David CookThe person you are in high school is not the person you are as an adult.
Therefore, we should not be imprisoned as an adult by the decisions we made decades earlier as teenagers.
We all make mistakes.
Being a teenager is exquisitely difficult.
That's why I pass no judgment on Christine Blasey Ford.
She didn't tell anyone after the night of her reported assault? The night 36 years ago she claims that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh tried to rape her?
She didn't tell her parents? Or friends? Or police?
I give wide grace for that, because trauma, especially teenage trauma, keeps its own clock. Such suffering, its own timetable.
"I thought he might inadvertently kill me," Ford said of that night.
Plus, there is often no victory or justice reporting rape; you're not phoning in a burglary or carjacking.
You are reporting sexual assault.
Here in America, what women often get in return - shame, harassment, a belligerent unwillingness from certain men to even listen - can feel like a second rape.
"It was like being raped again," Katie Hnida once told me. (Hnida is the first female to play - and score points in - an NCAA Division college football game. She was raped by her University of Colorado teammates.)
These days, Ford is enduring a similar second rape. Death threats. She's hired security. Moved her family into hiding. Some of the most powerful men - including the president and his own son - have mocked and dismissed her.
It's as if Ford is...nagging.
"This woman, whoever she is, is mixed up," declared U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch.
"Be done with this charade," tweeted Fox News columnist Stephen Miller. "It was drunk teenagers playing seven minutes of heaven."
"The thing happened - if it happened - an awfully long time ago, back in Ronald Reagan's time...No clothes were removed, and no sexual penetration occurred," wrote Lance Morrow in the Wall Street Journal.
If the tables were turned, I wonder how long it would take for a man to come forward.
Men, let's say you're at a house party Saturday, watching the game, when you go to the bathroom. Suddenly, a larger and stronger man forces his way in, holds you down, covers your mouth to stifle your shouting, then begins to assault you.
Would...you...report it? To your boss? Your family? The news? The cops? Hey, what's your hesitancy? No penetration, no problem, right?
Yes, of course, memories are faulty. Ford may not be remembering it correctly; her attacker may not have been Kavanaugh. And accusations aren't the same thing as proof.
Yes, of course, the heart is faulty, too. Ford may be completely lying.
But I don't think she is.
I believe her.
I believe her because her story is so believable.
Ford's story also belongs to so many other women. This large paddlewheel of stories keeps turning in this country, bringing story after story - Weinstein, Lauer, Cosby, Rose, Moonves and, yes, Bill Clinton - up out of the depths and into the light.
So many of the women I know say that so many of the women they know have experienced one form or another of male violence.
It could have been at a high school party. Or maybe an office. Or parking garage. Or fraternity house. Or Thanksgiving dinner.
Perhaps it was also a high school classmate. Maybe a boss. A stranger. A family member.
Maybe there was alcohol, maybe not. Maybe witnesses, maybe not.
Maybe there was physical violence, maybe not. Perhaps instead of assault, it was whistles and cat-calls. Being slapped on the back or bottom by a friend or stranger. Being touched or groped.
Being followed.
So Ford's story isn't difficult to believe.
It isn't difficult to believe because it's so often true.
David Cook writes a Sunday column and can be reached at dcook@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6329. Follow him on Facebook at DavidCookTFP.