An investigative report in Newsday on a 1975 rape defense case waged by a young Hillary Clinton (then Hillary D. Rodham) in Arkansas reveals that her famous anything-to-win attitude exhibited itself early on, her legal opponent in the case describing her as a "bulldog." According to Glenn Thrush's detailed report in Newsday, a 27-year-old Rodham, acting as a court-appointed attorney, impugned the character and credibility of a 12-year-old girl in her aggressive defense of the man accused of raping her. Perhaps justiable from a strictly legal perspective as the vigorous defense required of any attorney, the case nonetheless raises ethical concerns with regards to the methods employed by this particular attorney on behalf of her client; as well as to broader questions on the treatment of rape victims by the justice system, in particular the practice of "blaming the victim" in rape cases which women's advocates have long sought to end. It also casts a shadow on Clinton's reputation as a defender of children.

In May of 1975, according to Newsday, Rodham was appointed to represent a hard-drinking factory worker named Thomas Alfred Taylor, accused of raping the 12-year-old, and who had requested a female attorney in an effort to improve his chances with the jury. Hillary Clinton mentions the case in her 2003 autobiography, Living History, writing that she initially balked at the assignment but eventually secured a lenient plea deal with conviction on a lesser charge 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." This account, however, leaves out a significant aspect of her defense strategy, which consisted of impugning the character and credibility of the victim, according to a Newsday examination of court and investigative files and interviews with witnesses, law enforcement officials, and the victim herself. Rodham, records show, questioned the sixth grader's honesty and claimed that she had made false accusations of sexual assault in the past. She implied that the girl often fantasized about and sought out older men like Taylor, according to a July 1975 affidavit signed "Hillary D. Rodham." After requesting a psychiatric examination of the girl but without referring to any source of the allegations against her, Rodham wrote in her affadavit:

"I have been informed that the complainant is emotionally unstable with a tendency to seek out older men and to engage in fantasizing.... I have also been informed that she has in the past made false accusations about persons, claiming they had attacked her body."

Some would interpret this from a strictly legal perspective simply as the vigorous defense of her client required of Rodham as an attorney. "She was vigorously advocating for her client...," Andrew Schepard of Hofstra Law School told Newsday, "...What she did was appropriate. He was lucky to have her as a lawyer." From the perspective of the young victim and her family, however, and from the perspective of women's advocates who have long sought to end the practice of blaming the victim in rape cases, the view would look very different, as Schepard further suggests: "In terms of what's good for the little girl? It would have been hell on the victim. But that wasn't Hillary's problem." Owing to Rodham's efforts, Taylor's charges were finally reduced from first-degree rape to unlawful fondling of a minor under the age of 14, which carried a five-year sentence.

Schepard's suggestion that the process of discrediting her testimony "would have been hell on the victim" seems to have indeed been the case according to the victim herself, now 46, in an interview with Newsday. "They kept asking me the same questions over and over...," the unnamed victim recalls, "...I was crying all the time." Rejecting Rodham's claims against her, the victim 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," the victim insisted, "I never sought out older men - I was raped." The victim was visibly stunned when shown Rodham's affadavit, saying: "It kind of shocks me - it's not true.... I never said anybody attacked my body before, never in my life."

The prosecutor's files on the case were reportedly destroyed in a flood more than a decade ago, leaving a scarcity of documentation for fully investigating the case, and there is no direct evidence to suggest that Rodham fabricated evidence or otherwise behaved improperly. The victim's own statements clearly contradict Rodham's, however, as do those of case investigator Dale Gibson, who could not recall seeing evidence that the girl had fabricated previous attacks. On Rodham's aggressive handling of the case, her legal opponent, former Washington County prosecutor Mahlon Gibson, said simply: "She was just a real bulldog - a real bulldog."

Since 1975, the life of Hillary Rodham Clinton and that of her client's twice-brutalized young victim have taken very different paths. While Clinton went on to become the first lady both of Arkansas and of the United States, a U.S. Senator, and a presidential candidate, the victim went on to depression, attempted suicide, drug addiction, and jail. She is currently living in a halfway house and looking for work. The victim told Newsday that the incident continues to haunt her, compounding her bouts of depression and anxiety:

"I remember a lot of bad things about what he did to me in that pickup of his.... I've had a lot of counseling and saw a psychiatrist for five to ten years.... It really affected me mentally. I was always kind of scared to be alone with a guy afterwards."

The reader must decide for him/herself whether Clinton's actions in the case ought to be held against her. Whatever legal justification one might cite in Clinton's defense, however, it is worth recalling also that ending the practice of blaming the victim in rape cases has long been high on the list of priorities among women's advocates. Clinton's willingness, and even apparent eagerness, to engage in this same practice by actively and extensively seeking to discredit the testimony of a 12-year-old victim of sexual assault, seems fair to consider if one wishes to hold a presidential candidate to a higher standard than that of mere legal permissibility or expediency. She could, after all, have refused to take such steps or refused to take the case at all, as others would even at the cost of their jobs. Furthermore, the fact that Hillary D. Rodham's statements contradict those both of the case investigator and of the victim herself suggest again that the case is a matter of presidential ethics worth considering.

At the very least, it raises the question of whether an anything-to-win, political "bulldog" is really what we want most in the White House right now.