Stephanie Saul and Sheryl Gay Stolberg

The woman, Meredith Watson, accused Fairfax of raping her in 2000 while they were students at Duke University, saying in a statement that his actions were “premeditated and aggressive” and demanding that he step down immediately.

Watson spoke out two days after Vanessa Tyson, a political science professor from California, said she was assaulted by Fairfax during the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.

By Friday night, Fairfax was facing a wave of calls for his resignation. Democrats in the Virginia House and Senate urged him to step down, saying he “could no longer fulfill his duties to the commonwealth,” as did the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, a powerful bloc within the General Assembly. Patrick Hope, a Democrat in the Virginia House, said he would introduce articles of impeachment on Monday if the lieutenant governor had not resigned.

The list of nationally prominent Democrats who have said Fairfax must step down includes former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Kamala Harris of California, all 2020 presidential candidates.

They were joined by Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who said in a Twitter statement posted at 11 p.m. Friday that the accusations against Fairfax “detail atrocious crimes.”

Fairfax has denied both accusations and said Watson’s was “demonstrably false.” He vowed he would not resign.

“I demand a full investigation into these unsubstantiated and false allegations,” Fairfax said. “Such an investigation will confirm my account because I am telling the truth.”

After days of intense pressure on the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general over past incidents when they wore blackface, the spotlight swung quickly to Fairfax, who only days ago had been preparing for the possibility of becoming the state’s second African-American governor if Gov. Ralph Northam bowed to calls to resign.

Virginia’s political turmoil is complicated by its history as the onetime heart of the Confederacy. Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring have admitted wearing blackface in the 1980s. Many Democrats have been calling for Northam to resign, but some have offered words of support for Herring.

There is no clear succession plan should Fairfax resign. The last vacancy occurred in 1971, when Lt. Gov. J. Sargent Reynolds died and a special election was held to fill the vacancy.

Still, Virginia Democrats have started discussing possible Fairfax replacements, with many mentioning state Sen. Jennifer McClellan. McClellan is a veteran African-American legislator from Richmond who is widely thought to have statewide aspirations.

Nancy Erika Smith, a lawyer for Watson, said in the statement outlining her client’s allegations that Watson was coming forward out of a sense of civic duty after learning about the allegation by Tyson.

“The details of Ms. Watson’s attack are similar to those described by Dr. Vanessa Tyson,” Smith said.

Smith provided an email exchange between Watson and a friend from Duke, Milagros Joye Brown, in which Watson tells her friend not to include her on correspondence regarding Fairfax because he had raped her in college.

In an interview, Smith recounted her client’s claim that Fairfax assaulted her during spring break in 2000 at the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity house at Duke.

“It was her sophomore year at Duke and his senior year, and they were hanging out,” Smith said. “They had never dated. She had dated one of his friends. They did not have a romantic relationship. He gets up and walks out. Comes back in. Shuts off the light and locks the door. She knew things were going south when he locked the door.”

Smith said that her client did not seek medical attention or go to police or the university administration, and that Watson perceived Fairfax as a politically influential figure on campus.

A college friend of Watson’s, Kaneedreck Adams, said in an interview that Watson told her she was raped the day after she said it happened, and named Fairfax as her assailant.

“She was upset, she was kind of crying quietly, and she said that she had been raped” by Fairfax, Adams said.

“I said, ‘Did you say no?’ and she said, no she couldn’t say no,” Adams said. “And she said she was trying to get out of there, get away, remove herself from the situation, and she said Justin kept pushing her down.”

Watson, who has worked as a fundraising consultant for nonprofit companies, would not be conducting interviews discussing her allegations, a spokeswoman said.

Before Watson came forward, Fairfax had been grappling with Tyson’s allegation and repeatedly insisting that he had been falsely accused and that no corroboration existed.

But in interviews with The New York Times this week, six people said that Tyson told them over the past two years that she had been sexually assaulted at the convention, and that her account was consistent with her public statement this week. The people said she provided varying levels of detail, but three of them said she identified the assailant as either as a lieutenant governor or a politician on the rise or specifically as Fairfax.

Two professors currently joining Tyson in a prestigious fellowship at Stanford told The Times that she recounted the 2004 episode with Fairfax to them last fall, saying he had sexually assaulted her.

“What she told us was pretty much exactly what was in the statement that she released but with vastly less detail,” said Elizabeth Armstrong, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan.

