Last night I was listening to an interview with an author who wrote a book on serial killer Ted Bundy. The worst of the worst in the serial killer hall of fame. He had audio from an interview he did with a woman who survived one of Bundy’s attacks.
She was a hitchhiker who foolishly got in Bundy’s car when he offered her a ride home. She got nervous when he took the wrong street and then parked in a secluded area. At which point he turned to her and said, “I’m going to kill you now.” What happened next was absolutely horrific.
I listened to this woman tell her personal story of what had to be the most traumatic event of her entire life. An encounter with evil that undoubtedly left deep psychological scars. Scars needing years to deal with. I noticed she was calm, unemotional and very matter-of-fact about what happened. She did not speak in a quivering, little girl voice. She did not act damaged and fragile. She talked like someone who had something horrible happen to her and moved on with her life. She sounded courageous and believable.
Unlike Christine Blasey Ford.
It then occurred to me I use to watch a television show entitled, “I Survived.” Every episode interviewed someone who survived an excruciatingly horrible event that almost killed them. It was literally a miracle each one lived at all. Many of the subjects interviewed were women who survived being brutally sexually assaulted by violent criminals. Many were stabbed dozens of times and left for dead in a forest, miles from help. These women somehow crawled out of the woods and were rescued. All of them had accepted death because it was clear they would not live to see their families again.
I don’t remember one of these women speaking in this fragile, “I’m a china doll about to break” voice or acting like they were some pathetic basket case who needed to be treated with kid gloves. The majority of had survived a crime from ten to fifteen years earlier. Not thirty-six. They indeed became emotional during their interview but only when reliving the most nightmarish parts of what happened to them. Each woman was CLEARLY in pain but maintained a certain level of dignity while recounting her tale of horror.
Once again, unlike Christine Blasey Ford. I would have found her much more credible had she dropped the entire “wounded bird” act and just spoken like the educated adult she is supposed to be.
At first, I was willing to give Dr. Christine Ford the benefit of the doubt. I think something terrible did happen to her but time and trauma have left her memory faulty. It’s not unheard of for crime victims to identify the wrong person as their assailant.