Name: Tara Reade says Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. She deserves to be heard | Katie Halper
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Tara Reade says Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. She deserves to be heard | Katie Halper

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This article is more than 2 years oldThis article is more than 2 years oldI published the former aide’s accusation against the Democratic presidential candidate on my podcast after other media outlets ignored herLast modified on Wed 20 Jan 2021 22.21 ESTI’m an independent writer and podcaster. I don’t hide my politics, nor am I an “objective” investigative reporter with the resources of a legacy publication. But in March, a friend, herself a sexual assault survivor, said she’d spoken to a woman named Tara Reade, who had told her a credible story about being sexually assaulted by and asked me to speak with her. I agreed to speak to Reade and the people she said she’d told about the alleged assault at the time, and if her story seemed credible, I’d do my best to put her in touch with a journalist who could do her story justice. I spoke to Reade and her confidants, and reviewed documents. There seemed much to Reade’s story, and I moved ahead to find her help.The Intercept’s Ryan Grim, who the Christine Blasey Ford allegation against Brett Kavanaugh, was already working on a on Reade focused on Time’s Up – the not-for-profit founded to support women in telling their #MeToo stories – and its refusal to help her. I reached out to mainstream reporters but no one bit. Rightwing reporters were showing interest in the story, but neither I nor Reade, a lifelong Democrat who identifies as a progressive feminist, wanted her story and the #MeToo movement weaponized to help Trump. Because I believed Reade – and because no one else she had reached out to had agreed to interview her – I released my interview a day after Grim published his article.While Biden’s campaign has denied the sexual assault allegation, he has notYou can and Reade’s heart-wrenching account yourself, but to summarize her claims: she says she brought Joe Biden his gym bag as she’d been instructed. The two of them were alone and that is when she says “he just had me up against the wall and his hands were on me and underneath my clothes. And then he went down my skirt, but then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers ... Everything shattered in that moment.”Reade’s good friend (not her real name), who lived at the same residence and interned for another senator at the time, told me that Reade called her after the incident: “When I said, ‘Did you feel like you could walk away?’, [Tara] said no. And that his hand went where it shouldn’t below the belt...He said something that made [Tara] feel like a grain of dust… small and insignificant. On the phone...you can’t see someone’s facial expression… but you can tell when someone’s voice is shaking... She was definitely confused, disoriented.”Reade’s brother also remembers learning about the incident: “First my mom told me about it. She was up in arms. And I was like I don’t know what happened. I think my sister was trying to spare me.” Indeed, Reade did try to spare her younger brother somewhat but, as he told me, “I remember my sister being specifically asked to handle a gym bag... And there was a moment he had her up against the wall and made a hand move under her clothes.”Both Grim’s article and my interview were followed by a deafening silence, with only a handful of outlets covering the story. Two articles sought to justify why the mainstream media didn’t cover it. At Salon, one writer the lack of media attention to a number of “red flags”, including that Reade’s story had “changed over time”, when in fact Reade provided over time, something that is among survivors of sexual assault. The writer also pointed out that before 2019 her “public statements about Biden were entirely positive”. (Harvey Weinstein’s lawyers advanced the same discredited argument against his accusers, who praised him both publicly and privately after their alleged assaults.) Jezebel the media was ignoring the story “because of the way Halper...aired the allegations”, and “lets Reade speak uninterrupted, leaving her to tearfully stumble over her story”.Whether you believe Reade or not, it’s hard to justify the media’s refusal to give her a hearing. When Grim broke Blasey Ford’s story, virtually every major US legacy news outlet considered it newsworthy enough to cover within four days. But it took the New York Times 19 days to cover Reade’s story. The article originally reported that it “found no pattern of sexual misconduct by Mr Biden, beyond the hugs, kisses and touching that women previously said made them uncomfortable”. After the publication, the second part of the sentence was deleted at the behest of the Biden campaign, as the paper’s executive editor actually: “The campaign thought that the phrasing was awkward and made it look like there were other instances in which he had been accused of sexual misconduct.” The, which took 20 days to report on the story, managed to a police report Reade filed as saying she “disclosed that she believes she was the victim of sexual assault”. But the words “she believes”, didn’t appear in the actual police report.Two interns the Times interviewed corroborated Reade’s allegation that she was removed of her duties supervising them (in retaliation, she claimed, for reporting earlier sexual harassment). The Times did not include a response from the campaign on her demotion. And while Biden’s campaign has denied the sexual assault allegation, he has not. In the dozen media events (including a town hall) since the story broke, not a single reporter has asked him about it.Election Day, Americans will be asked to choose between two candidates, both of whom face credible allegations of sexual assault. Nobody is more upset about this than Tara Reade: “I tried so hard to be heard when there were 20 Democrats running,” she told me. , who accused Bill Clinton of rape, became a Trump supporter when he cynically and opportunistically let her tell the story. But, Tara says, “I will never ever support Trump. I am never voting Republican.” Instead, Tara will not participate in an election “between the man who assaulted me and a man who has similar assaults on other women.”We are in an excruciating situation with no easy solutions. Tara wants Biden to step down, understandably, as do others who see him as a disastrous candidate. Others wish Tara had been listened to before Biden was the last man standing, but now see no alternative. Both positions are understandable and neither should be shamed. But what is shameful is ignoring or belittling Tara because it’s politically inconvenient to grapple with her story. The powerful media, politicians and organizations who ignored her or didn’t take her seriously enough have no authority to say anything besides “I’m sorry,” and promise to do better, for Tara, women like her and the they’ve already harmed.

This article is more than 2 years oldThis article is more than 2 years oldI published the former aide’s accusation against the Democratic presidential candidate on my podcast after other media outlets ignored herLast modified on Wed 20 Jan 2021 22.21 ESTI’m an independent writer and podcaster. I don’t hide my politics, nor am I an “objective” investigative reporter with the resources of a legacy publication. But in March, a friend, herself a sexual assault survivor, said she’d spoken to a woman named Tara Reade, who had told her a credible story about being sexually assaulted by and asked...

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Katie Halper

TheGuardian.com, formerly known as Guardian.co.uk and Guardian Unlimited, is a British news and media website owned by the Guardian Media Group. It contains nearly all of the content of the newspapers The Guardian and The Observer, as well as a substantial body of web-only work produced by its own staff, including a rolling news service.

Tara Reade says Joe Biden sexually assaulted her. She deserves to be heard | Katie Halper

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