Anita Hill, who accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment in 1991, said her Senate testimony long ago failed to produce lasting change because “we don’t want to deal with the hard questions.”
The 62-year-old Yale-educated lawyer, now a professor at Brandeis University, told a packed audience at the University of Utah on Wednesday that the #MeToo movement sweeping the US has the opportunity to create long-term solutions, according to CBS News.
But she said that will require facing questions the nation has been hesitant to address, including the pervasiveness of the problem and the fact that abusers don’t always look like stereotypical villains.
“We look for simple solutions because we don’t want to deal with the hard questions,” she said. “When those simple solutions fail, too often we retreat.”
Hill said that when she came forward almost three decades ago, she was thinking about the integrity of the Supreme Court, whose justices have lifetime appointments.
“Access to equal justice for all is what was at stake in 1991, and it’s what’s at stake now,” she said.
Hill also criticized the decision to set a hearing for the Kavanaugh allegations on Thursday without a thorough, neutral probe and the input from experts who can explain how victims at times hold back from reporting sexual assault.
“Setting them up this way does a disservice not only to the primary witness, but it does a disservice to the courts, and it does a disservice to the American people who want to know how to respond to these situations and they want representation that helps them understand,” she said.
Hill said women who do make sexual misconduct allegations are frequently described as “crazy, vindictive, promiscuous or prudes.”
She challenged the crowd to think about what they might do next if they’re disappointed with how things unfold after the explosive testimony before the Senate panel.
“Will you engage your own institutions in change? Will you engage politically?” she said. “I can tell you that I will continue to use my voice.”