Ms. Conway said she was a victim of sexual assault as she defended Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh, the Supreme Court nominee, who has been accused of sexual assault decades ago.<\/b>
\nKellyanne Conway, an adviser to President Trump, said on Sunday that she was a victim of sexual assault and that the Supreme Court confirmation proceedings of Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh should not become a broader \u201cmeeting\u201d of the #MeToo movement, suggesting instead that victims hold their assailants directly accountable.
Ms. Conway made the personal revelation during an interview with Jake Tapper on the CNN program \u201cState of the Union\u201d during which she largely derided the \u201cpartisan politics\u201d of Judge Kavanaugh\u2019s hearing on Thursday.
Christine Blasey Ford said during the hearing that Judge Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her decades ago when they were teenagers, an allegation he then angrily denied.
Many, including Democratic senators, have seen Dr. Blasey\u2019s testimony as a rallying cry for survivors of sexual abuse, saying that a vote for Judge Kavanaugh would be an endorsement of not only the alleged behavior but of a culture that condones it and dismisses its victims.
Ms. Conway pushed back against that notion.
\u201cI feel very empathetic, frankly, for victims of sexual assault and sexual harassment and rape,\u201d Ms. Conway said.
She then paused and cleared her throat.
\u201cI\u2019m a victim of sexual assault,\u201d she said. \u201cI don\u2019t expect Judge Kavanaugh or Jake Tapper or Jeff Flake or anybody to be held responsible for that. You have to be responsible for your own conduct.\u201d
She was referring to Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who had been confronted by two women who said they were sexual abuse victims about his intention to vote for Judge Kavanaugh\u2019s nomination.
Ms. Conway said those women should \u201cgo blame the perpetrator.\u201d
Mr. Tapper later said, \u201cThis is the first time I\u2019ve ever heard you talk about something personal like that,\u201d adding, \u201cI\u2019m really sorry that you went through that.\u201d
He asked a question, noting that Ms. Conway works for President Trump, who himself has denied allegations of sexual misconduct.
\u201cDon\u2019t conflate that with this and certainly don\u2019t conflate that with what happened to me,\u201d Ms. Conway responded. \u201cLet\u2019s not always bring Trump into everything that happens in this universe. That\u2019s mistake No. 1.\u201d
She did not go into further detail about her own experience and could not immediately be reached for comment on Sunday.
In an interview with MSNBC in 2016, Ms. Conway said that when she was younger, she knew members of Congress who were \u201crubbing up against girls, sticking their tongues down women\u2019s throats who, uninvited, who didn\u2019t like it.\u201d
At Politico\u2019s Women Rule Summit more than a year later, Ms. Conway referred to that interview, saying that some members of Congress had tried to \u201cshove their tongue down my throat or rub or do worse,\u201d but asserted that \u201cnobody wanted to hear about it\u201d because she was aligned with Mr. Trump.
\u201cEvery time that happened to me, when I was younger and in the workplace, every time that happened to me, I always told a friend, I always told a female relative,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is shame involved because you tend to think it\u2019s on you, \u2018It\u2019s your fault,\u2019 somehow.\u201d
Ms. Conway said at the summit that she never saw those men as powerful after the encounters. \u201cI looked at them as weak and pathetic,\u201d she said.
It was not clear if those experiences were the basis of her comments to Mr. Tapper.
She said she found Dr. Blasey \u201ccompelling\u201d and \u201ccredible.\u201d But she suggested that perhaps Dr. Blasey was misremembering who was responsible for the assault, and expressed support for Judge Kavanaugh.
\u201cThey both could be right that Something truly awful happened to her in the summer of 1982 by someone, somehow, somewhere, and that Judge Kavanaugh was not involved,\u201d she said.
Ms. Conway said that all victims of sexual assault should be heard in courts of law and in criminal or civil proceedings. She emphasized that the Senate proceedings were not a criminal trial, but a hearing on whether Judge Kavanaugh was qualified to serve on the Supreme Court.
\u201cBut we do treat people differently who are either the victims or perpetrators of this based on their politics and based on their gender,\u201d Ms. Conway said.
The F. B. I. is now investigating Dr. Blasey\u2019s allegation, though some have questioned the scope of that investigation.<\/p>\n

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