The Virginia GOP announced Wednesday that the Virginia House of Delegates will not hold hearings, allowing the two women accusing Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax of sexual assault to testify under oath.
The GOP noted that the decision came after days of negotiation with Virginia Democrats, who they say did everything they could to prevent the hearings from happening.
“There should be no mistake about what has happened here: the alleged victims are seeking a bipartisan hearing; Republicans are seeking a bipartisan hearing; Democrats in the House of Delegates are refusing to allow that to happen,” Republican Speaker Kirk Cox told Fox News.
Virginia Republicans have already heard from both Vanessa Tyson, who says Fairfax forced her to perform a sexual act in a hotel room at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, and Meredith Watson, who claims Fairfax raped her while the pair were students at Duke University in 2000.
Cox released a statement after the two women had spoken to a contingent of GOP officials, stressing the importance of not allowing the women’s allegations to go unheard.
“For the last two days, we have watched excruciating first-hand accounts from two survivors of sexual assault who allege that Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax assaulted and raped them in separate incidents in the early 2000s,” Cox said in a written statement released to media.
“Over the course of the last few weeks, we have communicated with attorneys representing Dr. Vanessa Tyson and Ms. Meredith Watson,” he added. “Through those conversations, they have told us that Dr. Tyson and Ms. Watson are prepared to share their accounts at a legislative hearing, but only if there is bipartisan cooperation to conduct the hearing.”
Both women have told Virginia legislators that they want to testify, under oath, in front of the full House of Delegates, and that they are willing to answer questions about their encounters with Fairfaix, but both women say that they’d prefer to speak in a hearing organized by a bipartisan committee so as to appear as neutral on Fairfax as possible and to dispell the appearance of political motives.
Democrats justified their response to the GOP’s request by claiming that law enforcement is best suited to handle allegations of sexual assault.
“Law enforcement officials are best equipped to investigate these matters, and we certainly would not want to harm their inquiries or deny due process to either the complainants or the Lieutenant Governor by conducting a hearing that could easily be exploited for political purposes,” the Virginia House of Delegates minority leader said, according to Fox.
At least one Democrat did recall to reporters that Fairfax had been asked to resign, but no one appears to have followed up on that request.
The allegations against Fairfax had fallen beneath the radar for several weeks, but resurfaced this week after Tyson and Watson agreed to lengthy interviews with CBS This Morning’s Gayle King, where they both recounted the interactions with Fairfax in great detail. The show brought a renewed interest to Fairfax’s situation, as well as questions as to why the story had so easily slipped from the headlines.
Neither Fairfax nor Virginia governor Ralph Northam has resigned from their respective posts, even though Fairfax faced these credible allegations, and Northam is reportedly one of two men pictured in a very racist photo that appears in Northam’s medical school yearbook.