Justin Fairfax Rape Accuser Re-Ups Call for His Resignation

The woman who accused Virginia’s Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax (D) of raping her at the 2004 Democratic National Convention has once again called for his resignation Sunday.

“In my ideal world, I’d want him to resign.” Vanessa Tyson said on “CBS This Morning.” “I would want Meredith, myself, and Mr. Fairfax to be able to speak. To be heard. And particularly for survivors, I think this is incredibly important…we need to be treated as the human beings that we are.”

Her full interview with host Gayle King will air on Monday.

Tyson, a political science professor at Scripps College in Claremont, California, said that her primary reason for coming forward was so that her students who are interested in a career in politics would never have to go through what she did.

“I don’t want this to ever, ever, ever happen to them,” she said.

But she also wants the people of the state of Virginia to understand who Fairfax is, telling CBS that “the Virginia people need to know who they elected.”

Fairfax was accused by a second woman, Meredith Watson, of rape when they were students at Duke University.

The result of the allegations against have been a nasty fallout within Virginia’s Democratic Party and their friends in the mainstream press. The party was poised to replace Gov. Ralph Northam (D) with Fairfax after Big League Politics outed him as a racist. After the rape allegations against Fairfax, the party got cold feet.

Additionally, The Washington Post faced a great deal of scrutiny, having learned of the allegations against Fairfax from Tyson herself. The Jeff Bezos-owned blog said that it did not publish the accusations because they did not meet their editorial standards for corroborating witnesses, despite the fact that Tyson confidante Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.) confirmed to The New York Times that WaPo had contacted him about the allegations. Tyson had also confided in five other women.


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