Cosby Victory Gives me Hope that My Story Won’t be Repeated

But,  almost exactly 30 years ago to the day,  something did happen to me that I hope Cosby’s conviction and the #metoo movement will render less likely.  In my final semester of law school at SUNY Buffalo I was denied a job at Georgetown Law school explicitly because I claimed that there was a power imbalance between men and women.

In spring of 1988, I was a finalist for a job at Georgetown University Law Clinic.  There was just one more hurdle for me to jump, before I would win a prestigious fellowship (I’m pretty sure it was this one: Link to the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship) where I would work half the year as a public defender and half the year as a prosecutor in Prince Georges County (just outside DC).  

As I prepared for my final interview, I was assured by the director of the program that no matter what happened, I would have a fellowship in the program.  They told me I was the top candidate for the fellowship and that no top candidate had ever not gotten at least one of the fellowships.  It was just a question of whether I’d be a public defender all year, or in this half and half fellowship with better funding and more prestige. 

E. Barrett Prettyman

The fellowship had been created and endowed by a group of successful criminal defense attorneys.  I don’t recall if anyone warned me that every single one of my interviewers would be male.  At age 26 I put on my 80’s style business suit and walked into that small conference room filled to the brim with over 10 middle-aged to older white men in power suits.  The director of the program, also male, was there too.  The outgoing female student who had encouraged me all along was not present.

The interview seemed to be going well.  Even at that age, I could hold my poise and self possession in public and under pressure.  I wasn’t quavering or consciously scared.  I answered their questions truthfully with a steady voice.

As I recall one of the lawyers noticed that I had something explicitly feminist on my resume–it could have been any number of things.  I was an editor of the Rude Girrl Press in college.  I created a choral reading of Attorney General Ed Meese’s multi-volume report on pornography in law school.  I don’t know what could possibly have tipped them off…

Someone asked if I was defending a man accused of rape, whether I would feel comfortable breaking down the so-called “rape shield defense.”  In 1994 President Clinton would sign The Violence Against Women Law into effect which would create a federal rape shield law but back in 1988 many jurisdictions allowed defense attorneys to introduce evidence of a rape survivor’s prior sexual behavior as evidence of her “consent” to rape.  Prince George’s County–the Maryland jurisdiction in which I would be practicing law–seemed to be one of the places in the country where you waive the rape shield law and introduce such evidence to help exonerate your client accused of rape.

I gave what I thought was a measured reply.  I said that while every defendant deserves the best defense possible, and while I would not scruple to defend a client accused of rape, if there was a way for me to defend my client successfully without dragging the victim’s sexual history into public, I would do that.

At this point the energy shifted in the room.  One of the men leaned forward and asked, “and why would you want to avoid that?”  

I said something about how the victim deserved to be treated with respect if possible as long as the client’s constitutional rights were zealously guarded.

Imagine being on the witness stand with a dozen skilled trial lawyers cross-examining you at the same time and you’ll get the flavor of how I was led (purposefully or not) down the path to the statement below.  

Suffice it to say that a series of questions later I ended up blurting out this justification for my intentions, “because of the power imbalance between men and women.”

Well you could have heard a pin drop in this room.  Every single man sucked in his breath and the interview was effectively over.

Later that evening the director of the program called to inform me that, contrary to their prior promise, not only would I not be getting the prestigious fellowship, I would not be given any of the other fellowships either.  “I think you and I both know why,” he said.

I said something like, “well, maybe I do, but I’d like to hear you say it out loud.”  He repeated my statement about the power imbalance and he said, “to say that out loud raised serious questions about your judgment.”

I didn’t argue.  Some part of me has always drawn the lesson that clearly he was right–it did raise questions about my judgment.  As a trial lawyer, you’ve got to know who your adjudicator is and you’ve got to be able to shape your words to achieve the right result.   How could I have thought, in 1988, that a room full of white older male trial lawyers would be able to hear “power imbalance between men and women” as something that would justify anything?  It showed that I was out of touch.  It showed that I was a hothead.  It showed that I didn’t understand the real world.

I’m sure that if I had not been the privileged white daughter of a leftwing activist college professor who taught classes like prison and third world literature or “Feminist Utopian Literature” and who went to a law school where we studied “feminist jurisprudence” and wrote papers entitled “Swinging on the Porn-dulem” I might have known that academia and the real world are two very different places.  But, evidently, I did not.

It’s fruitless to imagine what my life would have been like if I not made that “mistake.”  Rather than being a public interest lawyer lobbyist turned new thought minister, would I be a cut throat Maryland DA today?  Or an overworked public defender?  Who knows.

What I do wonder though, in the wake of the Cosby convictions and the #metoo movement, is whether today’s E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship applicants would a) face a room full of white men; b) have to pretend that there’s not a power imbalance between men and women to get the job; or c) whether today’s millennial women would put up with this the way I did?

That’s probably the most interesting question that never occurred to me until just now.  Today’s young lawyers would probably go public and drag the E. Barrett Prettyman Fellowship and Georgetown University team into the public eye for this comment.  They wouldn’t just change their entire career trajectory because a bunch of powerful men judged their comment unacceptable.  They would probably judge those men and their action to be unacceptable.

Bill Cosby’s victims, who despite the fact that they were drugged and raped by a show business icon persisted and came forward the mistrial and his millions notwithstanding.  They came forward to stop him from harming anyone else.  And they inspired me with what real courage is. It really shows me how I (born in 1961) really am not, as I like to joke, the first millennial.  I am a product of my time.  I am a feminist who was trained as an advocate, and yet I still couldn’t and didn’t advocate for myself.  #WeSaidEnough