Another fellow, Jennifer Freyd, a University of Oregon professor known for her work studying sexual violence, also remembers the conversation, relaying that Tyson described how the incident was “clearly a traumatic experience.”

Tyson did not tell anyone in 2004 about the encounter with Fairfax, according to people close to her legal team, and she did not notify the police or file a complaint.

There has been an outpouring of encouragement for Tyson, 42, who has taught at Scripps College in California and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania over the last decade, and earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

More than 740 academics have signed a letter of support for her, according to its organizer, Nadia Brown, a political scientist at Purdue University who said Tyson also told her that she was assaulted. A GoFundMe account, set up by a political scientist at Menlo College in California, had raised more than $20,000 as of Friday morning.

“Everything she said in her statement was exactly what she told me when we talked,” said Diane Rosenfeld, a founding director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, who said Tyson told her of the alleged assault in December 2017.

“She’s not doing this for any fame,” Rosenfeld added. “She’s not suing him for money, so disbelievers and doubters can’t say, ‘Oh, she just wants money.’ She just wants, as she says, the Virginia voters to know who this person is.”

Tyson has declined to give an interview to The Times. She has said she was spurred to come forward by the realization that Fairfax might soon become Virginia governor.

In her statement, Tyson described a forced sexual encounter with Fairfax in a Boston hotel room while the two were working at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. It began with kissing that was “not unwelcome,” she said, but quickly escalated into nonconsensual oral sex.

At the time of the alleged assault, Tyson was volunteering at a Boston rape crisis center. She had helped start the center’s Survivor Speakers Bureau, where she shared her story about being sexually abused as a child.

In separate interviews Thursday and Friday, five friends of Tyson said she told them of the encounter either in late 2017, early 2018 or last fall. On Friday, after The Times published its article on Tyson’s supporters, a sixth woman came forward to say Tyson had also confided in her. Susan McWilliams, a politics professor at Pomona College in California, said that in a conversation around the time of Fairfax’s election as lieutenant governor in 2017, Tyson told her that he had assaulted her during the 2004 convention.

“I did not know who Justin Fairfax was,” McWilliams said. “And I immediately went home and Googled him.”

The Stanford fellowship Tyson began last fall is merely her latest academic accomplishment after a working-class upbringing in the Los Angeles area, the biracial daughter of a single white mother. Tyson graduated from Princeton in 1998 and would later tell The Princeton Alumni Weekly that she identified as African-American partly because that was the way the world saw her. “I am biracial, but I could not pass for white,” she said.

She would go on to obtain a masters and doctorate, both in political science, at the University of Chicago.

In a statement issued Thursday, Scripps College in Claremont, California, where Tyson is a professor of politics, confirmed that Tyson “shared with several members of the Scripps community the details about a 2004 sexual assault,” and that those conversations “are consistent” with her written account.

Friends describe Tyson as gregarious, and a mentor to younger scholars, particularly people of color. “Academics are socially awkward people,” Brown said. “We tend to be a lot more introspective and quiet and reserved, and she pulls people out of their shells.”

Freyd, the Oregon professor who is also doing a fellowship at Stanford, said that she and Tyson have become close despite having known each other for only a few months. On Thursday, Freyd joined 35 other fellows at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to support her.

Next Tuesday, Tyson and Freyd are planning a symposium at Stanford — arranged well before Tyson disclosed her allegations. It is titled “Betrayal and Courage in the Age of #MeToo.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/08/us/politics/tyson-fairfax-sexual-assault.html" id="8f479baf-cc01-3172-a120-56453d0f4995">The New York Times</a>.

Justin Fairfax Faces Eroding Support From Democrats After New Accuser Speaks

A second woman came forward Friday with claims that she had been sexually assaulted by Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia, intensifying the weeklong political crisis in the state and leading top fellow Democrats to call for Fairfax to resign.

The woman, Meredith Watson, accused Fairfax of raping her while they were students at Duke University in 2000, saying in a statement that his actions were “premeditated and aggressive” and demanding that he resign immediately. Watson spoke out two days after Vanessa Tyson, a political science professor from California, said she was assaulted by Fairfax in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

By Friday evening, Fairfax was facing a wave of calls for his resignation. Democrats in the Virginia House and Senate urged him to step down, saying he “could no longer fulfill his duties to the commonwealth,” as did the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, a powerful bloc within the General Assembly. Patrick Hope, a Democrat in the Virginia House, said he would introduce articles of impeachment against Fairfax on Monday if the lieutenant governor had not resigned by then.

