womanfish
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
The brother and friend thing also raises questions for me. Neither told her to take any action at the time, and her brother said to "move on, cause guys can be idiots sometimes". To me that reaction meshes much more with Riede's initial claims of inappropriate closeness and feeling uncomfortable sometimes, than it does to her new claims, where now she says "her life was shattered". It just doesn't feel genuine at all to me.
Also, Riede initially sought legal advice, not to pursue any action against Biden, but to see if she could take action against internet trolls that were calling out her adoration for Russia and Putin.
This also gives me pause.
Then you have statements like the ones below from Biden campaign:
"Women have a right to tell their story, and reporters have an obligation to rigorously vet those claims," Bedingfield said. "We encourage them to do so, because these accusations are false."
This to me is the correct response. This, unlike Trump who smears and insults accusers and tries to thwart any investigation. Or Kavenaugh, who called his friends to get their story straight and support him, and have the Senate kill any investigation.
Or this statement from Biden's assistant for 20 years:
Marianne Baker, who served as executive assistant to then-Senator Biden from 1982 to 2000, also rejected the assertions, saying that in the nearly 20 years she worked with Biden, she had never witnessed, heard or received reports of inappropriate conduct.
"For nearly 20 years, I worked as Senator Biden's executive assistant and supervised dozens of employees who reported to me," she said. "I took very seriously my duties with respect to human resources, following the direction of a Senator whose insistence on a professional workplace was embedded in our culture."
"In all my years working for Senator Biden, I never once witnessed, or heard of, or received, any reports of inappropriate conduct, period—not from Ms. Reade, not from anyone," she said.
"I have absolutely no knowledge or memory of Ms. Reade's accounting of events, which would have left a searing impression on me as a woman professional, and as a manager.
"These clearly false allegations are in complete contradiction to both the inner workings of our Senate office and to the man I know and worked so closely with for almost two decades," Baker said.
So in all honesty, I will be open to any credible information that might come to light. But as a victim of sexual assault myself, I have divided feelings. I think that claims should be believed but investigated if there seems to be gaping holes in them.
I also am sick to think of anyone that would create false or exaggerated claims to try and take someone down, because it ends up undermining all real claims from victims.
