I think I've said here before that I think "sexual harassment" is a bad name for what in many cases should be called "assault" or even "rape."
Oh, and let's be clear: Nothing in this post should be taken as excusing any unwanted sexual contact — even verbal — between two individuals, one of whom feels violated by it. A person who does that to another person is at the very least a creep and very possibly a criminal. To me, what Bill Cosby is said to have done is not, as some call it, harassment. It's rape and you don't deal properly with an unlawful act by describing it as something more innocent than it is.
But here, we may have the opposite problem. The headline says "George H.W. Bush Accused of Sexual Assault." See if you think what allegedly transpired warrants that term…
An actress has accused former President George H.W. Bush of sexually assaulting her in 2014 — and Bush has responded by claiming he was joking, according to Newsweek.
On Tuesday, actress Heather Lind wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post that the 93-year-old ex-president "touched me from behind" during a photo op three years ago before telling her "a dirty joke." Lind appeared with Bush as part of a promotion for Turn: Washington's Spies, a TV show about the American Revolution.
"He touched me from behind from his wheelchair with his wife Barbara Bush by his side. He told me a dirty joke," Lind wrote. "And then, all the while being photographed, touched me again. Barbara rolled her eyes as if to say 'not again'."
In a statement, a spokesperson for Bush apologized for the president's "attempt at humor." "President Bush would never — under any circumstance — intentionally cause anyone distress, and he most sincerely apologizes if his attempt at humor offended Ms. Lind," Jim McGrath, the spokesperson, told Newsweek.
What the former president did was rude and wrong in so many ways but I don't think it deserves to be described in the same terms one would use if he'd exposed himself to someone, forcibly kissed them or, to use a term coined by one of his successors in office, "grabbed 'em by the pussy."
Keep in mind, Mr. Bush did what he did while seated in a wheelchair, in front of his wife and a bevy of camerapersons. That is not usually where one decides to commit a sexual assault. It does suggest some kind of Senior Moment where perhaps one's elderly brain is momentarily not in total control of one's elderly mouth and hands, though obviously the spokesperson for Bush could not suggest this. (By the way, the article should have made something clear: Bush is a "93-year-old ex-president" now but this occurred in 2014 when he was 90.)
This allegation is not going to go anywhere. Bush will not be charged with a crime. The victim will not sue him. I doubt Bush's reputation will even be harmed in the slightest. Hell, he's now treated with a reverence that forgives all the pardons he dispensed to the Iran-Contra conspirators and what he did to the economy, as well as his appointment of Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. If none of that disgraced him, this won't.
But we shouldn't say he committed a Sexual Assault and got away with it. We need a term that differentiates the bad thing he did from what someone like Harvey Weinstein reportedly did. Punishments should fit the crime and so should the terminology.