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    Revealed: New Orleans archdiocese concealed serial child molester for years

    The last four Roman Catholic archbishops of New Orleans went to shocking lengths to conceal a confessed serial child molester who is still living but has never been prosecuted, a Guardian investigation has found.Upon review of hundreds of pages of previously secret church files, the Guardian has uncovered arguably the most complete account yet about the extremes to which the second-oldest Catholic archdiocese in the US went to coddle the admitted child molester Lawrence Hecker.Back in 1999, Hecker confessed to his superiors at the archdiocese of New Orleans that he had either sexually molested or otherwise shared a bed with multiple teenagers whom he met through his work as a Roman Catholic priest.The admitted conduct occurred during a 15-year period, beginning in the mid-1960s, which Hecker says “was a time of great change in the world and in the church, and I succumbed to its zeitgeist”. In a two-page statement given to local church authorities serving a region with about a half-million Catholics, Hecker says, “It was a time when I neglected spiritual direction, confession and most daily prayer.”Hecker confessed to the misconduct or abuse of seven teenagers between about 1966 and 1979, including “overtly sexual acts” or “affectionate … sex acts” with at least two individuals. In other cases, Hecker reported either fondling, mutual masturbation, nudity or bed sharing, including once on another overnight trip to a Texas theme park.Hecker’s confession said the late New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan spoke with him about an accusation of sexual abuse in 1988. In 1996, Hannan’s successor as archbishop, the late Francis Schulte, received another allegation which the organization deemed unsubstantiated.Hecker’s 1999 admission arrived after one of his victims came forward with another complaint to the archdiocese. The organization responded in part by sending Hecker to an out-of-state psychiatric treatment facility which diagnosed him as a pedophile who rationalized, justified and took “little responsibility for his behavior”.The facility also recommended that the archdiocese prohibit Hecker from working with children, adolescents or other “particularly vulnerable” people.But Hecker did not stop working. In fact, after a sabbatical of a few months, the church ultimately allowed him to continue until his retirement in 2002 – which happened after a Catholic clerical molestation and cover-up scandal that ensnared the archdiocese of Boston prompted worldwide church reforms.When attorneys for the archdiocese – pressured by the Boston scandal – reported Hecker alongside a handful of other clerics to New Orleans police, they only informed investigators about a single one of the cases cited in his confession. And they didn’t mention the confession at all.Law enforcement authorities have never charged Hecker with a crime, even though his number of accusers has only swelled with the passage of time. Despite transparency policies that the Catholic church generally adopted after the 2002 scandal in Boston, New Orleans’s archdiocese waited until it released a 2018 list of dozens of priests and deacons whom it considered to be strongly suspected of sexually abusing minors before it publicly acknowledged that Hecker was a predator.Notably, the archdiocese only stopped paying Hecker retirement benefits in 2020. Citing a moral obligation it had to all clerics, the archdiocese waited until after it filed for federal bankruptcy protection that year (in part because of litigation in the wake of the clergy abuse list) to stop paying these benefits to Hecker and other abusive clerics. The judge overseeing the bankruptcy ordered it.The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an attorney for the organization last week said in court that the city’s archbishop since 2009 – Gregory Aymond – “is taking every step possible to protect children”.The Orleans parish district attorney, Jason Williams, confirmed that on 14 June the archdiocese turned over “voluminous documents” pertaining to Hecker. He would not say whether his office compelled the church to hand over the files through a subpoena.That production came after Williams’s office spoke with a man who alleged being choked unconscious and raped as a child by Hecker after meeting the priest through a Catholic institution, according to an attorney representing the accuser.Child rape cases in Louisiana have no filing deadlines, and they could carry life imprisonment. Yet it is not clear when or if Hecker may ultimately be charged.Hecker’s attorney, Eugene Redmann, has declined to speak with the Guardian about claims against his client. But he alluded to how Hecker was 91, said the claims were generally from “decades ago” and added that people of advanced age “lose a lot of memory”.“We will address any charges if they are brought,” Redmann said.Reached by phone last week and asked for comment on his 1999 statement to the archdiocese, Hecker paused for several moments before saying: “I am running behind on time and have to get to an appointment.”He then hung up.Read the Guardian’s full investigation here.
    In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline at 800-422-4453. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International More

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    The Guardian view on consequences for Trump: this beginning took bravery | Editorial

