Accuser says she told truth on Thomas harassment
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Anita Hill said on Tuesday she testified truthfully in 1991 in accusing Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment and responded to a new book by the U.S. Supreme Court justice by saying he had unfairly attacked her character.
It was Hill's first response to the Thomas memoir that denounces his former aide and liberal interest groups who wanted to stop his nomination to the highest U.S. court.
"I'm really concerned that the approach that Clarence Thomas is taking now is so typical of people accused of wrongdoing. They trash their accusers ... and I don't want this to become the model of how we can react to bad workplace behavior," Hill said on ABC.
In an article on The New York Times op-ed page, Hill said Thomas in the book offered a litany of unsubstantiated representations and outright smears that Republican senators made when she testified.
"A number of independent authors have shown those attacks to be baseless," she wrote.
The sensational charges by Hill resulted in one of the most contentious Senate confirmation battles in history.
Hill, then a law professor in Oklahoma, charged that Thomas had badgered her for dates and offended her with sexually explicit talk when she was his aide at a government agency from 1981 to 1983.
A furious Thomas denied the charges and raised his own countercharges of racism and victimization. Both Thomas and Hill are black.
In the televised interview, Hill, now a professor at Brandeis University in Massachusetts, said, "I understand that he is very angry and he wants to vindicate himself. But when I testified in 1991 I was truthful."
She added, "I look back and think what could I have done to make this less combative, less tumultuous, and I can't think of anything I could have done to change that at all."
(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan)
