From the New York Times are Michael barbarity is the day to day the accusations against Judge Cabinet have set off a national debate about how seriously to treat decades old allegations of sexual aggression. My Bettina one woman's experience. It's Thursday September twenty, given you brought your yearbook from home. One of my your books. Yes, what is it that nineteen? Seventy nine yearbook from which, from a high school I graduated

in long island, the Ark. What was I thought, I'd rather not fake. If I'm really protect Miss persons, identity, Cavan, man, again wrote about this period for life for the Atlantic magazine, Can you show me your photograph from your graduating area with interesting about my photograph? Is I forgot until I looked at it the other day that another thing I did after this happened? Was I cut my hair very short and it was the seventy. So we really warlike fair Ass, a kind of here- and I was really proud of my fair faceted hair- and I cut my hair and look. What do you think you cut off your hair? I you know, I dont think I consciously thought to do it, but when I look at that picture of myself, I'm in this

I turtle MAC with a sweater overhead and cut my hair. I think I didn't want to be as attractive as I could be. I think I wanted to be a little unattractive because it seemed a little bit dangerous to be a pretty girl and nineteen and and what about some of the inscriptions, some of the things that people have written to you in here. Ok, let me find it

Dear Caitlin, I'm really glad that I got to know you this year. Don't ever forget world literature and MRS Laundry, I wish you the best of luck in the future and everything you do. Levin friendship, Leslie, I dont remember her her. She doesn't remember me: are there any others? Ok, you really. I've really have not read any others since probably about nineteen, eighty, maybe Kate high. You were so lucky you're getting out of here. I wish I was remember all those outrageously boring times with Mr Linsky and all those tests that were so easy to fail for me anyway. So listen have a great life, live it up and have it is there a long island expression have a picture where they would always export this? They would

do not pass that have a pleasant stay. This sweet person that you are take care, love Laura. So it's funny because most of the people who wrote these inscriptions, I have no idea who they on, but there is one inscription of someone, I'm sure I'll remember for the rest of my life and I wondered if you could easily reach me. Ok, let me find it oh here it is in the free, dear Caitlin, I'm really very sorry that our friendship plummeted straight down hill. After the first few months of school, really. The blame rests totally on my shoulders. To tell you the truth. I wanted to say this all year. I know you'll succeed because you were very smart and I regard you with the utmost respect. Enjoy this summer for me, because I'll be, and then he mentions some arduous thing to do over the summer menaces take care.

Love. Always many signs it. Can you take me back to your senior year in high school at the school. What was it like to be Caitlin Flanagan? Then it was suggested an unremitting horror show. I grew up in Berkeley California, then, and there. My father took a job in long island and it was leaving home for me in your year and universal, very big, its really big. Moving, there's a lot of fiction for girls. That starts with a move that that's a very disruptive time. I are you there but it's me Margaret lines out that way of a big book from my youth. Go ass, gallus, there's just this idea!

that when you approved a girl, it's hard and in it really was hard and long island was truly one of those bedroom communities and it was very republican and it was just I always say it was like a John Hume movie before there were John Hume movies. This high school was a big high school. I mean well, there's the jocks. There's the nerds, there's the there's there the burn out so everybody within these sex, just as you see in the classic Highschool movies, but when you have not seen the closet, guys go moving, women's rope hasn't been invented and when you run the risk of not yet been it had not yet been made, I surely would have survived the year. Had I by seeing the breakfast club,