    A 79-year-old advice columnist – along with a handful of other brave women who testified in her case – has done what legal and political institutions have not yet managed: held the former president Donald Trump accountable in law for his actions, and for his lies.In finding that he sexually abused E Jean Carroll in the 1990s, and subsequently defamed her, albeit not finding him liable for rape, the jury in her civil suit laid down an important marker.Though it awarded $5m (£4m) to Ms Carroll, money cannot erase the initial attack, the intrusive memories she has endured or her continued avoidance of romantic or sexual relationships. Mr Trump compounded the damage when he attacked her as a “wack job” pursuing a “hoax” after she described what had happened.It required courage to take on a man who was one of the most powerful people in the world, who may be so again, and who attracts and encourages irrational and aggressive support. She has received death threats, and the judge advised jurors to remain anonymous “for a long time”. Asked if she regretted bringing the case, Ms Carroll replied: “About five times a day.”It is too easy to write off this hard-earned victory by focusing solely on the fact that its impact on voters is likely to be limited. No one imagines it will sink Mr Trump’s political fortunes. His ability to float past or even capitalise upon his worst acts, transmuting them into fundraising and campaigning capital, is both remarkable and depressing. His support has proved resilient through impeachment, indictment and general disgrace. But this verdict stands on its own merits, in curtailing the impunity he has enjoyed for too long.It would be wrong to imagine that any case could fix a broken political system, or, indeed, root out entrenched misogyny. It is a sign of just how bad things are that it is entirely likely that the Republicans will go into the 2024 presidential election with a candidate found by a court to be a sexual abuser – and that, if they do, he may well win.Mr Trump was elected in 2016 even after the emergence of the Access Hollywood tape in which he boasted that “When you’re a star, they let you do it … Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” At that point, Republicans attacked him over his words. On Tuesday, most were silent about his deeds. Though the tally of women accusing him of assault has risen to at least 26, his share of the female vote actually rose in 2020, with an outright majority of white women backing him. Nonetheless, he did not want this trial, still less this outcome, and has said he will appeal, claiming the case to be part of “the greatest witch-hunt of all time”.This was a victory for Ms Carroll and, as she has said, for other women. It reflects the legacy of the #MeToo movement, sometimes written off as a blip due to the backlash against it. The journalist herself credited the flood of allegations about powerful, predatory men with persuading her to speak out. It also led to the New York law that temporarily lifted the statute of limitations on such allegations, making her case possible.Change does not always come in immediate, dramatic and decisive fashion. It may be slow, halting, partial and unsatisfactory, yet nonetheless real and significant. Mr Trump now faces mounting jeopardy on multiple legal fronts. Whatever the outcome of other cases, this one still counts.
    Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here. More

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    ‘The more women accuse him, the better he does’: the meaning and misogyny of the Trump-Carroll case

