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A child rape victim says she cannot forgive Hillary Clinton for defending her rapist in court 40 years ago, saying the Democratic presidential candidate attacked her credibility despite knowing that her assailant was guilty – and later laughed about it in a taped interview.
Kathy Shelton was just 12 years old when a 41-year-old drifter raped her on the side of a desolate Arkansas road in 1975.
Now, four decades later, she has agreed to be named and pictured for the first time in this Daily Mail Online exclusive because she is furious that her rapist’s defense attorney – Hillary Clinton – has been portraying herself as a lifelong advocate of women and girls on the campaign trail.
‘It’s put a lot of anger back in me,’ said Shelton, now 54, in an exclusive interview at her Springdale, Arkansas, home in August. ‘Every time I see [Clinton] on TV I just want to reach in there and grab her, but I can’t do that.’
In 1975, Clinton served as the defense lawyer for Thomas Alfred Taylor, a 41-year-old factory worker accused of raping Shelton after luring her to his car.
Taylor pleaded down to ‘unlawful fondling of a minor’ and served less than a year in prison after Clinton was able to block the admission of forensic evidence that linked her client to the crime.
In a lengthy interview with the Daily Mail Online, Shelton said Clinton is ‘lying’ when she claims to be a lifelong defender of women and girls.
Shelton said Clinton accused her during the case of ‘seeking out older men’, and demanded that the 12-year-old undergo a grueling court-ordered psychiatric examination to determine whether she was ‘mentally unstable’.
‘I don’t think [Clinton’s] for women or girls. I think she’s lying, I think she said anything she can to get in the campaign and win,’ Shelton said. ‘If she was [an advocate for women and children], she wouldn’t have done that to me at 12 years old.’
While Shelton gave an anonymous interview to the Daily Beast in 2014, she said wants to start speaking out publicly, in part because ‘I think a lot of people would look at [Clinton] in a different way’ after hearing her story directly.
‘I want to speak to the world. Out there at the White House, so everyone can hear me,’ said Shelton. ‘That’s always been my thing since the anger’s built up. I want to speak out like [Clinton] does, and let the whole world hear it.’
For decades, Shelton said she had no idea that Clinton was the same woman as the lawyer who defended her rapist in 1975.
During the case, Clinton accused the 12-year-old of ‘seek[ing] out older men’ and ‘engag[ing] in fantasizing’ in court affidavits, and later laughed while discussing aspects of the case in a recently-unearthed audiotape from the 1980s.
On the audiotape, Clinton indicated that she believed Taylor, her client, was guilty, saying that his ability to pass a lie detector test ‘forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs’.
HILLARY CAUGHT LAUGHING ABOUT RAPE CASE ON TAPE
Hillary Clinton joked about the guilt of an accused child rapist she defended in court, according to long-buried audio recordings from the 1980s that were first published in 2014.
During a taped interview with Arkansas reporter Roy Reed in the 1980s, Clinton can be heard laughing at several points while recounting her legal defense of Thomas Alfred Taylor, the 41-year-old man who was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in 1975.
‘I had [Taylor] take a polygraph. Which he passed – which forever destroyed my faith in polygraphs,’ said Clinton, chuckling.
Although the interview was not published at the time, Reed later donated the recording to the University of Arkansas Special Collections library. It was first published by the Washington Free Beacon in 2014.
Clinton said the ‘sad part’ of the case was the ‘prosecutors had evidence,’ including Taylor’s underwear that was stained with blood and semen. According to Clinton, crime lab investigators cut out the stained section of fabric when they tested it, but accidentally threw it away afterward – which gave Clinton an opening to get the key piece of evidence against her client tossed.
Clinton took the underwear to New York where she tracked down a famous forensics expert, who confirmed for her that there was no material left on the underwear for the defense to independently test.
Clinton said she returned to Arkansas and handed the prosecutor a clipping of the renowned forensic expert’s biography.
‘And I said, ‘Well, this guy’s ready to come from New York to prevent this miscarriage of justice,’ said Clinton, laughing. ‘So we were gonna plea bargain.’
The charges against Clinton’s client were dropped from first degree rape – which carried a 30-years-to-life prison sentence – to unlawful fondling of a minor. Taylor was sentenced to less than a year in prison.
On the recording, Clinton said she took the case – in which Taylor was accused of raping a 12-year-old girl after luring her into his car – as a favour to the prosecutor.
‘A prosecutor called me years ago, said that he had a guy who was accused of rape, and the guy wanted a woman lawyer,’ said Clinton. ‘Would I do it as a favour to him?’
Clinton gave a slightly different account in 2014 after the tape was published. She said she was appointed to the case and had asked the judge to remove her, but the judge ordered her to stay on. The prosecutor told CNN a similar story.