Fairfax, in a statement, denied all of the allegations and called the latest one “demonstrably false.” He vowed he would not resign.

After days of intense pressure on the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general over past incidents when they wore blackface, the spotlight has swung quickly to Fairfax, who only days ago had been preparing for the possibility of becoming the state’s second African-American governor if Gov. Ralph Northam bowed to calls to resign.

Now Fairfax is facing those demands himself, in Virginia and nationally: After Watson’s allegation became public, prominent Democrats — including former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia and Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand and Kamala Harris, all 2020 presidential candidates — said Fairfax should step down.

“The allegations against Justin Fairfax are serious and credible,” McAuliffe said. “It is clear to me that he can no longer effectively serve the people of Virginia as lieutenant governor.”

For Virginia Democrats and national party leaders, the political turmoil in the state is complicated by its racist history as the onetime heart of the Confederacy. Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring are both white men who have admitted wearing blackface in the 1980s. Many Democrats have been calling for Northam to resign, but some have been offering words of support for Herring.

Virginia Democrats late Friday were already discussing who could replace Fairfax, with many in the party turning to state Sen. Jennifer McClellan, according to multiple Democrats in the state. McClellan is a veteran African-American legislator from Richmond who was widely thought to have statewide aspirations even before the events of the past week.

In an interview, Smith recounted her client’s claim that Fairfax assaulted her during spring break in 2000 in a room at the house of Alpha Phi Alpha, an African-American fraternity at Duke.

Smith would not give details of the alleged sexual assault. Smith said that her client did not seek medical attention or go to police or the university administration, and that Watson perceived Fairfax as a politically influential figure on campus.

A college friend of Watson’s, Kaneedreck Adams, said in an interview Friday that Watson told her she was raped the day after she said it happened, and named Fairfax as her assailant.

Adams said that she went to visit Watson at her apartment and that “she was upset, she was kind of crying quietly and she said that she had been raped” by Fairfax.

Adams recounted questioning Watson about what happened.

Karen Kessler, a spokeswoman for Watson, said Watson is not planning on litigation or seeking financial compensation. She said Watson, who has worked as a fundraising consultant for nonprofit companies, would not be conducting interviews discussing her allegations.

Before Watson came forward, Fairfax had been grappling with Tyson’s allegation and repeatedly insisting that he had been falsely accused and that no corroboration existed. But in recent days, friends and colleagues of Tyson’s have come forward to support her.

In interviews with The New York Times this week, six people said that Tyson told them over the past two years that she had been sexually assaulted at the convention, and that her account was consistent with her public statement this week. The people said she provided varying levels of detail, but three of them said she identified the assailant as Fairfax, a lieutenant governor, or a politician on the rise.

Tyson did not tell anyone in 2004 about the encounter with Fairfax, according to people close to her legal team, and she did not notify the police or file a complaint with them.

But throughout academia, there has been an outpouring of encouragement for Tyson, 42, who has taught at Scripps College in California and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania over the last decade, and earned a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago.

In her statement, Tyson described a forced sexual encounter with Fairfax in a Boston hotel room while the two were working at the Democratic National Convention. It began with kissing that was “not unwelcome,” she said, but quickly escalated into nonconsensual oral sex.

At the time of the alleged assault, Tyson was already volunteering at a Boston rape crisis center. She had helped start the center’s Survivor Speakers Bureau, where she shared her story about being sexually abused as a child.

The distinguished Stanford fellowship Tyson began last fall is merely her latest rung up the academic ladder after a working-class upbringing in the Los Angeles area, the biracial daughter of a single white mother. Tyson graduated from Princeton in 1998 and would later tell the Princeton Alumni Weekly that she identified as African-American partly because that was the way the world saw her. “I am biracial, but I could not pass for white,” she said.

In a statement issued Thursday, Scripps College in Claremont, California, where Tyson is a professor of politics, confirmed that Tyson “shared with several members of the Scripps community the details about a 2004 sexual assault,” and said that those conversations “are consistent” with her written account.

