Who’s telling the truth? Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax releases lie detector results over sex assault allegations, says he ‘passed on the very first try’, demands prosecutors investigate claims made by two women
He’s been accused of sexual assault by Meredith Watson and Vanessa Tyson going back nearly two decades
Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax maintains his liaison with his accusers was totally consensual. Wednesday he released the results of his lie detector tests and demanded prosecutors launch investigations into the sexual assault allegationsVirginia’s embattled Lt. Governor Justin Fairfax released the results of his lie detector tests on Wednesday, claiming he ‘passed on the very first try’ and it’s proof that the sexual assault allegations two women made against him are false.
California based politics professor Vanessa Tyson and former Duke University classmate Meredith Watson came forward separately in February to accuse Fairfax of sexual assault in 2004 and 2000 respectively.
Fairfax has consistently maintained that the encounters were consensual, and took the polygraph test to prove his innocence.
He released those results and his own telling of the encounters, slamming the accusations as ‘false from the first moment I heard them,’ on Wednesday.
He’s now demanding prosecutors in Boston and Durham, North Carolina, where the assaults took place, investigate the claims.
Implying that the allegations was a smear campaign timed to derail his political ascendancy in Virginia politics, Lt. Gov. Fairfax released the results of his lie detector tests on Wednesday and demanded prosecutors launch investigations into the sexual assault allegations made against him,.
He expressed his desire to fully cooperate with investigators
Politics professor and #MeToo activist Vanessa Tyson [right] was first to accuse Fairfax [left] of assaulting her when the pair were political interns in 2004
Fairfax sounded confident the investigations will reach the same conclusions as a polygraph test he was releasing that shows he’s innocent. – The results of his polygraph test determined his responses were ‘Not Indicative of Deception’.
Curiously Fairfax noted, his accusers came forward just as he was poised to become Virginia’s next governor in the wake of a scandal surrounding a racist photo on Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam’s yearbook page.
Vanessa Tyson, an associate professor of political science at Scripps College in California, came forward in February claiming that Fairfax sexually assaulted her during the Democratic National Convention in Boston in 2004.
The politician’s former Duke University classmate Meredith Watson [left] has accused him of sexual assault as well, while both were students at the North Carolina school
Tyson released a statement detailing the alleged assault saying Fairfax forced her to perform oral sex on him and that she couldn’t feel her neck when he forced his hands on her.
‘I couldn’t feel my neck. I couldn’t hold my head up. He’s using his hand on the back of my neck. And I still didn’t know what was going wrong. I thought there was something wrong with my neck… And he’s pushing down and pushing down. And I couldn’t hold my neck up. And I didn’t know what was going on,’ Tyson said during a bombshell interview on CBS This Morning.
But on Wednesday in the polygraph results, Fairfax alleged that Tyson got the date of their first meeting wrong and maintained that when they met up on a later date, their interaction was consensual.
On Wednesday he released the results of a polygraph test he voluntarily submitted to in regards to the allegations made against him, saying he ‘passed on the very first try’
He was not lying: The polygraph scores indicate Fairfax’s responses were ‘Not Indicative of Deception’.
poking holes in the narrative, Fairfax says he was not at the DNC in Boston on July 26 in 2004, as Tyson alleged. He claims he was with former presidential candidate John Edwards at the time.
‘While Dr. Tyson has stated definitively that she met, interacted, and had a conversation with me in Boston on July 26, 2004, the first day of the Convention; in fact, Senator Edwards and I were not in Boston on that date. We did not arrive in Boston from North Carolina until the following day,’ Fairfax said according to CBS.
But he didn’t dispute the date of the alleged sexual encounter.
‘After I arrived, I met Dr. Tyson, who was a volunteer at the Convention. As young adults and students we spent time together talking. I invited her to my hotel room, where we engaged in completely consensual activity,’ he said in a statement Wednesday.
‘I have heard Dr. Tyson say that I held her neck and physically forced her to engage in sexual contact. That is simply is not true. What she alleged never happened. At no time did I force any contact,’ he added.
Watson came forward shortly after Tyson and claimed that Fairfax assaulted her when they were studying at Duke University in 2000, saying he took advantage of her history as a sexual assault survivor too.
‘It happened to her [Tyson] after it happened to me. And had I had the strength or the courage to say something in 2000, maybe it never would’ve happened to her,’ Watson said through tears to CBS’ Gayle King.
Stanford University fellow Vanessa Tyson [photo] suggested in a private Facebook post that Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax sexually assaulted her in 15 years ago, when they were both political interns
In a letter released by her lawyer in February, Watson called for Fairfax’s resignation claiming he sexually assaulted her in 2004 in a Boston hotel room when they were working on John Kerry’s convention
On Wednesday Fairfax stressed that his interaction with Meredith Watson while they were studying at Duke was consensual.
‘On one occasion late in my senior year in the year 2000, she initiated a consensual encounter with me. I did not rape or sexually assault Meredith Watson. I did not lock the door, turn out the lights, hold her down, or use any physical force whatsoever. We were both willing participants,’ he said.
‘After that encounter, I saw her on occasion when we were with mutual friends. At no time, before, during, or after our encounter did she ever say or do anything that suggested to me in any way that she believed that she thought anything that happened between us was something she had not wanted or that she was uncomfortable with,’ he added.
The Virginia Lt. Governor [photo] has responded with the release of his polygraph results, and demanding that his accusers be investigated
The attack allegedly took place in 2000 when Watson and Fairfax were students at Duke University.
Watson coming out opened up accusations that she allegedly has a history of accusing an athlete of sexual assault in the past, which turned out not tp be true. She also allegedly stalked a man she dated to the point he had to take out a restraining order against her.
Tyson previously shut down allegations that she and Watson are orchestrating a smear campaign against Fairfax by confirming that the women have never met or spoken.
Fairfax dismissed the allegations against him saying ‘if the facts alleged by Dr. Tyson and Ms Watson were true the conduct would be criminal.
He added that such conduct is ‘against everything I have stood for in both my public and private life.’
He went on to say that the ‘false allegations’ has inflicted significant pain to his family. He’s been married to dentist Cerina Fairfax since 2006.
Fairfax dismissed the emotional TV interviews Tyson and Watson have done with CBS saying, ‘TV appearances are not the right vehicles to get at the truth,’ adding that ‘sensationalizing allegations do not make them true’.
Still his account doesn’t sit well with everyone.
Virginia House Majority Leader Todd Gilbert said he found Tyson and Watson’s accounts to be ‘very compelling’ on Wednesday and is calling for a bipartisan public forum to be held for the women to share their stories.
He accused Virginia House Democrats of rebuffing Republican efforts to hold such a hearing.
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