Reply #22: Brown is a more complicated person than I had thought, but his backing of Perry

[karynnj]

given that this issue was there in the PRIMARY is hard to reconcile with his concern on this issue (Mass' post) and this new revelation. He speaks of being told that he would be killed (or not believed) if he told - yet - even taking the story that makes Perry look best, he covered up for his peer - leaving a young girl and her family seeing that her town's police would allow one policeman to victimize her and all of them protect him, not her. In some ways, this is worse than what Brown himself experienced. The very people who should have protected her victimized her. (She had it better in one way - She had her family supporting her - and Brown, at 10, seemed to assume that his family wouldn't. )

I think that Brown's early endorsement of Perry in the primary was given some credit for him winning. There were Republicans siding with his opponent just because of this. In the general election, when the woman spoke out, many Republicans moved away. Brown allowed them to use his endorsement praising Perry's character.

At the time, I thought it was tone deaf - that he maybe did not get the seriousness of the charge and maybe he felt that having helped him get the nomination, he might be blamed if he lost the one Congressional seat where Republicans had a decent shot. (Neither good excuses). Hearing him say that he was abused and lived with the fear of telling anyone, how could he NOT relate to the (then) young girl's story? (The excuse that she was possibly with some not all that good people - was not all that different from his own youth.) This makes his callous action worse.

I hope that people bring this up in call in appearances or at least in letters to the editor or in online comments.