The Back Door To God
Dr. David Hager is the neo-Puritan ob-gyn Bush appointed to Advisory Committee for Reproductive Health Drugs in the FDA . His ex-wife, Linda Carruth-Davis, says this supposed guardian of women's health had non-consensual anal sex with her many times. Here's an excerpt from Ayelish McGarvey's story in The Nation:
According to Davis, Hager's public moralizing on sexual matters clashed with his deplorable treatment of her during their marriage. Davis alleges that between 1995 and their divorce in 2002, Hager repeatedly sodomized her without her consent. Several sources on and off the record confirmed that she had told them it was the sexual and emotional abuse within their marriage that eventually forced her out. "I probably wouldn't have objected so much, or felt it was so abusive if he had just wanted normal [vaginal] sex all the time," she explained to me. "But it was the painful, invasive, totally nonconsensual nature of the [anal] sex that was so horrible."...Sex was always a source of conflict in the marriage. Though it wasn't emotionally satisfying for her, Davis says she soon learned that sex could "buy" peace with Hager after a long day of arguing, or insure his forgiveness after she spent too much money. "Sex was coinage; it was a commodity," she said. Sometimes Hager would blithely shift from vaginal to anal sex. Davis protested. "He would say, 'Oh, I didn't mean to have anal sex with you; I can't feel the difference,'" Davis recalls incredulously. "And I would say, 'Well then, you're in the wrong business.'"
...For the next seven years Hager sodomized Davis without her consent while she slept roughly once a month until their divorce in 2002, she claims. "My sense is that he saw [my narcolepsy] as an opportunity," Davis surmises. Sometimes she fought Hager off and he would quit for a while, only to circle back later that same night; at other times, "the most expedient thing was to try and somehow get it [over with]. In order to keep any peace, I had to maintain the illusion of being available to him." At still other moments, she says, she attempted to avoid Hager's predatory advances in various ways--for example, by sleeping in other rooms in the house, or by struggling to stay awake until Hager was in a deep sleep himself. But, she says, nothing worked. One of Davis's lifelong confidantes remembers when Davis first told her about the abuse. "[Linda] was very angry and shaken," she recalled.
...Linda Davis chose not to bring allegations of marital rape into her divorce proceedings; her foremost desires at the time were a fair settlement and minimal disruption for her sons. Nonetheless, she informed her lawyer of the abuse. Natalie Wilson, a divorce attorney in Lexington, asked Linda to draw up a working chronology of her marriage to Hager. "[It] included references to what I would call the sexual abuse," Wilson explained. "I had no reason not to believe her.... It was an explanation for some of the things that went on in the marriage, and it explained her reluctance to share that information with her sons--which had resulted in her sons' being very angry about the fact that she was insisting on the divorce."
...Davis had only told a handful of people about the abuse throughout her marriage, but several of her longtime confidantes confirmed for this article that she had told them of the abuse at the time it was occurring. Wilson, the attorney, spoke to me on the record, as did Brenda Bartella Peterson, Davis's close friend of twenty-five years. Several others close to Davis spoke to me off the record. Two refused to speak to me and denounced Davis for going public, but they did not contest her claims. Many attempts to interview nearly a dozen of Hager's friends and supporters in Lexington and around the country were unsuccessful.
...As disturbing as they are on their own, Linda Davis's allegations take on even more gravity in light of Hager's public role as a custodian of women's health. Some may argue that this is just a personal matter between a man and his former wife--a simple case of "he said, she said" with no public implications. That might be so--if there were no allegations of criminal conduct, if the alleged conduct did not bear any relevance to the public responsibilities of the person in question, and if the allegations themselves were not credible and independently corroborated. But given that this case fails all of those tests, the public has a right to call on Dr. David Hager to answer Linda Davis's charges before he is entrusted with another term. After all, few women would knowingly choose a sexual abuser as their gynecologist, and fewer still would likely be comfortable with the idea of letting one serve as a federal adviser on women's health issues.
Professionals and other interested parties from the legal and psychological fields will always try to carve a piece out of a story like this. But it sounds like whatcha got here is two shitty people in a shitty marriage. And all the other rhetoric and descriptions of instrusion and oppression and what-have-you are not really necessary.
How many happy women in good marriages put up continuing verbal abuse, let alone buggery? They DON'T, so they stay sane and happy. It's a yingy-yangy thing, causey and effecty. OJ taught us that weirdness on this scale requires two parties.
Picking through the private freakery of other's lives is not only poor policy for public agencies; It's also horridly mundane.
A doctor with corrosive behavior of this magnitude in his private life must be an inarguable fuckup in his practice; Why can't his polical opponents nail him for professional incompetence?
Unless....
Cridland at May 21, 2005 9:36 AM
"Hager would blithely shift from vaginal to anal sex."
But he was only following Emily Post's advice to "be quick and unembarrassed about it"! What was he supposed to do, introduce the idea with a Powerpoint presentation?
Lena Cuisina, starring in the remake of "Blithe Spirit" at May 21, 2005 10:19 AM
Lena, that's awesome. What role are you playing in Noel Coward's classic play? I see you as Madame Arcati.
Patrick, The Goddess Fan at May 21, 2005 1:46 PM
I am confused. Shouldn't this man be a priest?
Radwaste at May 21, 2005 7:54 PM
Yes, he should -- although that would mean that he'd have to buy her an icecream cone before sodomizing her.
Lena at May 22, 2005 10:01 AM
And BTW, is this what it's come to at editorial office of the Nation? "Republicans are anal meanies!"
Crid at May 22, 2005 6:10 PM
It wasn't my girl Naomi Klein who said it!
Lena-doodle-doo at May 22, 2005 11:08 PM
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