Do you remember your first day of school that Europe is now God? I don't think I remember what we're here is what our faces a you remember some kind of a trauma around well. What I really remember is some, so I always dreaded the lunch period and I was sitting at the table alone and there were these girls sitting at the table behind me and I thought that they had been like throwing peanuts at my back, but they hadn't and I became really angry and I picked up. Might

and I hurled at them. Why, and I didn't that the very fact that I didn't get in trouble for this. Just tell you what a weird unmonitored high school at while much her that's the most telling me about the story. It somebody you anticipated that everybody around you didn't like you that they were really throwing things. Ion. Yes, we're? U lonely this first couple of weeks and months, I was so lonely. It's like some emotions are so intense. They don't even read as that emotion is like depression like depression is so intense. It doesn't like sadness but yeah. I was profoundly lonely, but one of the pieces of advice that my when my good friends had given me when I left home I could. What am I going to do? I don't know anybody and she's got a boyfriend because the boyfriend will have friends and his friends will have girlfriends and then you'll have your hall group, and I think this is so

advice, so I noticed this guy. I thought he was a guy who might decide would be of highly suitable applicant for this position of my boyfriend man provider of social life to me said he would drive me home from school. I thought he was handsome and he was on. Quiet and I've all my life. I've decided that quiet man. I always thought that still waters were deeply running beneath that in some ways they just not that interesting but I had already decided that he was a very interesting person based on nothing and he was on one of the big teams soccer on long island really big and it may be used to lacrosse exactly with the cross, is really so he was going to drive me home and I thought that excellent, because this is the beginning of problem solved. So what do you say to this offer of a of a ride home hard? Yes,

one hundred percent- and I remember that we got to my parents house and I said, come in, come in and he did, but he was really has and then all of a sudden he was really adamant that we should leave we should leave, and I was thinking. Why should we leave my parents out here, which is rare, my panzer usually home? It was around, I don't know where they were and ways. He really wanted to get away from my house, and he said, let's go to the beach, and I said: ok and I'm from cows you're. So beaches are popular all year round, now authority, into autumn. It's called, and so we go to. The speech had been to the town of times that summer, with my mom cedar Beach and it is just totally desert and as a cloud had never occurred to me, they Lizzie early afternoon trade after school pie. Three

They are so an them always smoked a little part which is fine with me, and I remember him having a tan colored down jacket, I really am over there and then he and to me I remember what I really remember is like this really artless kids, just gonna plastered on my face and kind of backing away from it like love is not the way is not the script for this enchanted romance. That is beginning kind of that teeth, clunky kind of cancer, and I pull away from like hell. This is not your egg him. You know that no invigorate! I couldn't get this back on track Many gonna mashes into me again, and I guess gonna climbs over from the driver's seat to the passenger seat he climbed over the year has no cities is on top of your right yeah and I'm just gonna put

him the way I was used to being able to push a boy a way to give the message that I'm not into those and unlike. Why is he not getting them That is why I really remember my sixteen o had. This is weird not getting the message on pushing him, and now I'm even telling him oh and then I realized he is getting the message and he doesn't care about the message and that the message is not powerful. Like I know sixteen, I wasn't like sexually experienced, but I had like made out with boys or whatever, and I just thought if you were with a nice boy from your community. The message was enough, like I don't want to do that.

But I realized all of life, which is that there are men who don't care about the message in certain Gandhi and certain moments and eating care about the message, and then I just just as I have thrown the tray at the two poor girls who had not been telling me with peanuts. I just thought like Hell. I just fought like Hell. I was just like he's not doing this to me. You're, both curved, oh yeah, my clothes didn't come off he's trying to take them off by he's trying to get his hands on me, but I am really. I'm not having at a certain point he suddenly stopped and then he started the car and I remembered, was driving home in silence. No music is all wordless, its answer, yeah. I think I was yelling during it. What really I I don't know, I can't remember I just stop. What was that? What was that?

DR like silent. It was really silent with super awkward and I just felt tricks. I just really felt tracked. I felt like I thought, you lied to me. I thought that's why you would ask now you know- and I I should inject into this story- a weird thing to inject, but I was there. I was an attractive girl when I was young, so I thought its prey while he asked me on the date. So, even though I am not a job or in this, or that I have something to bring to the party of being worth dating, and I certainly read all these books, you wouldn't want to be with her at all those books. So on it was this obliterating event. In my life it had taken everything from a level of just constant misery to just a horrifying Fang. Almost like a shaming. It was like a shaming on this epoch level and then I still had issued.

