Judge Ketanji Brown JacksonKetanji Brown JacksonHawley says he’ll bring child porn cases up during Jackson hearing Kavanaugh fight casts long shadow over Jackson hearing The Hill’s 12:30 Report: Judge Jackson in the hotseat MORE opened the second day of her confirmation hearing Tuesday with a forceful defense of her record of sentencing child pornography offenders, pushing back against a recurring Republican attack line leveled against her.
Under questioning from Sen. Dick Durbin
Dick DurbinThe Memo: GOP seeks to make Jackson part of broader Biden midterm war Hawley says he’ll bring child porn cases up during Jackson hearing Kavanaugh fight casts long shadow over Jackson hearing MORE (D-Ill.), Jackson was asked to address a claim by Sen. Josh Hawley
Joshua (Josh) David HawleyGOP sounds alarm bells over Greitens allegations The Memo: GOP seeks to make Jackson part of broader Biden midterm war Hawley says Greitens should drop out of Senate race amid abuse allegations MORE (R-Mo.) on Monday that her treatment of sentencing child sex offenders showed an “alarming pattern” of leniency.
“As a mother and a judge who has had to deal with these cases, I was thinking that nothing could be further from the truth,” Jackson told Durbin, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Jackson said that as a sentencing judge she puts great weight on victims’ perspective when addressing offenders.
“I tell them about the adults who are former child sex abuse victims, tell me that they will never have a normal adult relationship because of this abuse. I tell them about the ones who say, ‘I went into prostitution, I fell into drugs because I was trying to suppress the hurt that was done to me as an as an infant.’ ”
“Almost every one of these sentences, when I look in the eyes of a defendant who’s weeping because I’m giving him a significant sentence, what I say to him is do you know that there is someone who has written to me and she has told me that she has developed agoraphobia — she cannot leave her house — because she thinks that everyone she meets will have seen her, will have seen her pictures on the internet, they’re out there forever, at the most vulnerable time of her life and so she’s paralyzed,” she added. “I tell that story to every child porn defendant as a part of my sentences, so that they understand what they have done.”
Hawley and a few other GOP senators are expected to make the issue a major point in their questioning, a matter GOP senators have backed even as it has created some unease among Republicans wary of being seen as offering personal attacks against the first Black woman nominated to serve on the Supreme Court.
In offering Jackson a chance to address the issue in response to his own questioning, Durbin appeared to want to help the nominee and White House get out in front of the issue.