RUTHFULLY YOURS

Bill Ayers told a University of Oregon social justice class in 2012 “our fate hinges on our ability to open our eyes.” Well, Bill, rumor has it you are rapist, so let’s open the discussion.

Frontpage Magazine and several other sites published Donna Ron’s account of what happened one Friday night in 1965.

The terms “psychological rape” or “date rape” had not yet been coined but Ms. Ron’s story, the kind the Left are so fond of, suggests Ayers was at most a rapist; at least, a sexual deviant.

So when Ayers talks about women’s rights, or mentions rape as he does in the University of Oregon lecture, he conveniently forgets to mention his own allegedly sordid past with women.

Any woman who has suffered the psychological and physical humiliation of forced sex never forgets. Donna’s ability to remember graphic details after many years is typical of those who have endured sexual trauma.

The young women introducing Ayers to the University of Oregon class probably had no idea they were standing next to a possible sexual predator. If they dismiss Ayers’ history of violence against innocent police officers and his later refusal to renounce his actions, chances are these same young people that Ayers advises to critically examine the world around them, will not care about one young woman who had the misfortune of meeting up with the terrorist.

But in light of the recent University of Wyoming hoax involving Ayers fan and co-plaintiff in a 2010 lawsuit against UW regarding his speaking engagement at the college, Meg Lankers-Simon and her efforts to draw attention to the “culture of rape,” young women at liberal colleges should take a second look at the former Weather Underground terrorist.

Here’s part of Donna Ron’s story (warning: graphic language):

Bill Ayers’ apartment was around the corner and a half a block away from the sorority house. The more time I spent there, the more out of place I felt with my sisters.  Sometimes I would stop by just to keep from having to go back to a place I had begun to think of as boring. I guess it was one of those evenings — maybe on the way back from the library, maybe just to get out of the sorority house, I don’t remember exactly. What I do recall is that when I was getting ready to leave Ayers told me I couldn’t go until I slept with his roommate and his brother. At this point Bill and I had slept together just once. I was sexually inexperienced, having had only one serious boyfriend with whom I had recently broken up.

At first I thought Ayers was joking. I got up; and went to the door. He moved quickly to block me at the doorway. He locked the door and put the chain on it. I went to the couch and sat down and told him that I had no intention of having sex with his roommate and his brother or him. He said that I had no choice but to do as he said if I wanted to get out of there. He claimed that I wouldn’t sleep with his married roommate because he was black — that I was a bigot. I had gone to school with black kids and had them as friends all my life. I couldn’t believe he was saying that to me.

I felt trapped. I had to get out of the situation I was in and because he was so effective a guilt-tripper, I also felt I had to prove to him that I wasn’t a bigot. I got up from the couch and walked over to the black roommate’s bed and put myself on it and he —me.  I went totally out of my body. I floated beside myself on the outside and above the bed looking at this black stranger— me angrily while I hated myself.

After that I had to go lie down on Bill Ayer’s bed for his brother to — me.  Rick Ayers was a decent person, unlike his brother, and couldn’t go through with it He started and stopped and let me go. I also thought I had to let Bill —me but at that point he unbolted the door and I left.

I remember going back to the sorority house and talking to my best girlfriend and telling her what had happened

I was a mess and felt it was my fault for letting it happen. I was ashamed.  Back home at the end of the semester, I got my parents to send me to a psychiatrist. What had happened affected my ability to trust in a relationship with a man and I didn’t have a close relationship again for a long time.

Later I read about Ayers and his book Fugitive Days on the Internet. This was just after the terrorist attack on 9/11 and he was entirely unrepentant for having been a terrorist himself. “I would do it again,” he told the Times when he was asked about having set a bomb in the Pentagon.

I also discovered that he was a Distinguished Professor of Education at University of Illinois Chicago campus.  I think that freaked me out more than anything. That a man so cruel and conscienceless could attain such a position enraged me. I contacted him by email through the University’s website. He wrote back that he didn’t remember me.

Anybody reading this might ask why Ms. Ron bothered to email a man she calls “conscienceless and cruel” more than thirty years after the incident.

Sexual abuse victims are notorious for seeking closure. The need to confront their attackers is at times overwhelming. This part of Ms. Ron’s story rings so true as to make the rest seem very plausible.

As a group counselor for a Women’s Advocacy Program run by the YWCA in the 1990’s, I came into contact with many women exactly like Donna.

In a 9/11 New York Times book review for Fugitive Days Ayers’ own words support Ron’s claims. The “rich kid radical,” as he was known, points out in the article that Weather Undergrounders weren’t exactly discriminating when it came to sex.

He also writes about the Weathermen’s sexual experimentation as they tried to ”smash monogamy.” The Weathermen were ”an army of lovers,” he says, and describes having had different sexual partners, including his best male friend.

A month before the New York Times review, which included Ayers’ early fascination with the joy of July 4 “candle bombs” and how he really “trembled mostly for the Big Ones, the loud concussions,” the professor and his Underground terrorist wife wrote an article for Mothering The Natural Family Living Magazine entitled “The Son Also Rises Boys to Men, Outside the Stereotypes.”

Oddly enough, the man Ms. Ron accused of date rape in 1965 brings up the topic in the 2001 article. Ayers and Dohrn recounted an “alleged date rape” at their sons’ high school.

The former members of the Weather Underground, who in Ayers’ own words descended into a “whirlpool of violence,” and who admitted they practiced ‘anything goes’ sex, offered advice on sexual relationships to other parents of teenagers. After reading about Ayers these past four years it makes sense it takes a sexual predator to know one.

From Mothering:

An alleged date rape after a party at our kids’ high school became a huge focus of fear and anxiety, conversation, accusation, and contention. The adults, typically, knew almost nothing, but the kids were all abuzz. Would the young woman tell her parents? Would she file charges? Would the event and the aftershock become openly acknowledged?

We overheard Zayd, Malik, and Chesa talking about it and, as usual, butted in. When they seemed evasive and somewhat lighthearted about what we took to be a most serious act, we began to question them sharply: “Do you understand what a profound violation, what a disgusting and vile crime is being alleged?” “Don’t you see how badly she was hurt and how unjust and immoral it was?”

…we talked more clearly about guilt and responsibility…The date rape helped us clarify several areas of agreement:

• Sex can be enormously pleasurable and powerful when it is mutual, respectful, authentic.
• When an older guy and a younger girl have sex, there’s a concern about power and intimidation. (The girl in this instance was a freshman, the guy a senior.)
• If the guy uses alcohol and drugs to grease the wheels of cooperation, there’s a real problem. (The guy in this case got her drunk.)
• If there is one girl and more than one guy, it’s force, for sure. (The guy arrived at the girl’s house at midnight with his best friend, and the three of them drank heavily until the guy coaxed the girl into a basement bedroom practically within reach of the TV the three had been watching.)
• If a girl says “no” at any point, everything stops there.(There was dispute about whether she ever said “no.”)

Whether Ayers is making up the date rape scenario at his kids’s school or not, the similarities between the advice he gives to his sons and Donna Ron’s account of what happened in 1965 are startling.

Accounts of Ayers’ early days are as bad as it gets. Just think: a fugitive, a terrorist, a communist with a small ‘c’ and an alleged rapist helped launch a future president’s political career.

Activist young women who are truly interested in the victims of sexual assault should take a hard look at Ms. Ron’s story and run as far away from Bill Ayers and his ilk as they can.

Read more M. Catharine Evans at Potter Williams Report