    Donald Trump has boasted about grabbing women by the pussy without their consent. He has made innumerable misogynistic comments. He has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 26 women. He has suggested that some of the women who have accused him of misconduct were too unattractive to assault. And, until this week, he has managed to get away with all of it. Trump has faced no meaningful consequences for his actions; he has given every impression of being above the law.Until this week. It may have taken decades, but the law has finally caught up with Trump. On Tuesday, a jury in New York found that the former president sexually abused the advice columnist E Jean Carroll in the changing room of a department store 27 years ago. It was a civil case, so Trump hasn’t been taken away in handcuffs, but his reputation and his wallet have suffered a blow. While the jury did not find that Trump raped Carroll, its verdict brands him a sexual predator. Carroll was awarded $5m (£4m) in total: $2.02m in compensation and damages for her battery claim and $2.98m in compensation and damages for defamation, as a result of Trump calling her a liar.“I filed this lawsuit against Donald Trump to clear my name and to get my life back,” Carroll said on Tuesday. “Today, the world finally knows the truth. This victory is not just for me but for every woman who has suffered because she was not believed.”It is hard to overstate just how profound it is to see one of the world’s most prominent men finally held accountable for his actions – and at a time when women’s rights in the US seem to be going backwards. “The verdict in this case is important to survivors of sexual abuse,” says the trailblazing equal rights lawyer Gloria Allred. “It will cause many of them to believe that if they are sexually abused and defamed by a rich, powerful and famous man that they may be able to fight back and win in a civil lawsuit, even if it is too late for a criminal case to be filed or even if no police report is ever made.”The activist Shannon Coulter says that the verdict feels deeply personal. “Ever since the release of the Access Hollywood tape [in which Trump made his “Grab ’em by the pussy” remark], I’ve been on this journey of understanding my own rage around the words Donald Trump said on it,” Coulter says. “This journey included confronting the sexual assault I experienced as a younger woman at the hands of a powerful man. With E Jean Carroll’s victory today, something has come full circle for me. I feel more peaceful. Less angry. I feel that some small amount of justice has, at last, been served, not just to Donald Trump, but to any man who believes that power eclipses consent.”Carroll’s victory came at a high price. First, there was the assault itself: the panicked minutes spent trapped alone with Trump, struggling as she tried to push him off. When she spoke publicly about the assault for the first time, in an article in New York magazine in 2019, Carroll wrote: “I have never had sex with anybody ever again.” Then there was the aftermath: being forced to relive the assault again and again, having every detail poked, prodded and scrutinised.Why did she take so long to come forward? Because, Carroll wrote in her essay, she knew exactly what the response would be; every woman does. “Receiving death threats, being driven from my home, being dismissed, being dragged through the mud, and joining the 15 women who’ve come forward with credible stories about how the man grabbed, badgered, belittled, mauled, molested, and assaulted them, only to see the man turn it around, deny, threaten, and attack them, never sounded like much fun,” she wrote.Of course, everything that Carroll expected to happen when she came forward happened immediately. Trump’s defence was steeped in sexism and victim-blaming; it was a masterclass in misogyny. In video testimony in October, Trump claimed that Carroll was a “nut job” who had “said it was very sexy to be raped”. In fact, what she had said was that some other people “think rape is sexy”. Meanwhile, Trump’s lawyer Joseph Tacopina called Carroll’s case “a scam” and accused the writer of “minimising real rape” and trying to profit from her accusations.What constitutes “real rape”, according to Tacopina? Well, it’s not rape if there is no screaming, he appeared to insinuate. At one particularly gruesome point in the trial, Tacopina repeatedly asked Carroll why she didn’t scream during the assault. “I was in too much of a panic to scream,” Carroll replied. Tacopina kept pushing the issue. Why hadn’t she screamed? Why hadn’t she behaved in the manner that he, Trump’s lawyer and an apparent expert on assault, expected a rape victim to behave? “I’m telling you he raped me whether I screamed or not,” an exasperated Carroll replied. “One of the reasons women don’t come forward is because they’re always asked: ‘Why didn’t you scream?’ Some women scream. Some women don’t. It keeps women silent.”“Rape myths – myths that allegations of sexual assault are uniquely untrustworthy, that women have to perform victimhood in a certain way to be credible, or that women should not be believed if they are imperfect human beings – are still powerful in our culture,” says Emily Martin, a spokesperson for the National Women’s Law Center Action Fund. “They often show up in courtrooms. We saw some of them in this trial. E Jean Carroll’s courage reaffirmed the power of survivors’ voices to create change. But no one should have to be this courageous or face the misogynistic vitriol she has faced in order to get some measure of justice. Our legal systems – and our media narratives – often fail survivors.”This trial is over, but the misogynistic vitriol directed at Carroll isn’t. Trump doesn’t take losing well and responded to the verdict in his usual restrained and eloquent manner, smearing Carroll as a liar. “I HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO IDEA WHO THIS WOMAN IS. THIS VERDICT IS A DISGRACE – A CONTINUATION OF THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME!” he wrote on his social media platform.Trump has repeated the assertion that he doesn’t know who Carroll is multiple times, despite the fact that a photograph taken in 1987 shows them together with their then spouses. He has also said that she isn’t his “type”, despite once mistaking a picture of her for his second wife, Marla Maples.What does Trump plan to do now? Hours before the verdict was announced, Trump said he would appeal. He repeated this intention to Fox News Digital after the verdict. “We’ll appeal. We got treated very badly by the Clinton-appointed judge,” Trump complained. “And [Carroll] is a Clinton person, too.” He then added: “I have no idea who this woman is.”If Trump does appeal, his argument will probably be that the case was an attempt to stop him from winning the presidency in 2024. A statement sent to reporters by the Trump campaign, for example, alleged that the trial was a “political endeavour targeting President Trump because he is now an overwhelming front-runner to be once again elected President of the United States”. That last bit isn’t bombast: Trump is the frontrunner for the Republican nomination and a Washington Post/ABC News poll released this month showed Biden trailing Trump by six percentage points in a theoretical rematch. Some analysts have questioned the methodology of that poll, but the fact remains: Trump should be taken seriously as a 2024 contender.Could the Carroll verdict hurt Trump’s political future? In a sane world, this wouldn’t even be up for debate. In a sane world, having a jury of nine people deliberate for just three hours before finding unanimously that you sexually assaulted a woman and defamed her should end your career. But, as has been demonstrated time and time again, the rules work differently when it comes to Trump. During the trial, Carroll’s attorney Michael Ferrara asked the writer why she didn’t go public with her allegations when Trump first ran for president. “I noticed that the more women who came forward to accuse him, the better he did in the polls,” she said.“Trump has always made the ability to have anyone he wants and do anything he wants with impunity part of his brand,” says Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a historian who writes about authoritarianism, democracy protection and propaganda. “When the Access Hollywood tapes came out right before the 2016 election, most people thought that would be the end of him – but it was the opposite.”This verdict won’t necessarily hurt Trump, Ben-Ghiat believes; he will just spin it so that it fits the tried-and-tested narrative that he is a victim of the liberal elite. “Trump is a superb propagandist and for years he’s pushed the narrative of himself as the victim of a witch-hunt and pushed the idea that the deep state is after him,” she says. It’s important to remember, Ben-Ghiat says, that “Trump is not a normal politician – he’s a cult leader. We’ve already seen how he managed to indoctrinate tens of millions of people into discarding the facts in front of them and believing that he didn’t lose the 2020 election.”If you need any more evidence that Trump isn’t a normal politician, look at the extraordinary advice that the US district judge Lewis Kaplan gave jurors in the Trump-Carroll case. They have had their identities kept secret, due to Kaplan’s concerns that they might face “harassment … and retaliation” from Trump supporters. After the verdict, Kaplan told the jurors that they were now allowed to identify themselves if they wished, but strongly suggested that they didn’t. “My advice to you is not to identify yourselves. Not now and not for a long time,” Kaplan said.To repeat: a judge warned a jury that they might face violence from Trump supporters. It’s the sort of warning you expect in the trial of a mob boss, not a former president. “These jury instructions show again that he’s not a normal politician – he’s a violent cult leader,” Ben-Ghiat says.Of course, while Trump may have a cult-like following, he is not omnipotent. The manner in which he is able to spin the Carroll verdict to his followers depends on what media platforms he is given and how journalists challenge his narrative about the trial. The first big test of this will be Wednesday’s live town hall forum on CNN, the first major television event of the 2024 presidential campaign. In a social media post on Tuesday, Trump seemed ambivalent about his big return to primetime. “Could be the beginning of a New & Vibrant CNN, with no more Fake News,” Trump wrote. “Or it could turn into a disaster for all, including me. Let’s see what happens?” More