Friends describe Tyson as gregarious, and a mentor to younger scholars, particularly people of color. “Academics are socially awkward people,” Nadia Brown said. “We tend to be a lot more introspective and quiet and reserved, and she pulls people out of their shells.”

Freyd, the Oregon professor who is also doing a fellowship at Stanford, said that she and Tyson had become close despite having known each other for only a few months. On Thursday, Freyd joined 35 other fellows at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to support her.

Virginia's Lt. Gov. Faces 2nd Claim of Sex Assault

A second woman came forward Friday with claims that she had been sexually assaulted by Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia, intensifying the weeklong political crisis in the state and leading some top fellow Democrats to call for Fairfax to resign.

By Friday evening, Fairfax was facing a wave of calls for his resignation. Democrats in the Virginia House and Senate urged him to step down, saying he “could no longer fulfill his duties to the commonwealth.” Patrick Hope, a Democrat in the Virginia House, said he would introduce articles of impeachment against Fairfax on Monday if the lieutenant governor had not resigned by then.

Fairfax, in a statement issued Friday evening, denied all of the allegations and called the latest one “demonstrably false.” He vowed he would not resign.

Now Fairfax is facing those demands himself: After Watson’s allegation became public Friday, three prominent Democrats — former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, both 2020 presidential candidates — said Fairfax should step down.

On Thursday night, the state’s two Democratic senators, several members of Congress from Virginia and some 2020 Democratic presidential candidates called for an investigation into Tyson’s allegation against Fairfax. The New York Times published accounts from six people Friday who said that Tyson had told them over the last two years that she had been sexually assaulted by Fairfax.

Smith would not describe details of the alleged sexual assault. Smith said that her client did not seek medical attention or go to police or the university administration, and that Watson perceived Fairfax as a politically influential figure on campus.

In interviews with The Times this week, six people said that Tyson told them over the last two years that she had been sexually assaulted at the convention, and that her account was consistent with her public statement this week. The people said she provided varying levels of detail, but three of them said she identified the assailant as Fairfax, a lieutenant governor, or a politician on the rise.

“What she told us was pretty much exactly what was in the statement that she released but with vastly less detail,” said Elizabeth A. Armstrong, a sociology professor at the University of Michigan.

Another fellow, Jennifer J. Freyd, a University of Oregon professor known for her work studying sexual violence, also remembers the conversation, relaying that Tyson described how the incident was “clearly a traumatic experience.”

More than 740 academics have signed a letter of support for her, according to its organizer, Nadia E. Brown, a political scientist at Purdue University who said Tyson also told her that she was assaulted. A GoFundMe account, set up by a political scientist at Menlo College in California, had raised more than $20,000 as of Friday morning.

“Everything she said in her statement was exactly what she told me when we talked,” said Diane L. Rosenfeld, a founding director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, who said Tyson told her of the alleged assault in December 2017.

In separate interviews Thursday and Friday, five friends of Tyson said she told them of the encounter either in late 2017, early 2018 or last fall. On Friday, after The Times published its article on Tyson’s supporters, a sixth woman came forward to say Tyson had also confided in her. Susan J. McWilliams, a politics professor at Pomona College in California, said that in a conversation around the time of Fairfax’s election as lieutenant governor in 2017, Tyson told her that he had assaulted her during the 2004 convention.

The distinguished Stanford fellowship Tyson began last fall is merely her latest rung up the academic ladder after a working class upbringing in the Los Angeles area, the biracial daughter of a single white mother. Tyson graduated from Princeton in 1998 and would later tell the Princeton Alumni Weekly that she identified as African-American partly because that was the way the world saw her. “I am biracial, but I could not pass for white,” she said.

In a statement issued Thursday, Scripps College in Claremont, California, where Tyson is a professor of politics, confirmed that Tyson “shared with several members of the Scripps community the details about a 2004 sexual assault,” and said those conversations “are consistent” with her written account.

The woman, Meredith Watson, accused Fairfax of raping her while they were students at Duke University in 2000, saying in a statement that his actions were “premeditated and aggressive” and demanding that he resign immediately. Watson spoke out two days after Vanessa Tyson, a political-science professor at Scripps College, said she was assaulted by Fairfax in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Late Friday, Patrick Hope, a Democrat in the Virginia House, said he would introduce articles of impeachment against Fairfax on Monday if the lieutenant governor had not resigned by then.

