As to the first one - nothing she was wearing, nothing she ever did consensually with anyone else, and nothing she did consensually with Franken prior to or after that incident has anything to do with whether she consented this time. To suggest it does is extremely misogynistic - and synonymous with every tactic ever used to discredit rape survivors. Using that kind of basis to casting doubt on someone who has alleged sexual assault has no place on progressive website like DU. Comments like that would likely be hidden if made against accusers of anyone of a different political party.
As to this specific accuser, Franken has acknolwedged bad behavior - and still people are looking for ways to discredit the person he acknowledged behaving badly toward.
The other accusers have disclosed their identities to the reporters and in most, if not all, of the instances contemporaneously to family and friends. I am sure you expressed the same concerns about "deep throat," who took down Nixon and whose identity remained secret for more than 3 decades, right?
More significantly, I am a sexual assault survivor - from mild incidents, nearly identical to those described by Franken's accusers, to rape. I also spent more than a decade working at the rape crisis center in a large urban area. The kind of character assassination of accusers going on on DU is the same that was directed at me - by police (even though they knew I was telling the truth becuase they identified a dozen other women who were also the victims of the person who raped me), and at other women I've spent countless hours comforting over the years.
The accusers' stories ring true to me. As I noted, I've been in a nearly identical scenario - public, with someone I trusted and admired - who fondled my buttocks in a very public place when it appeared to everyone watchng that I was merely being hugged, under circumstances that made responding forcefully very emotionally/politicaly challenging. After the fact, until it became necessary, I was not inclined to drag it out into the open becaue the incident itself was relatively minor, on the scale of what I've been through in my own life. If I reported every sexual assault - they woud number into the hundreds. Ultimately, he and I talked about it - but before that (about 18 months later) I was forced to disclose it when the character flaw it represented became relevant to whether he should be appointed to a particular committee.
As to Franken's accusers, the only exception to ringing true to me is the comment attributed to Franken that he was entitled to kiss the penultimate accuser because he was an entertainer. That just isn't something I can imagine him saying. Perhaps not surprisingly, I had that reaction when i read her accusation - before I read his one and only categorical denial in this entire series of accusations (that he didn't make that comment).
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