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    Who is E Jean Carroll, the woman who alleges Trump sexually assaulted her?

    E Jean Carroll is an 80 year-old former journalist who, until she accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her, was best known as an advice columnist for Elle magazine for 26 years.The column was praised for its forthright writing including Carroll’s view that women should never build their lives around men and the compassion of her replies to readers seeking advice. Elle terminated Carroll’s contract in 2019. She said the magazine fired her because of her dispute with Trump. Elle denied it.Born in Detroit and raised in Indiana, Carroll began writing for leading magazines of the era, including Rolling Stone and Playboy, after drawing attention with a “witty literary quiz” about Ernest Hemingway and F Scott Fitzgerald for Esquire.Carroll left her husband and moved to New York where she established herself as “feminism’s answer to Hunter S Thompson”. By the mid-1980s she was writing for Saturday Night Live. A decade later she turned the advice column into a television talk show, Ask E Jean.Carroll was well known within New York’s literary set. But she is now likely to be best remembered for her book, What Do We Need Men For? A Modest Proposal, and for suing Trump. The book describes the alleged assault by the now former president and attacks by other men, including the former chief executive of CBS Les Moonves, who was forced out over allegations of sexual harassment. More

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    Condom ‘stealthing’ is a vile practice. California is right to ban it | Moira Donegan

