Journalist says Katie Britt’s story about child sex abuse ‘out-and-out lie’
Journalist says Katie Britt’s story about child sex abuse ‘out-and-out lie’ The Guardian US
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Doubts Cast on Accuracy of Republican Senator’s Speech
Doubts have been cast on the accuracy of a story about horrific child sex abuse told by the Republican senator Katie Britt in her widely ridiculed speech delivered in rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address.
Accusations of Dishonesty
The journalist and author Jonathan Katz has accused Britt of being “fundamentally dishonest” for invoking the case of a woman who had been sex-trafficked at age 12 and raped multiple times to illustrate the supposed failure of the Biden administration’s border control policies.
Controversy Surrounding Britt
The controversy further intensifies the spotlight on Britt – a rising Republican star – after she came under fire from members of her own party for delivering a rejoinder to Biden on Thursday from the setting of a kitchen.
Exploiting the Border Crisis
In that speech, Britt described travelling to the Del Rio sector of the US-Mexico border and cited the case of an unidentified woman, whom Britt said confided harrowing experiences. The senator implied these were a direct result of the ongoing crisis at the border, which Republicans have sought to exploit as a campaign issue.
Britt’s Misrepresentation of Facts
“I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me,” Britt said. “She had been sex-trafficked by the cartels starting at age 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped.”
However, in a seven-minute video posted on TikTok, Katz – a former AP reporter who has written on drug wars in Mexico – cited details that appeared to show the story Britt was describing had happened not just outside the US, but many years before Biden became president.
He concluded that Britt had deliberately misrepresented the tale of Karla Jacinto Romero, an activist who has publicly recounted her experiences on numerous occasions at the hands of sex traffickers in her native Mexico.
Britt’s False Association
Now 31, Romero testified to a US Congressional subcommittee in May 2015 describing her experiences at the hands of a trafficker who held her captive between the ages of 12 and 16, before she was eventually rescued. She has also spoken before the Mexican house of representatives and the Vatican.
Britt met Jacinto Romero on a visit to the border with two other Republican senators, Marsha Blackburn and Cindy-Hyde Smith, in January 2023.
Katz’s Criticism of Britt
In his video, Katz dissected what he said was Britt’s attempt to conflate Romero’s story with the US-Mexico border imbroglio, where the build-up of asylum seekers promises to become a central issue in the 2024 presidential election, before lambasting her for “dishonesty”.
Katz said that Britt, by not giving a location or a timeframe for the story, had deliberately tried to create a “beyond misleading” impression that the events had taken place recently and on US soil.
“All I had to do was key in Karla Jacinto Romero’s name … and it took me to [her] testimony to Congress from 2015 about her experiences in Mexico,” he said.
“It took place between 2004 and 2008. I don’t know what they put in the textbooks of Alabama these days, but Joe Biden was not the president of the United States in 2004 or 2008. In 2004 and 2008, the president of the United States was George W Bush, a Republican. [But] none of this really matters because none of these events took place in the United States – or even near the border.”
Katz added: “It seems very clear to me that she is trying to create an association in people’s minds between Joe Biden, the border, Mexicans, you know, Latins – people of Latin descent – and sexual violence. That’s what she’s going for and she is doing it on the basis of something that you can only say is an out-and-out lie.
“It must have been obvious to her, at the very least, that she was not talking to somebody who had recently been 12 years old.”
No Response from Britt’s Spokesperson
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