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Maclean's
March 8, 1999

Rape and a President
by Andrew Phillips

Nick Auf der Maur, the late Montreal man-about-town and political gadfly, had a favourite line about the enduring popularity of the city's perennial mayor, Jean Drapeau. Montrealers, he used to say with a wondering shake of the head, would keep on re-electing Drapeau "even if he was caught at high noon with a greased goat in Dominion Square."

Drapeau, it turns out, had nothing on Bill Clinton. The mayor may have been a minor-league autocrat, but his public life was devoid of personal scandal. The President's private failings are all too familiar, and if the evidence of last week stands, there is just about nothing that will dent the American public's support for him. Something quite extraordinary happened, and the collective reaction was to shrug and look away. What happened was this: a perfectly credible, well-spoken woman with no evident political or financial motive went on national television and accused the President of the United States of raping her in the spring of 1978, when he was the young, on-the-make attorney general of Arkansas, campaigning to be governor. She didn't actually use the word "rape," so harsh and ugly, but that's what it was, if you believe her, so long ago in a hotel room in Little Rock. It wasn't an "inappropriate relationship," an "unwelcome sexual advance," or any of the other euphemisms that surround the Clinton presidency. It was rape.

The news media, after tiptoeing around the story for weeks, in some cases for years, finally reported the sordid details. The woman, known to investigators during the Lewinsky scandal as Jane Doe No. 5, is a 56-year-old nursing home owner in the town of Van Buren, Ark., named Juanita Broaddrick. Her story -- recounted to, among others, NBC News, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post and The New York Times -- is straightforward. She says she met Clinton in April, 1978, when he came to campaign at one of her nursing homes. He invited her to see him at his headquarters in Little Rock. When she contacted him on April 28, he talked his way into her hotel room, then started kissing her.

Here's Broaddrick's account, in an emotional interview with NBC: "I first pushed him away and just told him no. . . . The second time he tries to kiss me he starts biting on my lip. . . . Then, he forces me down on the bed. I just was very frightened, and I tried to get away from him and I told him no. He just wouldn't listen to me. . . . He was such a different person at that moment; he was just a vicious, awful person." On his way out the door, she said, Clinton put on his sunglasses, turned and, indicating her swollen lips, said: "You better get some ice for that."

Why believe her? Why even report it? In the post-impeachment climate of scandal fatigue and "let's move on," why care? The mainstream American media has found it an excruciating story to deal with. The problems with it are obvious -- starting with the fact that Broaddrick never reported it to the police and waited 21 years before speaking out. Her husband and three of her friends say she told them about the incident at the time and they saw her bruised lips, but there is not hard evidence that Clinton was even at the hotel when she was there. His lawyers say flatly that the allegation is "absolutely false." And indeed, early last year after lawyers acting for Paula Jones sought her out in connection with their sexual harassment lawsuit against the President, Broaddrick signed an affidavit denying the "rumours and stories" about her and Clinton.

And yet . . . the story rings true. Why should anyone be surprised that a woman would keep quiet about such an incident -- especially two decades ago, before rape shield laws prevented defense lawyers from ripping apart her character in court, and especially when the man she was accusing was the state's chief law enforcement officer? Signing the affidavit is no surprise, either: she did not want to be forced into the open by Jones's lawyers. Other women, notably Monica Lewinsky, have denied having sex with Clinton, then acknowledged the truth.

It was only when investigators working for independent counsel Kenneth Starr knocked on her door that Broaddrick agreed to tell her story, knowing that the legal consequences of lying to a grand jury are enormous. Her allegation was part of the huge "document dump" that Starr sent to Congress last year. Republicans decided not to pursue it during the Lewinsky impeachment trial, but they did urge wavering congressmen to read about it in a secret room on Capitol Hill where classified documents were kept. About a dozen took the trouble; nine of them voted to impeach.

Broaddrick's charge is unproven and, at this point, unprovable. The striking thing last week was that as the usual roundtables of pundits dissected the story, almost everyone, except for a handful of last-bunker Clinton partisans, assumed it was true. Feminists, among his most ardent defenders during the Lewinsky saga, did not rush to his rescue. Patricia Ireland, head of the National Organization for Women, called Broaddrick's story "particularly compelling" and urged people to "take her charges seriously." Richard Cohen, a liberal columnist for The Washington Post and a Clinton sympathizer, wrote in amazement that the ability of Bill and Hillary Clinton to float above such charges is "staggering" -- "the Clintons play by no rules. They have vanquished outrage." Newsweek's sole comment on the rape charge was an astonishing throwaway line: "Sounds like our guy."

Sounds like our guy? That's it?
Bill Clinton, it seems, has managed to change America's political culture more than anyone had ever imagined.