27-year old lawyer Hillary Rodham destroyed 12-year old girls credibility to save his client from rape charges

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Hillary Rodham Clinton often invokes her "35 years of experience making change" on the campaign trail, recounting her work in the 1970s on behalf of battered and neglected children and impoverished legal-aid clients.

But there is a little-known episode Clinton doesn't mention in her standard campaign speech in which those two principles collided. In 1975, a 27-year-old Hillary Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, attacked the credibility of a 12-year-old girl in mounting an aggressive defense for an indigent client accused of rape in Arkansas - using her child development background to help the defendant.

...

In May 1975, Washington County prosecutor Mahlon Gibson called Rodham, who had taken over the law clinic months earlier, to tell her she'd been appointed to represent a hard-drinking factory worker named Thomas Alfred Taylor, who had requested a female attorney.

In her 2003 autobiography "Living History," Clinton writes that she ... secured a lenient plea deal for Taylor after a New York-based forensics expert she hired "cast doubt on the evidentiary value of semen and blood samples collected by the sheriff's office."

However, that account leaves out a significant aspect of her defense strategy - attempting to impugn the credibility of the victim, according to a Newsday examination of court and investigative files and interviews with witnesses, law enforcement officials and the victim.

Rodham, records show, questioned the sixth grader's honesty and claimed she had made false accusations in the past. She implied that the girl often fantasized and sought out "older men" like Taylor, according to a July 1975 affidavit signed "Hillary D. Rodham" in compact cursive.

...

The victim, now 46, told Newsday that she was raped by Taylor, denied that she wanted any relationship with him and blamed him for contributing to three decades of severe depression and other personal problems.

"It's not true, I never sought out older men - I was raped," the woman said in an interview in the fall. Newsday is withholding her name as the victim of a sex crime.

http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/ny...0,2670956.story

[garya505 2]

I'm no fan of Hillary, but it's the job of an attorney to get their client acquitted, and sometimes that gets nasty.

[rebeccajo 14]

I'm no fan of Hillary, but it's the job of an attorney to get their client acquitted, and sometimes that gets nasty.

That's right. The client is entitled to a 'vigorous defense'.

[britbird 4]

Agreed, she was doing her job.

I'm not a huge fan of hers either, but I give her props for working in a legal aid clinic - clinic work is tough stuff.

[metta 0]

Agreed, she was doing her job.

I'm not a huge fan of hers either, but I give her props for working in a legal aid clinic - clinic work is tough stuff.

What naivet'e! Don't you know that SHE is the anti-messiah? If you don't believe it check it out here

[William33 110]

I'm no fan of Hillary, but it's the job of an attorney to get their client acquitted, and sometimes that gets nasty.

Does that apply if you know the client is guilty?

That is why I have little respect for some lawyers, who will do anything to get ahead, even compromise morals and common sense. How they sleep at night is beyond me.