Fairfax, in a statement issued Friday evening, denied all the allegations and called the latest one “demonstrably false.” He vowed he would not resign.

“I will clear my good name,” he added.

After days of intense pressure on the state’s Democratic governor and attorney general over past incidents when they wore blackface, the spotlight has swung quickly to Fairfax, who only days ago had been preparing for the possibility of replacing Gov. Ralph Northam and becoming the state’s second African-American governor if Northam bowed to calls to resign.

Now Fairfax is facing those demands himself: After Watson’s allegation became public Friday, three Democrats — former Gov. Terry McAuliffe of Virginia and Sens. Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, both 2020 presidential candidates — said Fairfax should step down.

For Virginia Democrats and national party leaders, the political turmoil in the state is complicated by issues of race and the state’s racist history as the onetime heart of the Confederacy. Northam and Attorney General Mark Herring are both white men who have admitted wearing blackface in the past. Many Democrats have been calling for Northam to resign, but some have been offering words of support for Herring.

If Northam resigns, Fairfax is next in line to become governor. If Northam and Fairfax were to resign, Herring would become governor.

On Thursday night, the state’s two Democratic senators, several members of Congress from Virginia and some 2020 Democratic presidential candidates called for an investigation into Tyson’s allegation against Fairfax. The New York Times published accounts from five people Friday who said that Tyson had told them over the last two years that she had been sexually assaulted by Fairfax.

Rep. Jennifer Wexton, a Northern Virginia Democrat who was elected to Congress last year, offered Fairfax no support Friday.

“I believe Dr. Vanessa Tyson,” she wrote on Twitter. “I believe Meredith Watson. And I believe Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax must resign.”

Nancy Erika Smith, a lawyer for Watson, said in the statement outlining her client’s allegations that Watson was coming forward out of a sense of civic duty after learning about allegations by Tyson.

“The details of Ms. Watson’s attack are similar to those described by Dr. Vanessa Tyson,” said the statement from Smith.

Smith would not describe details of the alleged sexual assault. Smith said her client did not seek medical attention or go to police or the university administration, saying Watson perceived Fairfax as a politically influential figure on campus.

A college friend of Watson’s, Kaneedreck Adams, said in an interview that Watson had told her of the rape the day after it happened, in the spring of 2000, and named Fairfax as her assailant.

Kaneedreck said she went to visit Adams at her apartment and “she was upset, she was kind of crying quietly and she said that she had been raped.” She named Fairfax, who Kaneedreck also knew; the three were part of a relatively small and close-knit community of black students at Duke, Adams said.

“I said, ‘Did you say no?’ and she said, no she couldn’t say no,” Adams said. “And she said she was trying to get out of there, get away, remove herself from the situation and she said Justin kept pushing her down.”

Adams declined to provide further details, but said the alleged assault did not take place not during a party.

Karen Kessler, a spokeswoman for Watson, said in an interview that she is not planning on litigation or seeking financial compensation.

She said Watson, who graduated from Duke a year after Fairfax and has worked as a fundraising consultant for nonprofit companies, would not be conducting any interviews discussing her allegations.

Two professors currently joining Tyson in a prestigious fellowship at Stanford told The Times that she recounted the episode with Fairfax to them last fall, saying he had sexually assaulted her.

“What she told us was pretty much exactly what was in the statement that she released but with vastly less detail,” said Elizabeth A. Armstrong.

Another fellow, Jennifer J. Freyd, a University of Oregon professor known for her work in sexual violence, also remembers the conversation, relaying how Tyson described how the incident was “clearly a traumatic experience.”

In interviews with The Times this week, five people said Tyson told them over the past two years that she had been sexually assaulted in an encounter at the convention, and that her account was consistent with her public statement this week. The people said she provided varying levels of detail to them, but three of them said she identified the assailant as Fairfax, a lieutenant governor, or a politician on the rise.

On Friday, after The Times published its article on Tyson’s supporters, a sixth woman came forward to say Tyson had also confided in her. Susan J. McWilliams, a professor of politics at Pomona College in California, said that in a conversation around the time of Fairfax’s election as lieutenant governor in 2017, Tyson told her he assaulted her during the 2004 convention.

“I did not know who Justin Fairfax was,'’ McWilliams said. “And I immediately went home and Googled him.”

Tyson did not tell anyone in 2004 about the encounter with Fairfax, according to people close to her legal team, and she did not notify or file a complaint with police.

