You sexual predator!

We will always link that possibility to your name. For the rest of your life.

Suppose you are about to receive a big award. Or you are about to become mayor. Someone you don’t know sends a letter to a political enemy of yours.

That person accuses you of sexual mis-behavior. From your high school years. Three and a half decades ago. Asks to remain anonymous. Cannot recall essential details. Reluctant to discuss openly. Only remembered this mis-behavior during psycho-therapy many years later.

The politician arranges for the letter to be leaked. Suddenly the media fling your name and reputation into a cesspool. Prominent people decry you, accuse you, besmirch you. TV personalities suggest to millions of viewers that you are probably guilty. A senator declares you guilty of rape. Even though your accuser did not.

Meanwhile, you say you don’t know the accuser. You claim you did not do what the accuser claims.

Your political enemies ignore your claims. They scream for the FBI to investigate. Though there is no crime for the FBI to investigate. And the FBI has no jurisdiction in this anyway.

None of this matters. You are hereby branded for life. If you win the award or mayoralty, you are branded. If you lose or withdraw, you are branded. For the rest of your days your name, face, reputation and legacy will carry a stigmata. You will ever be known to others as a sexual predator. Or as maybe a predator. Or as, well, who knows.

You know this is a political football.  Because Hillary – of all people – says accusers like this must be given the benefit of the doubt. No matter how scant the evidence (thus far). Must be believed. This from a woman who ran a goon squad. To destroy the lives of woman who credibly accused Bill Clinton of criminal behavior, including rape.

You know it is political. Because a partner of a top Democrat has come forward to accuse him of wicked behavior. The same prominent guys who besmirch you ignore his accuser.

You know it is political. Because politicians and Hollywood celebs attack your credibility. On the basis of a single letter from an accuser with a foggy memory. Yet the same folks ignored or belittled Juanita Broaddrick. When she cried rape against Bill Clinton. In fact, the politician who leaked the letter on you refused to even read Broaddrick’s accusation. To read it.

You know it is political. Because the politician who received the letter sat on it for months. Allowing it to be leaked only at the last minute. When defending yourself would be awkward.

Meanwhile you don’t attack your accuser. You simply state that what you are accused of did not happen.

You give thought to how unreliable are high school memories. After all, you have gone to high school reunions. Where your memories of events clash with the memories of your old school mates. (I have vivid memories of a summer of passion with a girl just before my junior year. Four years later, she did not remember we had even dated. To this day, she has zero recollection. That punctures my ego, of course. But it also makes me question high school memories – hers and mine.)

You also give thought to the Duke lacrosse team. Women accused them of sexual crimes. Faculty and students and prominent people declared them absolutely guilty.  Until the women’s accusations fell apart.

Too bad for the young men. They will be forever branded. Too bad for you. One columnist suggests the accusations flung at you will be in your obituary.

You think about the thoughts of your children. Twenty years from now: “Oh, your mom was the woman who…”  You wonder how this vicious circus will color their thinking toward their parent. You suffer similar thoughts about your friends. About your mate. About anyone you meet in the future.

You know there are processes in our system. For instance, the right to confront your accuser. Such safeguards are there to avoid mob rule. To ward off lynchings. And high-tech lynchings such as that which Judge Clarence Thomas suffered. You know the protections are there. They are in our Constitution. You are dismayed that your political enemies ride roughshod over them. They could give a damn.  One commentator on CNN declares that presumption of innocence should only apply in court cases. Not in the court of public opinion.

This is Judge Kavanaugh’s world, his fate. It is Clarence Thomas’s world.

Maybe more will come out that changes all this. Meanwhile, welcome to Scarlet-Letterville.

PS: Come see the final in Tales From The Empire. A play about my family’s adventures in a rural hotel/saloon. I play the parts of many characters. Friday September 28, at 7 pm. Fenimore Art Museum, Cooperstown. Info at FenimoreArt.org. Tickets at Eventbrite.com.

From Tom…as in Morgan.

Find Tom on Facebook. You can write to Tom at tomasinmorgan@yahoo.com.