The Senator, who is up for reelection next month, published the advert as an open letter to her Republican opponent, Representative Kevin Cramer. Oops, it turns out that Senator Heitkamp made a mistake. A big one. Several of the women listed as signees of the ‘letter’ have spoken out on social media to say they were either not a victim/survivor of sexual assault, or that their names had been made public without their permission.
In response, Sen. Heitkamp said the following:
“We recently discovered that several of the women’s names who were provided to us did not authorize their names to be shared or were not survivors of abuse,” Ms. Heitkamp said in a statement on Tuesday.
She added: “I deeply regret this mistake and we are in the process of issuing a retraction, personally apologizing to each of the people impacted by this and taking the necessary steps to ensure this never happens again.”
Sounding emotional, Senator Heitkamp stated, “This is a very flagrant error of the campaign, and I own it.’
Heitkamp revealed that her campaign got the names through advocates who work with victims. What? Victim advocates shared the names of victims without their consent?! And where did the names of woman who are listed as signatories but say they have never been victimized come from? This is also a flagrant violation of trust. How did the abuse advocates reveal the names of victims to a political campaign? How can true survivors who choose not to go public be confident in Senator Heitkamp? We can’t.
After the ad ran, several women took to social media to state that either their name was made public without their permission, or that they had never been a victim of sexual harassment or assault.
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