More than 740 academics have signed a letter of support for her, according to its organizer, Nadia E. Brown, a political scientist at Purdue University who said Tyson also told her of the assault. A GoFundMe account, set up by a political scientist at Menlo College in California, had raised more than $20,000 as of Friday morning. A hashtag has sprung up on Twitter: #IBelieveVanessa.

“Everything she said in her statement was exactly what she told me when we talked,” said Diane L. Rosenfeld, a founding director of the Gender Violence Program at Harvard Law School, who said Tyson told her of the assault in December 2017.

Tyson’s account was also partly corroborated late Wednesday by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., whose aides said Tyson told the congressman a year ago that she had made an allegation of sexual assault against Fairfax, without offering details.

Tyson has declined to give an interview to The Times. She has said she was spurred to come forward by the realization that Fairfax might soon become Virginia governor. That possibility arose after the disclosure last week of a racist photograph on Northam’s medical school yearbook page, and his subsequent admission that he had once blackened his face as part of a Michael Jackson costume, leading to widespread calls for him to resign.

She asked for privacy, insisting that she wanted to resume her life as an academic and professor. “I do not want to get embroiled in this highly charged political environment,” she wrote in the statement.

At the time of the alleged assault, Tyson was already volunteering at a Boston rape crisis center. She had helped start the center’s Survivor Speakers Bureau, where she shared her story about being sexually abused as a child. She also started a self-esteem program for female juvenile offenders in Massachusetts, according to a biography posted on her personal webpage.

Her work at the rape crisis center made her attack feel “especially degrading,” she said in her statement. She said she did not speak of it for years because she felt “deep humiliation and shame.”

In separate interviews Thursday and Friday, five friends of Tyson said she told them of the encounter either in late 2017, early 2018 or last fall. One, a mutual friend of Tyson and Fairfax, who asked not to be named to protect his own privacy, said he dated Tyson in the late 1990s and believed her account. Given her experience with abuse as a child, he said, she was not the type of person to become intimate in the way she described with someone she had just met.

The distinguished Stanford fellowship she began last fall is merely the latest rung up the academic ladder for Tyson, who had a working class upbringing in the Los Angeles area, the biracial daughter of a single white mother. Her mother often took her to Los Angeles Dodgers games when she was growing up, buying cheap tickets for seats in the bleachers, and today Tyson remains an avid fan.

Tyson graduated from Princeton in 1998 and would later tell the Princeton Alumni Weekly that she identified as African-American partly because that was the way the world saw her. “I am biracial, but I could not pass for white,” she said.

Now a professor of politics at Scripps College in Claremont, California, Tyson is also the author of a book, “Multiracial Coalitions and Minority Representation in the US House of Representatives,” published in 2016.

In a statement issued Thursday, the college confirmed that Tyson “shared with several members of the Scripps community the details about a 2004 sexual assault,” and said those conversations “are consistent” with her written account.

Freyd, the Oregon professor who is also doing a fellowship at Stanford, said she and Tyson have become close despite having known each other only a few months. On Thursday, Freyd joined 35 other fellows at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences to support her.

“We are incredibly proud to call Vanessa Tyson a colleague,” their statement said. “We know her to be a thoughtful scholar of integrity and compassion and stand with her in this difficult time.”

Second Woman Accuses Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia of Sexual Assault

The statement released by a lawyer for the woman, Meredith Watson, said her client was coming forward out of a sense of civic duty after learning about allegations disclosed earlier this week by Vanessa Tyson, a political-science professor at Scripps College, who said she was assaulted by Fairfax in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention.

“The details of Ms. Watson’s attack are similar to those described by Dr. Vanessa Tyson,” said the statement, released by Nancy Erika Smith, a New Jersey lawyer representing Watson. The statement described the rape as “premeditated and aggressive.”

The disclosure comes two days after Tyson issued a statement providing a detailed account of the episode with Fairfax. Her allegations deepened the political leadership crisis in Virginia, where the governor and attorney general are facing calls to resign after admitting in recent days that they donned blackface as younger men. Fairfax has denied he ever assaulted Tyson.

In a statement issued shortly after Watson came forward, Fairfax issued another denial, calling the allegation “demonstrably false” and vowing that he would not resign.

“I demand a full investigation into these unsubstantiated and false allegations,” he said. “Such an investigation will confirm my account because I am telling the truth.”

