RICHMOND, Va. — Vanessa Tyson, who claimed Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax sexually assaulted her, detailed her account of what happened between them in 2004 on Wednesday.
The allegation was related to an encounter at the Democratic National Convention 15 years ago.
The website that published a racist photo from Governor Ralph Northam's medical school yearbook page posted the allegation against Fairfax on Sunday (February 3).
Fairfax told reporters Monday that the 2004 encounter with a woman was consensual, and he called the accusation of misconduct "a smear."
The Washington Post said Monday that the woman (Tyson) approached the paper in 2017. The Post carefully investigated her claim, but it never published anything related to the accusation.
13News Now learned on Wednesday that Fairfax hired the same lawyer that represented then-SCOTUS nominee Brett Kavanaugh during confirmation hearings.
The law firm confirmed they have been representing him since January 2018.
In Fairfax's second statement, released on Twitter, he reiterated that he believed the encounter 15 years ago was "consensual" and that he had no inkling of her uncomfortableness until a national media organization contacted him just before his 2018 inauguration.
Fairfax's statement also highlighted the importance of listening to women when they come forward with allegations of sexual assault.
Fairfax said: "As a former prosecutor and someone who is close with a number of women who are survivors of sexual assault, I know that many survivors of sexual assault suffer in silence, and it is absolutely essential to their healing and our healing as a culture that we give all survivors the space and support to voice their stories."
The statement also said that Fairfax does not want to harm, humiliate, or diminish his accuser, but he just "cannot agree with a description of events that [he] know[s] is not true."
The accusation against the lieutenant governor came just after Governor Ralph Northam's controversial Eastern Virginia Medical School yearbook photo. The picture shown in the 1984 yearbook page depicts a person in blackface and another in a KKK hood.
Northam apologized for the photo on Friday, but he backtracked on Saturday and said he was not in the photo.
On Wednesday, Attorney General Mark Herring admitted he used makeup and a wig to look like a black rapper during a party as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia.