THE BLACKEST ROBES

This is the story of the women who were saying me too long before they had a hashtag to put a collective name to their plight.
At the center of this narrative is disgraced U.S. District Judge Samuel Bristow Kent, who was the first and only federal judge ever impeached for sexual misconduct. But this is also the larger story of the secretive court culture that enabled him and, by extension, U.S. Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski and Kozinki's mentee U.S. Supreme Court Justice Bret Kavanaugh too.

Based on first-hand reporting, complete access, and a decade of breaking news, THE BLACKEST ROBES charts Cathy McBroom's 2007 assault by Judge Kent, its shattering aftermath, and her long journey to come forward, ultimately joined by other victims, to expose Kent for his crimes. The result is a propulsive legal thriller unfurled by dogged investigators, a story of abuse, corruption, perseverance, integrity, bravery and ultimately triumph.

Lise Olsen worked as an award-winning investigative journalist for the Houston Chronicle where she first uncovered and broke this story as a reporter who has dedicated years of her life to seeking justice in a system ironically rigged against just that. A former survivor of sexual assault herself, Olsen patiently and painstakingly tracked every lead and pushed through every roadblock to expose Federal Judge Samuel Bristow Kent for what he was and to tell this victim's story the right way.

There are so many tendrils to this page-turning narrative - the system that created the likes of men like Brett Kavanaugh, Harvey Weinstein, Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, the vilifying of strong-willed, hard-nosed women who dare to persist, and the power women can have when they come together and realize they are not alone. As we stand at water coolers or troll social media trying to parse the latest discussion around this issue of sexual assault in our culture, fueled most recently by the explosive publications of The Education of Bret Kavanaugh and She Said, among others, THE BLACKEST ROBES is a cautionary, telling story that will help us contextualize and understand how sexual assault and abuse can occur, even in institution whose leaders are charged with protecting all of us from those same kind of crimes. Here is a narrative that will help answer the urgent question on every woman in America's mind right now: How could this happen? But perhaps more importantly: What do we do now?