Actress and activist Alyssa Milano showed her support for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser Christine Blasey Ford Sunday, explaining in an essay why she also remained silent for decades about being sexually assaulted when she was a teenager.
“The courage of survivors will always be stronger than Donald Trump’s hate. The lives of survivors will always be more important than Brett Kavanaugh’s career,” Milano wrote in an essay posted on Vox on Sunday.
“It took me years after my assault to voice the experience to my closest friends. It took me three decades to tell my parents that the assault had even happened. I never filed a police report. I never told officials. I never tried to find justice for my pain because justice was never an option.”
Milano was triggered to write about her experience after President Trump questioned Ford’s allegation that Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were in high school in 1982. (Kavanaugh denied the incident occurred.) In a tweet, the president said that if the accusation against Kavanaugh was true, Ford would have filed a report with police years ago.
“Hey, @realDonaldTrump, Listen the f–k up,” she tweeted Friday. “I was sexually assaulted twice. Once when I was a teenager. I never filed a police report and it took me 30 years to tell me parents.”
After sitting on it, Milano took it a step further by writing the op-ed on Sunday, explaining exaclly why sexual harassment and sexual assault victims don’t speak up.
“This statement chilled me to my core,” she wrote of Trump’s claim.
“Far too many of us know that what President Trump said is simply not true. Victims of sexual assault often don’t report what happened because they know all too well that our stories are rarely taken seriously or believed — and that when it comes to sexual misconduct, our justice system is broken,” Milano wrote.
Milano concluded the piece by calling on the U.S. Senate to reject Kavanaugh as a Supreme Court Justice.
“Every person who refuses to loudly and openly reject Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination is telling every generation of Americans that an alleged abuser’s career is more valuable than a survivor’s humanity. And the highest court in our land is no place for an alleged sexual offender to sit.”
You can read Milano’s essay in its entirety by clicking here.