White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway admits she was once a victim of sexual assault

White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway admits she was once a victim of sexual assault while talking about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

Kellyanne Conway has admitted she is a victim of sexual assault during a TV interview about Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.

White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway says she was once a victim of sexual assault, but women’s shared outrage over such misconduct should not affect Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.

Ms Conway made the comments on CNN’s State of the Union program while defending Mr Kavanaugh against sexual misconduct allegations.

She argued his opponents were wrongly politicising his nomination and turning it into a “meeting of the MeToo movement”.

Ms Conway said the news media and others often treat victims differently “based on their politics”.

“I feel very empathetic, frankly, for victims of sexual assault, sexual harassment and rape,” Ms Conway said. “I’m a victim of sexual assault,” she added.

But she said she doesn’t expect Mr Kavanaugh to be held responsible for that. : “I don’t expect Judge Kavanaugh or Jake Tapper or (Republican Senator) Jeff Flake or anybody to be held responsible for that. You have to be responsible for your own conduct,” Ms Conway said. She did not elaborate on her experience, though she has previously alluded to it.

.@KellyannePolls to @jaketapper: "I'm a victim of sexual assault." #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/ZQcmnFIicQ

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) September 30, 2018

The White House aide was asked about how she deals with her experience with sexual assault while working for Mr Trump, who has been accused of sexual harassment.

“Don’t conflate that with this, and certainly don’t conflate that with what happened to me,” she replied.

Ms Conway said her experience helps her understand that victims “should all be heard, and they should be heard in courts of law”.

She told a Politico forum last December that during the 2016 presidential campaign she sought to denounce cases of sexual harassment by congressmen against her and others when she was a GOP political operative, but was ignored by the press.

In that talk, Ms Conway referred to an MSNBC appearance she made in October of 2016, a day after the release of an Access Hollywood tape that caught then presidential candidate Donald Trump in 2005 boasting off-camera about groping women. She implied in those comments that members of Congress had behaved inappropriately.

“I would talk to some of the members of Congress out there. I remember when I was younger and prettier, them rubbing up against girls sticking their tongues down women’s throats. It was true,” Ms Conway said during a post-presidential debate interview

AP