I have closely watched the ever-breaking news about the allegations against Supreme Court Nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh.  I was able to watch much of the testimony before the Judiciary Committee on Thursday.  And I am aware that I am seeing these events through a rather different lens than do most people.

I am a pastoral counselor and psychotherapist who has spent most of my adult life working in the field of intimate violence.  While I have worked with many victims, I have mostly done intervention with men accused of battering, incest, and/or sexual assault.  In the sex offender group I led in the 90’s we kept a seat open for Bill Clinton. It is from that experience that I have learned a way of looking at these events from a somewhat different perspective.

Many experts in sexual abuse have weighed in about the behavior of Dr. Ford.  She remembers some aspects very clearly and others not at all.  She has been hesitant to divulge experience which was clearly harmful to her.  Some who know her well never heard about this event.  These are all very common behaviors on the part of sexual assault victims.

But I haven’t seen any reflections from colleagues who work with offenders so I am offering my own.

Over the course of a nearly 40-year career I have interviewed at least hundreds and perhaps a thousand men who have been accused of some form of intimate abuse that was criminal in nature.   Not all of these men were people I believed were guilty of the accusations.  Some people are falsely accused.

Sometimes I am asked by local court services to do evaluations of accused and convicted offenders to assess their need for counseling intervention.  I have to be able to read sometimes subtle cues to determine what is going on in the mind of someone who is trying hard to convince me of what he wants me to believe.  It is this lens that I bring to the matter of the allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.

First let me say that the issue is not what happened.  It is largely unknowable to anyone who wasn’t there.  The issue is what is happening now.  The question is not, did he do it, but do we want him on the Supreme Court.  That he did some foolish and even perhaps mean things when he was a teenager doesn’t disqualify him.  We have all behaved badly.  The issue is whether he brings to the Court a perspective and attitude that will enhance justice in our nation.  What we thus look at is how he represents himself now.

Nearly everyone wants to be seen as innocent.  That he proclaims his innocence is not at all unusual.  I was initially surprised at the level of emotion he was willing to bring to the table because he is, after all, a judge.  But he was not being judicial.  He floridly expressed rage against forces that are conspiring to take away something to which he is entitled.  His assertion is that he is the one who is the victim here and that he is a good person.

One of the strongest markers by which to discern whether the accused believe they are innocent is the strength by which they insist that they are a good person.  Those who know they didn’t do it are not so motivated to make a case that they are a good person.  Their goodness is not at issue.  But when someone has done something which is clearly harmful to another and which they are eager to deny, they do it by countering that they are good.  “I am good, therefore, I could not have done this.”

Another marker is the degree to which they are curious about how it came to be that they have been accused.  There apparently are a couple of men who have come forward to claim they were the attackers.  Judge Kavanaugh was smart to not collude with them.  But he is not curious about how Dr. Ford became so convinced that he was her attacker.  Indeed, he didn’t watch her testimony.  Men who are innocent are curious about how they came to be accused.

And the third marker is that men who are innocent, or men who are guilty and repentant, are emotionally softer.  They respond with careful introspection to the questions they are asked.  When they are asked a question they haven’t thought of before they sit with it and mull it over.  When Judge Kavanaugh was asked a question he didn’t like, he gave an answer that was something he had already said, and in some instances, had said several times.  He had a game plan.  He had a strategy.  When someone wanted to go somewhere not on his map he would go back to what he wanted to talk about.

I can’t know what happened thirty years ago.  But I know that at the hearing of the Judiciary Committee Judge Kavanaugh appeared to me to be a man whose past was catching up to him and who was desperate to preserve the privilege that is his due.