Well, well, well, look who had an affair outside of his marriage...Ken Starr.

[dalton99a]

16. Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me

https://medium.com/@judihershman/ken-starr-brett-kavanaugh-jeffrey-epstein-and-me-ba2dbf77b0da

Ken Starr, Brett Kavanaugh, Jeffrey Epstein and Me


Ken Starr and Judi Hershman

I had been on the bike trip through Tuscany in 2009. Early one evening while our spouses were at dinner elsewhere, Starr had stepped out from the shadows of the grounds of the inn where we were staying and called me over. After expressing his feelings for me, he pulled me into an embrace. This was the beginning of a fond, consensual affair that I had every intention of taking to the grave, even if it probably wasn’t an accident that I chose O’Brien of all my friends on that Croatia trip to send my text to during the Kavanaugh hearings. When I had drawn back from that first kiss in Italy, I noticed that O’Brien was looking at us from the balcony above. Though I can’t be sure O’Brien could see that Starr had taken my hand and placed it on his crotch, there can be little doubt that he saw the kiss Starr had initiated. And when I expressed to Ken my horror at having been observed, he had said, “It’s O.K., he understands.” Nine years later, I was reasonably sure O’Brien would relay my text message to Starr. ...

There was the time in January 2010 when I saw him in California — he was then dean of the Pepperdine University School of Law — and he asked me, if on my next visit to South Florida, I could extend myself to counsel a “very wealthy, very smart businessman who got himself into trouble for getting involved with a couple of underage girls who lied about their ages.” I confess I did not recognize Jeffrey Epstein’s name at the time, but I knew what statutory rape was and I couldn’t understand why Ken Starr would be involved with him. “Is this a church thing?” I asked. “Are you trying to ‘cure’ him? Why would you do this!” It did not occur to me that he might have been part of the legal team that executed a secret and egregious sweetheart deal for the convicted pedophile or that the stickler for details I knew Starr to be might be grossly undercounting the victims in question. “Everyone deserves representation, Judi,” he said, adding, “He promised to keep it above 18 from now on.” According to an alleged victim statement after the fact, the middle-aged, child molestor, Jeffrey Epstein, did not keep his sex with girls above the age of 18. ...

Our affair ran its course after a year or so of occasional encounters and a steady exchange of affectionate texts and emails. No fireworks, no drama. I remained his adviser and supporter and he mine and we continued to talk frequently. Later, when I was living and working in Texas, I tried to help him weather his beleaguered tenure at Baylor and then in 2016, when he was fired as a result of a rape scandal involving the college football team, I ran interference for him as best I could. It was a an interview I watched in 2020 with one of Baylor’s aggrieved accusers that helped me understand how I could have been blind for so long to the pattern of misogyny coursing through Starr’s career. Describing a meeting with Starr about her ordeal, she said that he shed a tear along with her, made her feel heard, but did nothing to help get justice for her or the many other female students who came forward with allegations. Unless you count what he said in one interview, “We grieve for what happened. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t say it’s a new day. That’s the biblical perspective that we try to live up to here at Baylor University.” Shamelessly and effectively, he shoved rape allegations under the carpet in the name of Christianity.

It took me 20 years to pull my head out of the proverbial sand, but I can see clearly now all the harm Ken Starr has done from the 1990s and now beyond as he reaches for Mike Pence’s presumed coattails. Seeing him lend his practiced piety to a president who lies so much that he was considered by his previous lawyers to be a walking perjury machine along with his sanctimonious “Religious Liberty in Crisis” campaign that he is presently stumping around the country, has made my story suddenly feel urgent. It’s not just the hypocrisy, it’s the damage Starr’s sham moral authority has done to — our nation, to our people, and remember those children his client separated from their parents and put in cages at the border?