Virginia Lt. Gov. Fairfax accuser told friend at Stanford about 2004 sexual assault

The woman at the center of a sexual assault scandal involving Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax is a Stanford University fellow scheduled to appear at a symposium next week on sexual violence and the #MeToo movement.

Professor Vanessa Tyson’s allegations, stemming from an interaction at the Democratic National Convention in 2004, and the explosive political fallout echo those of Christine Blasey Ford, another university professor living in Palo Alto, who last year accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault when they were teenagers.

Tyson’s Stanford colleague Jennifer Freyd told the Bay Area News Group on Tuesday that sometime last fall, at the start of their fellowship program, Tyson told Freyd and a couple of other colleagues about the 2004 encounter at the Boston convention. Freyd doesn’t remember whether Tyson named Fairfax, but said that she spoke about it while “illustrating a concept” they were discussing about sexual violence.

“It was not that remarkable in that many times I’ve sat with colleagues and they talked about being victimized and how it fits in with what we are talking about,” said Freyd, a University of Oregon psychology professor who is part of the same Stanford behavioral sciences fellowship program with Tyson.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/02/05/virginia-lt-gov-fairfax-accuser-told-friend-at-stanford-about-2004-sexual-assault/amp/?__twitter_impression=true