Lab at school during next year would happen that the next day or the next time he saw an. I don't, have any memory. What I have memories of his being at home and becoming suicidal, that I remember you tell me, about. I just really I mean I would, as I say, I dont want in any way say that I was like I. I think we have established that I was not just some together teenager who then somebody tried to rate may and I fell apart. I was a very fragile teenager and someone did this and plummeted

and up and what I really remember was I got. I was good, it standardize testing and I got pulled out for some other special level of standardize testing and so like a whipped through the verbal and then the matter was deemed a touch. You know I just never do have big bore, and so I mean I couldn't do it and anyway they gave you like a sheet of paper that you could do. Your math show your work figure it out your mouth answers, and so I was using a sheet of paper to write my suicide.

And I was like a game and save these drugs, and only debt has. As you know, my mom has, as I do, that I'll do that and I wrote it all out and then the tests over and this guy he's collecting the paper and I'm gonna keep mine and he's like no, we have to account for all the paper, and I remember somehow, as it will give me a minute night. You know scratched everything out and I was more bombed out. My colleagues were really good plaid. I was living honing, the planned down here. How much did you own the plan? I attempted suicide that year, but it was a very was a very classic girls attempt to is more of a cry for help, attempt but sorry and how much of this was connected.

Directly to what happened in that car. Oh yeah under president was like that that that is it, and did you talk to anyone about what had happened now? I didn't tell anybody not any of your classmates on any of your teachers, not either of your parents. Because in your mind, to tell them that was to have affirmed their rejection, the shame the like here is more incoming news. Like me probably thought you were gonna lose your kid now we have some confirmation and what about the young man? Who did this to you? What was your understanding of the

packed it had on him. My understanding was it had no impact accept that he drove me home in that angry silent way. I didn't think it had any effect on him whatsoever in a continuous, for he got accepted two very prestigious institution. You know he seemed to be doing just fine yeah, and then he signs my yearbook. This very powerful inscription- and I remember having anxiety about which I have enough people to sign my yearbook, which there are these things, It is a seem so silly than banning of a year but and they carry such weight. Can I ask you Kalen Teresa, what he wrote one more time now that we know the story, we now ok, dear Caitlin. I'm really very sorry that our friendship plummeted straight downhill after the first few months of school. Really the blame rests totally.

My shoulders? To tell you the truth, I wanted to say this all year. I know you'll succeed because you are a very smart and I regard you with the utmost respect. Enjoy your summer, because I'll be miserable off doing this arduous thing. Take care. Less always many signs at yesterday's office plants don't match your needs of today, which we work

have the flexibility to future proof, their business, which is ideal for navigating uncertainty, whether you're looking to house dispersed teams, reconfigure offices or have flexible terms, we work can help you a day through change to learn more about, why a third of fortune, five hundred choose, we work, go too, we dot co, slash future. There's another chapter in your story that adds a new dimension to all of us of what happened with this boy. By about two: here's out of high school. I done very well in college. I was transferring to a really good college and I was home for the summer and I was working at a department store, which I thought was a really spiffy job to have Abraham Strauss eyes in men, sure that I got to measure than men's nag that agenda. That was really like.

Very senior position. Anyways. I was ringing someone up at my register and I kind of out of my poor. If rural vision, I saw someone approaching the cash register, but when I looked up they had gone and then the person came back it was this boy and he walked right up to make. As there was no one everything and he had tears in his eyes, and he said I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, and it was again it was it's totally weird place to do something like that and they really weird time. It was such a debate moment for him, but I know you know now: is working Marin been looking for a few days at me? I don't know, and it was such a long time and then I just kept saying it's. Ok, it's ok, I forgive you and it obviously had paid him a great deal that he had done, that they can tell he carried that emotion along time. Any really thought it through when he probably punished himself and harsh ways

