more, she added, “that is part of what motivated Christine.”

For these people, evidently, anything is justified, even destroying a man's reputation, if it'll promote a political victory.

There's a lesson here for everyone who accepted Blasey Ford's account despite her lack of evidence. Before you put your reputation for reliable judgment at risk, before you jump to conclusions about guilt or innocence, before you accept an allegation on someone else's say-so, wait for the evidence. Demand to see the evidence.

Until the evidence is presented one should refuse to form a judgment of guilt, and if none is forthcoming then no matter how tempted you may be to believe the allegation, refuse to allow yourself to think the worst of someone until you have good reason to do so.

It would have spared a lot of people who ended up embarrassed by their rush to judgment over the Covington Catholic brouhaha had they followed this simple rule of intellectual and moral responsibility, and it would've spared a lot of others the disgrace of being complicit in the character assassination of Brett Kavanaugh for whom there's much more reason to support a judgment of innocence and no good reason to support a judgment of guilty.

To see more of the reasons for thinking Kavanaugh innocent read the Hemingway/Severino column at The Federalist.