    OpinionUS politicsCondom ‘stealthing’ is a vile practice. California is right to ban itMoira DoneganTwelve per cent of women have experienced stealthing – and 10% of men have perpetrated it. The law is finally catching up Tue 14 Sep 2021 06.19 EDTLast modified on Tue 14 Sep 2021 06.20 EDTShe told him a condom was “non-negotiable,” and that if he would rather not use one, she would leave. The young woman, identified as “Sara” in a 2017 study, describes the encounter, saying, “I set a boundary. I was very explicit.” Yet she then discovered that her partner, a man she’d been seeing for a couple of weeks, had secretly removed the condom during sex.“I ended up talking to him about it later,” Sara told the study’s author, the feminist civil rights attorney Alexandra Brodsky. “He told me, ‘Don’t worry about it, trust me.’ That stuck with me, because he’d literally proven himself to be unworthy of my trust.”The man who removed the condom was telling her to trust him not to put her at risk for the potential consequences of unprotected sex – for STD infection, or for unplanned pregnancy. But if he was someone she could trust on those issues, he never would have removed the condom in the first place.Sara was a victim of a phenomenon that 12% of women say they have experienced, and that 10% of men say they have perpetrated, but which for years has had no legal recognition and no name other than the one given to it by its practitioners: “Stealthing”, the non-consensual removal of a condom.Now, the violation experienced by Sara and others may finally be made illegal, at least in one state. A bill introduced by California Assemblywoman Cristina Garcia has passed both houses of the state’s legislature, and would make non-consensual condom removal a civil offense. It now awaits a signature from Governor Gavin Newsom.If the bill goes into effect, it would give victims the power to sue men who removed condoms without their permission for the non-criminal charge of sexual battery and open the door for monetary damages. The Wisconsin and New York legislatures are considering similar bills. If California’s is signed, the state will become the first in the nation to recognize stealthing as a violation in law.Because the bill makes stealthing a civil offense, not a crime, it does not create the possibility that perpetrators will serve prison time. Instead, it makes them liable for fines and penalties if their victims prevail in court. (The pending bills in Wisconsin and New York do have criminal provisions.) But Brodsky believes that the worthiness of a civil avenue for justice should not be overlooked. “I’m glad to see California pursuing this approach,” she told me. “In my experience, many survivors find the kinds of outcomes available in civil litigation – including money damages – more meaningful and useful.”Brodsky points out that civil courts have lower burdens of proof and offer rewards for the victims, not only punishments for the assailants. The symbolic value of the bill, too, is worth noting: the possibility for stealthing victims to have their day in court, and be remunerated for the harm they suffered, offers a route to recognition for a kind of sexual abuse that institutions have historically ignored.For women like Sara, the reality that what their partners did to them was not right is intuitive. In Brodsky’s study, victims of stealthing recount being worried about STIs and pregnancy. These worries, they observed, seem to fall almost exclusively on their shoulders, even though the removal of the condom had not been their idea and had happened without their permission. One woman, referred to as “Rebecca”, told Brodsky that after the incident, her assailant refused to help her pay for emergency contraceptives.“None of it worried him,” she said. “It didn’t perturb him. My potential pregnancy, my potential STI. That was my burden.” Rebecca had a reason to be worried: a 2019 survey on stealthing found that men who engaged in the practice were much more likely to be infected with an STD than men who didn’t (at a rate of 29.5% to 15.1%) and were much more likely to have sired an unintended pregnancy (at a rate of 46.7% to 25.8%).But in addition to the medical and material concerns, women and others who have been victims of stealthing describe the incidents as degrading, hurtful and wounding to their self-respect. The removal of the condom represents a willingness to discard their preferences, an indifference to their safety and a contempt for their right to control their own bodies – and all of this comes from men who, only a few moments earlier, they had believed they could trust.There is empirical evidence to support their sense of betrayal: the 2019 survey found that men who engaged in stealthing also had greater hostility towards women. In Brodsky’s study, a review of online communities for stealthing practitioners supports the notion that non-consensual condom removal by heterosexual men is motivated by misogynist disdain; the men, quoted at length, spoke of their own contempt for women and scorn for their partners’ desire for a condom in terms that I will not repeat here.Stealthing poses high-stakes material risks to victims, as well as deeply felt harms to their dignity. It is galling that the practice was not already illegal. Both our law and our culture have a long history of ignoring gendered violence, and of lacking the rhetorical frameworks that make such harm legible – even when, as seems to be true in the case of stealthing, that harm is very common.Rebecca, the survivor quoted in the 2017 study, said that she fielded many calls about the practice in her job at a local rape crisis hotline. “The stories often start the same way: ‘I’m not sure this is rape, but …’”Melissa Sargent, the Wisconsin state representative who has sponsored the anti-stealthing bill there, also says she has been contacted by women who say they were victims of stealthing. “Everyone has their own story,” Sargent told the Associated Press. “But the common thread is, this happened to me, I knew it wasn’t right, but I didn’t know what to call it.”One hope is that the passage of the California law might help such victims know what to call it. The stealthing bill can help make clear and definite what might have otherwise been an inchoate sense of having been wronged. With the passage of the California bill, stealthing victims will be able to see themselves as worthy of dignity, of having a right to control their own bodies, and of being entitled to negotiate their own sex lives without coercion or tricks. And the law will see them that way, too.
    Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
    TopicsUS politicsOpinionGenderRape and sexual assaultSexCaliforniacommentReuse this content More