I want to turn to right now and break haven't all given. Why do you think it was this story that compelled you tell your own story publicly? Well, I was so struck by the fact that you know she's a few years younger than me, but not many that even still she's haunted by this event and even still she's talking about her therapy, and I think I was thinking well. I had a similar, and why hasn't it haunted me, and I realized a lot of why I am not haunted. Is that this young man made such a perfect on complete apology to me and he took full ownership for what he did and he truly apologized and gave me an opportunity to forgive him, which is also powerful thing to give some one, and that allowed me to really lay to rest that I didn't have to spend the rest of us

life wondering the things I wondered senior year was it because I was an attractive not for smart enough for popular up. It was because he made a terrible mistake, so I didn't have to wonder the whole thing, and so you know if it's true that the judge did this to this woman. If it's true he's had an awful long time to make it right so you're hearing everyone talk in this moment about whether we hold someone accountable for their actions at the age of seventeen as a high school student- and you were thinking it's about, more than that. It's about how someone response as an adult I bet she would have loved to get a letter like the yearbook, but note that I got explaining that it was his fault, not hers,

and to say that he really saw her, and that was a beautiful thing about the note two or he said. I know you're, going to succeed because you're smart and I have succeeded- and I am smart. So I was able to lay at all to rest in decades decades ago and she hasn't done. I do wonder if an apology would have helped her, so he released you from this feeling that there was something wrong with you. He gave you permission to see it as his far right. I hear you kill in saying over and over and our conversation that the region, You were able to heal after this experience is because of the way that this young man later dealt with. What had happened and I cried, then he came back and he tried to make it right and he demonstrated to you that he had been tat. He had fall, not you and all the thoughts didn't he visited affected him

I have to say- and please forgive me if this seems like I'm overstepping in any way, but this conversation is left me feeling, like the expense It is still very real and very painful for you. Even if you have accepted his apology, wealth interesting, I mean, I think that horribly year is, is it now? We really regret the fact that it was my situation that year that you now, if I time travel back, very fragile, and that was just the horrible capstone of at all. So when I think of it as myself, now it's very healed, but when, really go back into that moment. It was a traumatized event. What does it say to you about someone who did something like this order? Is alleged to have done something like this?

And as an adult, they haven't done what your classmates did, which is acknowledged and apologize for it. I think what those men do is they put it in a cab? or of when I wasn't my best self or when I was young, and I was ashamed of how I was when I was young and then I grew up and I'm really proud of who I became now, and so they look at that girl or those girls. As the learning experience of when I wasn't, and I wanted to be, and now I am the person I wanna be, but the girls are still sitting with what you did to them and some of them have been sitting with it for decades. Can. Thank you very much for coming in here. Sharing office. Philosopher, really really pressure. Thanks for having me, I was sure they are the best Thank you

here's what else you need to know on Wednesday Democrats and Republicans forward competing narratives in the battle over how to proceed with Judge Cavanaugh Supreme Court. Confirmation Democrats continued to insist that it would be unfair to doktor Christine Blasi forward to hold a hearing without first conducting an FBI investigation. While I would let us out of this fact, therefore let the said it is a very good job,

Publicans, including president trouble said an investigation was not necessary and that Doctor Blasi should take the opportunity she'd been offered to testify at a Monday hearing alongside cabin. If that would be wonderful if she doesn't show up that what we are working on Wednesday, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck rashly gave Doktor Blasi of Friday deadline by which to decide whether she will participate in the Times reports that Senate Republicans seem increasingly convinced that they can confirm A cabinet with or without corporatist participation

That's it. I'm a global seated between two or cancellations lost, creative gags end shrinking out revenue. The covered nineteen crisis is making it clear that the system supporting creative people is broken. Patriarch offers a better way. We help creators make up lost revenue and build a more sustainable income source by offering the monthly membership to their fans. In turn, fans get access to exclusive community premium contents and the chance to become active participants in the work. They love check out, patriarch dot com now and help change the way art is valued,