Ramaswamy's ad doesn't say rape. Experts say it doesn't matter

Does a political ad stop being about a woman’s childhood rape simply because nobody in it says the words?Today in Ohio hosts Chris Quinn and Leila Atassi rejected that defense of Vivek Ramaswamy’s attack on Amy Acton during Monday’s discussion. Their argument: Putting Acton’s estranged mother on camera to attack her credibility makes the sexual abuse central to the ad, because that abuse is inseparable from the mother’s departure from Acton’s life.“You don’t have to mention it in the ad,” Quinn said. “Her very presence there makes the rape of Amy Acton as a 12 year old the central theme of that ad.”Quinn described a succession of defenses offered for the Republican gubernatorial candidate after the ad appeared. First, he said, supporters insisted Ramaswamy wasn’t responsible. Then, after Ramaswamy took responsibility, they argued that an Acton ad involving his mother made family members fair game.By the weekend, Quinn said, the defense had shifted again: The ad never mentioned sexual abuse, so the media had introduced that subject.He called that an exercise in semantics that ignored whom Ramaswamy had chosen to deliver the attack.As Quinn and Atassi recounted, Acton’s mother left with her husband after he was indicted on charges of raping Acton. Atassi said the stepfather fled Ohio and remained a fugitive until his death. The mother’s appearance, Quinn argued, brought that history directly into the campaign.“This was put into the atmosphere by Vivek Ramaswamy,” he said.Atassi sharpened the point by questioning the basis for the mother’s sweeping attack on Acton’s honesty. This was a woman, she said, who had not known her daughter since she was 12.“All she knows of Amy Acton are up until the moment when she accused this woman’s husband of what he did,” Atassi said.That made the suggestion that the mother could assess Acton’s character across the ensuing decades untenable, Atassi argued. Her knowledge of her daughter ended at precisely the childhood trauma Ramaswamy’s defenders now insisted was irrelevant to the ad.The discussion began with another consequence of that choice: what children being sexually abused might hear in a powerful politician’s attack on a survivor’s credibility.Atassi summarized reporter Lizzie Kaboski’s interviews with child sexual abuse experts, who warned that the spectacle could reinforce an abuser’s insistence that nobody will believe a child who speaks up.“Those kids are already dealing with shame and fear and in many cases, abusers who have convinced them that nobody will believe them,” Atassi said.She cited research in Kaboski’s story showing that roughly two-thirds of sexual abuse cases involving children ages 10 to 17 were never reported to a parent or another adult. Only about 19% were reported to police, she said.Against that backdrop, the potential harm extended well beyond Acton or the election. Atassi described children watching a candidate for governor enlist a survivor’s own mother to challenge her honesty, despite the indictment of the stepfather.Jennifer Johnson of Cleveland’s Canopy Child Advocacy Center warned in Kaboski’s story that such a public spectacle could discourage children from coming forward, Atassi said. Another expert, Darcy Olson of the Center for the Rights of Abused Children, argued that childhood trauma should be off limits in politics.“If we want them to expose the people who abuse them, we have to create a world where they feel safe enough to speak,” Atassi said.Quinn argued that the response should transcend party loyalty. He explained that the editorial board had reversed its earlier policy and endorsed Acton after readers urged it to take a stand.“Forget your party affiliation, do the decent thing, and instead we have people searching for any way to justify it so that their team can win,” he said.Atassi argued that President Donald Trump’s support had emboldened Ramaswamy to double down. She connected that support to Trump’s history of attacking the credibility of women who accused him and others of sexual misconduct.There was also a brief look at the political fallout. Host Lisa Garvin reported that Acton’s chances as reflected in three prediction markets had climbed at least 10 percentage points from Monday to Friday morning, reaching 85% on PredictIt, 83% on Polymarket and 82% on Kalshi. Quinn saw the movement as evidence that bettors recognized the damage to Ramaswamy’s campaign.But his larger demand was for an unmistakable rejection of the tactic itself.“It has to be a statement,” Quinn said. “No, we don’t accept this. We are better than this in Ohio.”Listen to the conversation here.Why is the Ohio Chamber trying to crush 14,000 people over data centers?Trump celebrates ad targeting Amy Acton’s childhood rape, then turns on DeWine for condemning itA Republican offers Cuyahoga taxpayers protection from their Democratic leadersListen to full “Today in Ohio” episodes where Chris Quinn hosts our daily half-hour news podcast, with Editorial Board member Lisa Garvin, Impact Editor Leila Atassi and Content Director Laura Johnston.