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    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says she is a sexual assault survivor

    The Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Monday spoke in an emotional video about the insurrection at the US Capitol, and how what she went through was affected by her experience as a survivor of sexual assault.In an account remarkably candid for an American lawmaker, Ocasio-Cortez recounted going into hiding as rioters scaled the Capitol on 6 January, hiding in a bathroom in her office while hearing banging on the walls and a man yelling: “Where is she? Where is she?” She had feared for her life, she told an Instagram Live audience of more than 150,000 people.“I thought I was going to die,” she said. “And I had a lot of thoughts. I was thinking if this is the plan for me, then people will be able to take it from here.”In the video, Ocasio-Cortez expressed frustration at being asked to “move on” after the attack, likening it to the refrain heard by many survivors of sexual assault. “These folks like to tell us to move on, that it’s not a big deal, that we should forget what happened, even telling us that we should apologize – these are the same tactics of abusers,” Ocasio-Cortez said.“I’m a survivor of sexual assault,” she added. “And I haven’t told many people that in my life. But when we go through trauma, trauma compounds on each other.”Ocasio-Cortez, who won re-election in November in New York’s 14th congressional district, had said in a video last month that she feared for her life during the Capitol attack.On Monday, she said she had been worried about the security situation for days, having been cautioned about possible violence by several people, including other lawmakers.The incident at her office had occurred after she returned from receiving her Covid-19 vaccine, she said. “I immediately realized I shouldn’t have gone into the bathroom. I should have gone in the closet,” she said. “Then I hear whoever was trying to get inside got into my office. I realize it’s too late.”She said she had then heard yelling. “This was the moment I thought everything was over. I thought I was going to die.”The congresswoman wiped away tears as she continued. “I start to look through the door hinge to see if I can see anything. I see this white man in a black beanie and yell again,” she said. “I have never been quieter in my entire life.”AOC recounting her horrifying experience hiding in her office during the insurrection.“I thought I was going to die…I have never been quieter in my entire life.” pic.twitter.com/t2P6FU3mFU— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) February 2, 2021
    A staffer had eventually told her it was safe to emerge from the bathroom where she was hiding, and a Capitol police officer had been present in her office. She and her team had left the office, she recalled, and had eventually found shelter in the offices of the California representative Katie Porter.Ocasio-Cortez, who is Latina, had previously said that her fears were heightened because there were white supremacists and other extremists taking part in the mostly white mob.The second-term representative, whose New York district covers part of Queens and the Bronx, is among the most high-profile elected officials on the political left and a lightning rod for the right and extreme right.She has strongly condemned Donald Trump for inciting the riots, as well as members of his administration who did not invoke the 25th amendment to remove him from office, and lawmakers who voted to overturn the election results. More

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    'It happened all at once': Tara Reade details assault claim against Joe Biden in Megyn Kelly interview

    Joe Biden Former staffer discusses allegation in in-depth interview with the former Fox News and NBC host Tara Reade detailed her sexual assault allegations in an interview with Megyn Kelly. Photograph: Donald Thompson/Associated Press Tara Reade repeated her allegations of sexual assault against Joe Biden in an in-depth interview with Megyn Kelly released on Friday, […] More