“She has been concerned and angered by what she’s been reading about another victim so she decided to tell her story,” Kessler said.

Kessler is a New Jersey-based public relations consultant and has worked on other sexual misconduct cases with Smith.

As Tyson’s allegations roiled Virginia politics this week, her friends and colleagues have come forward to support her. Two professors currently joining Tyson in a prestigious fellowship at Stanford told The New York Times that she recounted the episode with Fairfax to them last fall, saying he had sexually assaulted her.

Another fellow, Jennifer J. Freyd, a University of Oregon professor known for her work in sexual violence, also remembers the conversation, relaying how Tyson described the incident was “clearly a traumatic experience.”

Fairfax has vigorously denied Tyson’s account, which she laid out publicly in a statement her lawyers issued Wednesday. His ability to stay on as lieutenant governor now appears more precarious, with leading Democrats — including Virginia’s legislative black caucus and some members of the Congressional Black Caucus — calling for an investigation and bracing for more details about the accusation.

Tyson has declined to give an interview to The Times. She has said she was spurred to come forward by the realization that Fairfax might soon become Virginia governor. That possibility arose after the disclosure last week of a racist photograph on Gov. Ralph Northam’s medical school yearbook page, and his subsequent admission that he had once blackened his face as part of a Michael Jackson costume, leading to widespread calls for him to resign.

Tyson’s personal story has also lately merged with her professional life. Fellow academics say that especially since the 2016 election, and with the rise of the #MeToo movement, she has been thinking about sexual assault in the context of political science.

Last year, after a prominent political scientist in the Midwest was accused of sexual harassment by a former student, Tyson became part of a collective of feminist political scientists that called itself #MeTooPoliSci, said Brown of Purdue, one of the group’s organizers.

The group, dedicated to addressing harassment and imbalances of power within the political science field, mounted a letter-writing campaign and silent protests, and raised money to pay for victims’ legal expenses, Brown said. It also issued the letter of support for Tyson this week.

“In addition to being political scientists,” its authors wrote, “many of us are also scholars of the politics of race, gender, and sexuality, and as such, we recognize the all-too-familiar tropes that are being deployed to try to shame, silence, and delegitimize Dr. Tyson.”

“I really see her as speaking truth to power,” Brown said. Referring to Tyson’s openness about her childhood experience, she added: “She’s sharing her story pretty much in a matter-of-fact way. She doesn’t pull you aside to tell you what happened; she doesn’t talk about it in hushed tones. She owns it.”

Bernard Fraga, an assistant professor of political science at Indiana University, said Tyson mentored him after they met at political science conferences.

“It was very clear that she was an advocate for young scholars especially,” he said, as well as for “minority scholars of color who were often marginalized in our discipline.”

A second woman came forward Friday with claims that she had been sexually assaulted by Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, alleging that he raped her while they were students at Duke University in 2000 and demanding that he resign immediately.

The statement released by a lawyer for the woman, Meredith Watson, said her client was coming forward out of a sense of civic duty after learning about allegations disclosed this week by Vanessa Tyson, a political-science professor at Scripps College, who said she was assaulted by Fairfax in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention.

“She has been concerned and angered by what she’s been reading about another victim so she decided to tell her story,” said Kessler.

As Tyson’s allegations roiled Virginia politics this week, friends and colleagues of hers have come forward to support her. Two professors currently joining Tyson in a prestigious fellowship at Stanford told The New York Times that she recounted the episode with Fairfax to them last fall, saying he had sexually assaulted her.

Fairfax has vigorously denied Tyson’s account.

“What she told us was pretty much exactly what was in the statement that she released but with vastly less detail,” said Dr. Elizabeth A. Armstrong.

The statement released by a lawyer for Meredith Watson — who sent a letter to Virginia lawmakers — said Watson was coming forward out of a sense of civic duty after learning about allegations disclosed this week by Vanessa Tyson, a political-science professor at Scripps College, who said she was assaulted by Fairfax in 2004 during the Democratic National Convention.

As several fellows shared lunch on a patio, Tyson expressed the sense of having been blindsided by her assailant, a man she worked with at the 2004 Democratic National Convention whose political career had since taken off, according to Elizabeth A. Armstrong, a professor of sociology at the University of Michigan who was part of the lunch group.

