The flood gates are starting to open, another repressed memory unlocked.
Via Seattle Times:
A Seattle woman says state Sen. Joe Fain raped her in 2007 after a party in Washington, D.C., spurring bipartisan calls Friday for an investigation into one of the state Capitol’s most prominent Republican legislators.
The woman, Candace Faber, tweeted her explosive allegations Thursday afternoon, following hours of divisive, nationally televised testimony regarding sexual-assault allegations against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
In a statement, Faber said she was inspired by the courage of Kavanaugh’s accuser, psychology professor Christine Blasey Ford.
As the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings wrapped up, Faber tweeted that she was “fed up” and “ready to name names” before publicly identifying Fain as her rapist — an accusation he denied in a text message to The Seattle Times.
In that earlier account, Faber described how she and the man met “at the Capitol” and spent a night out drinking and kissing. She wrote that she helped the drunken man return to his hotel room. In the room, she wrote, he pulled down her dress “so hard the straps tore.”
She pushed him away and said “stop, stop, stop” before eventually relenting, when he raped her, she wrote. She later asked him for a kiss goodbye, she wrote, and wondered whether she should go to the hospital.
Fain, a politically moderate Republican from Auburn who serves as the Senate’s minority floor leader, denied Faber’s account in a text message Thursday night.
“I absolutely deny what Ms. Faber is accusing me of,” Fain said. “Any allegation of this serious nature deserves to be heard and investigated for all parties involved. I invite and will cooperate with any inquiry. I ask everyone to show respect to Ms. Faber and to the process.”
He did not comment further.
Fain, elected to the Legislature in 2010, was one of four Republican senators who voted to legalize same-sex marriage in 2012 and helped negotiate a bipartisan deal for the 2017 paid family-leave law.
Last year, he successfully sponsored legislation that strengthened Washington’s sexual-assault protection orders. He also co-sponsored legislation to create a bill of rights for sexual-assault survivors. That bill got a public hearing in the Senate Law and Justice Committee, but did not advance.Lawmakers of both parties as well as Gov. Jay Inslee agreed Faber’s allegations should be investigated, though details of how an investigation might proceed were not clear Friday.