The treatment of allegations of sexual assault against Supreme Court candidate Brett Kavanaugh is more than a conservative fight against a Liberal party over a high court seat.

The debate highlights how allegations of sexual assault are minimized and trauma victims misunderstood – even in the post-MeToo era.

On Sunday, Christine Blasey Ford claimed that Kavanaugh and a friend had taken her to a room where he had pinned her to a bed, wiped her, attempted to take off her clothes and put her hands on her mouth. to party. in the suburbs of Washington, DC, in the early 1980s, when he was 17 years old and she was 15 years old.

According to psychologists, playing since then is such a common pattern that it has an acronym: DARVO – or "Deny, Attack and Reverse Victim and Offender".

"When a survivor goes out and makes an accusation, whether it is a boy coming out and accusing a sexual assault by a priest, or a psychology professor accusing a Supreme Court candidate, the societal response in general is to deny this accusation, then to accuse the survivor of going out for all the wrong reasons or to lie or be insane, "said Joan Cook, Yale Trauma Professor of Psychiatry. "Most people, it takes them years to tell anyone."

More: The Senate Speaker, Grassley, said that he does not doubt that Ford believes he was assaulted

What has changed since #MeToo, is that rather than murdering a character, the attacks on Blasey Ford are less direct, calling into question her memory or lamenting that she has experienced something wrong. Horrible but suggesting that it is an error of identity.

Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told CNN that he thought Ford was "confusing something".

On Monday, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson told viewers, "Human memory is notoriously unreliable, especially over time, what were you doing on a drunken night in the spring of '82, you do not remember? than No. 36 years. "

"They will watch [Kavanaugh’s] career. They will look at what she had to say 36 years ago, "said President Trump.

The editorial board of the Wall Street Journal called him "an alleged case of adolescence, partially recalled 30 years later, without corroboration, and put forward to ruin Mr. Kavanaugh's reputation for partisan purposes."

But talking about aggression years or decades later is not uncommon, say the experts (Ford told a therapist in 2012). Sexual trauma can take years to unwrap, as victims usually choke their memory, minimize the event or deny it.

"This is not peculiar to Kavanaugh or anyone," said Kristen Houser, Public Affairs Officer at the National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC). "I think every time these conversations occur, American citizens decide to play the judge and the jury and graciously decide if the victim is credible even though she does not have any real training on the offender's dynamics. normal behavior, consistent and expected victims, including late disclosure, partial disclosure.It is normal.It is the most common thing that women do not report. "

Ford, who did not report the alleged crime when it occurred, called on Tuesday for an FBI investigation before attending a Senate hearing. Senate President Chuck Grassley issued a statement on Tuesday stating that there was no reason to delay the vote, and that Ford's invitation to testify at the scheduled hearing on Monday is still open. 39; news.

But in a letter sent Tuesday to Grassley and Senator Dianne Feinstein, the national task force to end sexual and domestic violence urged the Senate to refrain from "negative assumptions and judgments" reports. 39, sexual assault is not credible, attacking credibility because of gaps in memory and suggesting that the emotional presentation reflects credibility. "

Experts say that it can be difficult for people to understand survivors' memory deficiencies because of the well-grounded notions about how victims should behave, despite the prevalence of data.

"The research clearly shows that we have these scripts on how people act … but that does not mean that people are always adapting to these scripts, especially with issues as complex as rape and sexual trauma" said Katie M. Edwards. professor at the University of New Hampshire. "We know that there are so many reasons why people can have memory loss."

The shame and fear of not being believed has contributed to the fact that author and ex-lawyer Maria Leonard Olsen has not been talking about her own rape for 20 years. She finally told a close friend of high school decades later, who confirmed Olsen's account at USA TODAY, and then worked with a therapist.

"As a survivor of rape in high school by a boy who attended a Catholic children's school, while I was studying at a Catholic girls' school in the Washington area, [the Kavanaugh allegations] "It made me feel again," said Olsen, who wrote about his experience in his book "After 50: Reframing the Next Chapter of Your Life."

Olsen, who worked for the Justice Department during the Clinton administration, says it's a human issue, not partisan.

"I applaud Christine Ford for her breakthrough … I can not think of a single woman who wishes to relive such a painful experience," said Olsen. "What seems to be teenage indiscretion can have very lasting effects, for example, when my daughter has reached that age, I have become hyper-nervous and hypervigilant again.I am someone who does not sleep without doors. locked in. men in general, and these are lifelong effects of something that happened when I was not an adult. "

The way the Senate deals with Ford's allegations can be seen as a turning point, as does the testimony of Anita Hill.

"[Ford’s] According to her, her voice and her problem should not be dismissed, because it does not only do the individual a disservice, but it does a disservice to all women watching what is happening now. Women are returning to the shadows or encouraging women to seek the help they need for being injured decades ago. So I think that it is a critical point of the #MeToo movement and that it should be treated with a lot of attention. "

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