To hear Gov. Eric Greitens' defense team explain it, his 2015 sexual liaison with a young woman in the Greitens family's basement was nothing more than a tryst between two fully consenting adults. Really, who wouldn't want to be bound to exercise rings, blindfolded and partially denuded while Greitens snapped a photo?
The young woman, for one. She made absolutely clear in the tearful confession to her then-husband that she never consented to being photographed partially nude. In fact, she protested, according to a recording the husband secretly made of her recollections.
But the consent argument apparently is the best defense Greitens and his lawyers can find to argue that he was not in criminal violation of a Missouri law regarding the photographing and transmission of another person's image without that person's consent. Up to the point of the photo, the woman appeared to be on board.
"He said: 'I'll make you feel better. I'll make you feel good. Come downstairs. I want to show you how to do a proper pull-up,'" the woman, whom prosecutors refer to by the initials "K.S.", says in the recording. "And I knew he was being sexual and I still let him. And he used some sort of tape, I don't what it was, and taped my hands to these rings and then put a blindfold on me."
The blindfold kept her from knowing Greitens' intent to photograph her. "He stepped back. I saw a flash through the blindfold, and he said: 'You're never going to mention my name, otherwise there will be pictures of me everywhere,'" K.S. recalled.
In the taped account, K.S. became distraught and began crying, indicating that the photo had frightened and upset her. If this is consent, what would objection sound like?
This episode, and Greitens' attempt to explain it away, goes to the heart of the anger women are registering around the country through the #MeToo movement about men who do not respect boundaries. Women have a right at any stage of an encounter to call a halt to something they're not comfortable with.
Most men know to respect that boundary. Greitens did not, and the fact that he's now making this argument in court means he still doesn't get it. He treated her more as a sexual plaything than as a human.
Greitens has a right to the best defense he and his legal team can muster. This is hardball. He could face jail time in addition to the utter destruction of his career. But he inflicts even more damage on himself by alleging consent where it doesn't appear to have existed.
Greitens embarrasses himself, his family, his party and his state with his desperate attempt to save a political career that cannot be salvaged.
