Some social media commenters are expressing doubt about Huma Abedin’s claim to have repressed a memory of a sexual assault by a U.S. senator for years.
SO WHAT
Americans are increasingly finding it hard to trust anything they read.
WHAT HAPPENED
In a forthcoming memoir, the former aide to Hillary Clinton says she “buried” the incident until her memory was triggered by sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018.
The assault allegedly took place sometime between 2001 and 2009, after a dinner in Washington D.C. attended by senators and aides, she writes in “Both/And: A Life in Many Worlds,” per The Guardian.
- Abedin recalled being “utterly shocked” and says she pushed the unnamed senator away.
- “Then I said something only the twentysomething version of me would have come up with – ‘I am so sorry’ – and walked out, trying to appear as nonchalant as possible,” she writes.
- Abedin claims she “buried the incident” with the senator, with whom she remained friendly, but says she was triggered after reading about Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford “being accused of ‘conveniently’ remembering” her alleged assault.
THE REACTION
On Twitter, some users expressed doubt regarding Abedin’s story, saying the timing of the revelations seemed “politically convenient.”
Others, including clinical psychologist David Ley, attacked the very concept of “recovered memories.”
- “Just a reminder that ‘recovered memories’ are both fictitious AND contagious,” Ley tweeted.
- And still others criticized Abedin for categorizing the incident as a sexual assault.
- “Huma Abedin claims to have ‘repressed memories’ of having been ‘sexually assaulted’ by an unwanted kiss after which the guy apologised,” tweeted Australian attorney and Twitter personality Gillian Dempsey. “If this is the standard of ‘wrong’ to bear that label, then society is making a mockery of serious sexual assaults.”