“What she told us was pretty much exactly what was in the statement that she released but with vastly less detail,” said Armstrong, a fellow in the Stanford program.

Several months later, Tyson’s allegation that she was attacked by Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia during the 2004 convention has roiled politics in Virginia and deepened the state’s leadership crisis. The governor and attorney general are facing calls to resign after admitting in recent days that they donned blackface as younger men in separate incidents.

In interviews with The New York Times this week, five people said that Tyson told them over the last two years that she had been sexually assaulted in an encounter at the convention, and that her account was consistent with her public statement this week. The people said she provided varying levels of detail to them, but three of them said she identified the assailant as Fairfax, a lieutenant governor, or a politician on the rise.

In her statement, Tyson described a forced sexual encounter with Fairfax in a Boston hotel room while the two were working at the Democratic National Convention in 2004. It began with kissing that was “not unwelcome,” she said, but quickly escalated into non-consensual oral sex.

Last fall, after Vanessa Tyson began a prestigious fellowship at Stanford, she told a gathering of colleagues in a behavioral sciences program that she had been sexually assaulted years earlier, citing personal experience to illustrate a larger point involving sexual violence.

Vanessa Tyson Draws Support for Assault Allegation Against Justin Fairfax

<h1>The woman, Meredith Watson, accused Fairfax of raping her in 2000 while they were students at Duke University, saying in a statement that his actions were “premeditated and aggressive” and demanding that he step down immediately.</h1>

By Friday night, Fairfax was facing a wave of calls for his resignation. Democrats in the Virginia House and Senate urged him to step down, saying he “could no longer fulfill his duties to the commonwealth,” as did the Virginia Legislative Black Caucus, a powerful bloc within the General Assembly. Patrick Hope, a Democrat in the Virginia House, said he would introduce articles of impeachment Monday if the lieutenant governor had not resigned.

But in interviews with The New York Times this week, six people said that Tyson told them over the past two years that she had been sexually assaulted at the convention and that her account was consistent with her public statement this week. The people said she provided varying levels of detail, but three of them said she identified the assailant as either a lieutenant governor or a politician on the rise or specifically as Fairfax.

There has been an outpouring of encouragement for Tyson, 42, who has taught at Scripps College in California and Dickinson College in Pennsylvania over the past decade, and earned a master’s and doctorate in political science from the University of Chicago.

In separate interviews Thursday and Friday, five friends of Tyson said she told them of the encounter in late 2017, early 2018 or last fall. On Friday, after The Times published its article on Tyson’s supporters, a sixth woman came forward to say Tyson had also confided in her. Susan McWilliams, a politics professor at Pomona College in California, said that in a conversation around the time of Fairfax’s election as lieutenant governor in 2017, Tyson told her that he had assaulted her during the 2004 convention.

“I did not know who Justin Fairfax was,” McWilliams said, “and I immediately went home and Googled him.”

The Stanford fellowship Tyson began last fall is merely her latest academic accomplishment after a working-class upbringing in the Los Angeles area as the biracial daughter of a single white mother. Tyson graduated from Princeton in 1998 and would later tell The Princeton Alumni Weekly that she identified as African-American partly because that was the way the world saw her. “I am biracial, but I could not pass for white,” she said.

Friends describe Tyson as gregarious and as a mentor to younger scholars, particularly those of color. “Academics are socially awkward people,” Brown said. “We tend to be a lot more introspective and quiet and reserved, and she pulls people out of their shells.”

Justin fairfax faces eroding support from democrats after new accuser speaks

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Stephanie Saul and Sheryl Gay Stolberg

Articles written by the author

Justin Fairfax Faces Eroding Support From Democrats After New Accuser Speaks

Virginia's Lt. Gov. Faces 2nd Claim of Sex Assault

Virginia's Lt. Gov. Faces 2nd Claim of Sex Assault

Virginia's Lt. Gov. Faces 2nd Claim of Sex Assault

Second Woman Accuses Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia of Sexual Assault

Second Woman Accuses Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia of Sexual Assault

Second Woman Accuses Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia of Sexual Assault

Second Woman Accuses Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia of Sexual Assault

Second Woman Accuses Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax of Virginia of Sexual Assault

Vanessa Tyson Draws Support for Assault Allegation Against Justin Fairfax

Justin fairfax faces eroding support from democrats after new accuser speaks