If the publicity and his dominance of the public eye were what inspired them, and got them to screw up their courage to come forward, well this has been going on for over a year. Why not do it when there was a substantial proportion of both parties interested in stopping him? If they were afraid of retaliation, why wait until about half the country is invested in him as a candidate, and there is about a 50/50 chance he is about to become the most powerful man in the world, with some REAL retaliatory chops?

In addition to the difficulties and realities that victims of sexual assault face, there is also the fact that it is by a considerable margin the most frequent falsely reported type of crime. For other crimes, the number of false reports is about half that of sexual assault. Another is the politicizing of sexual assault and the use of such accusations to take down so many prominent black men, under dubious circumstances. That Trump's opponent is one of the worst offenders in demonizing and vilifying sexual assault victims for her own advancement does not help either. Tying those factors all together, is the falsity of so many prominent accusations, from Tawana Brawley, the Duke lacrosse team, the Mattress Girl, the Rolling Stone story and Lena Dunham.

At this point, any political use of sexual assault accusation is simply the boy who cried wolf. It might be a real danger, as in that story, where the wolf does come in the end, but its credibility has been exhausted, particularly by the left wing, and Trump's opponent has done too much in the service of rapists for people to want to see her profit by exposing another one.

It might be scary to come forward, but it is also scary to charge into battle. It is scary to advance under fire. It is scary to hold your position when the enemy is coming down on you. But soldiers who fail to do those things are excoriated as cowards, and often prosecuted or executed for it. "Scary" is a reason for empathy, it is not a justification of a failure to do the right thing. "I was afraid of retaliation" was not acceptable for Germans who failed to stop the Holocaust, and it should not be acceptable for someone who allows other people to be victimized by a predator operating under cover of her silence. In the case of the People magazine reporter, her failure to come forward at the time was a drastic breach of journalistic ethics.