{"id":200582,"date":"2021-02-26T19:09:00","date_gmt":"2021-02-27T00:09:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/02\/26\/of-course-he-did-4\/"},"modified":"2021-02-26T19:09:00","modified_gmt":"2021-02-27T00:09:00","slug":"of-course-he-did-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2021\/02\/26\/of-course-he-did-4\/","title":{"rendered":"Of Course He Did"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today in Republican Family Values\u2122 we discover that freshman Republican Madison Cawthorn spent his college years harassing women on campus<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Also I would note that you have to be pretty f%$#ing “Harassy” to get large numbers of women from a Christian college known for its reactionary politics (Patrick Henry College) to publicly complain your behavior means that it had to be pretty bad. <\/p>\n

When you add to the fact that you were doing so FROM A WHEEL CHAIR<\/b>, which both makes harassment both physically and culturally more difficult. (Lots of people believed that the disabled can’t do things like harass other people, because they do not see the disabled as real people) <\/p>\n

Also, he managed to do this in 1 semester, since he flunked out of his first semester. <\/p>\n

Still, it appears that Mr. Cawthorn wins the gold on this, which is ironic, since he was also caught lying about training for the Paralympics<\/a>: <\/p>\n

Madison Cawthorn arrived at Patrick Henry College\u2019s small Christian campus in northern Virginia in fall 2016 blazing with charm, bravado, and a flashing white smile. His former classmates said the future member of Congress would whip his white Dodge Challenger into the parking lot and regale his classmates with the story of how he survived a harrowing car crash as a teen, which left him paralyzed from the waist down and in a wheelchair for life. After his intensive recovery, he was older than most students \u2014 21 \u2014 and didn\u2019t fit the mold of the Christian and largely sheltered first-year students who chose the conservative school in Purcellville because of its commitment to God and rigorous academics. And, former Patrick Henry students said, it didn\u2019t take long for women on campus to start warning one another: You don\u2019t want to be alone with him, especially in his car.<\/p>\n

BuzzFeed News spoke with more than three dozen people, including more than two dozen former students, their friends, and their relatives, who described or corroborated instances of sexual harassment and misconduct on campus, in Cawthorn\u2019s car, and at his house near campus. Four women told BuzzFeed News that Cawthorn, now a rising Republican star, was aggressive, misogynistic, or predatory toward them. Their allegations include calling them derogatory names in public in front of their peers, including calling one woman \u201cslutty,\u201d asking them inappropriate questions about their sex lives, grabbing their thighs, forcing them to sit in his lap, and kissing and touching them without their consent. One of these women now works as an intern for another Republican member of Congress and passes Cawthorn in the corridors of the Capitol. According to more than a dozen people \u2014 including three women who had firsthand experience and seven people who heard about these incidents from them at the time \u2014 Cawthorn often used his car as a way to entrap and harass his women classmates, taking them on what he could call \u201cfun drives” off campus. Two said he would drive recklessly and ask them about their virginity and sexual experiences while they were locked in the moving vehicle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI realized he was taking me out to the middle of nowhere, Virginia,\u201d said Caitlin Coulter, a former classmate who went for a drive with him during her senior year. \u201cWe were on these small, like, one- [or] two-lane back roads, and I just felt so uncomfortable and nervous and not even something I think at the time I could put a finger on, but just, like, danger warning.\u201d<\/p>\n

BuzzFeed News sent Cawthorn a detailed list of allegations in this story. His communications director, Micah Bock, did not respond to the specific allegations but instead referred BuzzFeed News to remarks the young Republican had made during a campaign<\/a> debate in September: \u201cI have never done anything sexually inappropriate in my life,\u201d Cawthorn said. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Long before Cawthorn\u2019s persona as a poster child for the new right gained national traction, people who went to school with him at Patrick Henry College said they were stunned as they watched him ascend in the North Carolina race. They told BuzzFeed News they remember him as one of the only Trump supporters on their small conservative campus, where he developed a reputation for mistreating women at the school, according to more than two dozen former students.  <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

Then, in October, more than 160 members of the Patrick Henry community signed an open letter<\/a> detailing \u201cgross misconduct towards our female peers, public misrepresentation of his past, disorderly conduct that was against the school\u2019s student honor code, and self-admitted academic failings,\u201d including that Cawthorn \u201cestablished a reputation of predatory behavior.\u201d After the letter was published, Cawthorn told ABC 13<\/a> that it was based on rumors, and his campaign wrote in a Facebook post<\/a> that he had the endorsement of a \u201csignificant number of PHC alumni and former students who knew him well.\u201d The post was signed by just six people. Two worked for the campaign and a third was one of their relatives. <\/p>\n

\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n

But former classmates also remember Cawthorn as magnetic and ambitious, delivering almost-too-firm handshakes, buddying up with nearly everyone he met, and flirting with and befriending many women classmates. A former high school football player and avid athlete \u2014 his Instagram feed<\/a> is peppered with videos in which he claimed he was training for the 2020 Paralympic Games, which wasn\u2019t true<\/a> \u2014 Cawthorn exuded a jock persona at school, classmates said. He soon formed a small posse of guys, which seven former students told BuzzFeed News was known around campus as the \u201cthe douche crew.\u201d <\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And he managed this in the single semester that he was there.<\/p>\n

He was a very busy boy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today in Republican Family Values\u2122 we discover that freshman Republican Madison Cawthorn spent his college years harassing women on campus. Also I would note that you have to be pretty f%$#ing “Harassy” to get large numbers of women from a Christian college known for its reactionary politics (Patrick Henry College) to publicly complain your behavior …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[968,1051,978,1075],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-200582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-hypocrisy","category-politics","category-sex"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200582"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}