Hillary Clinton’s campaign website was edited in recent months to remove a statement supporting rape victims’ “right to be believed” after an Arkansas woman resurfaced earlier this year to accuse Bill Clinton of raping her in 1978.
“I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault: Don’t let anyone silence your voice. You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed, and we’re with you,” Clinton’s website once read, according to the website Buzzfeed in a profile of Bill Clinton’s rape accuser, Juanita Broaddrick.
Clinton made the supportive statement in a video that her campaign posted online in September.
Broaddrick ended years of silence in January when she tweeted about the alleged rape. The 73-year-old retired nursing executive says that the former president raped her in a Little Rock hotel room. Clinton was running for governor at the time.
The Clintons have largely avoided discussing Broaddrick’s claims, which came to light during the former president’s impeachment proceedings in the late 1990s. Clinton has denied through attorneys that he assaulted Broaddrick. Other Clinton supporters have said that Hillary Clinton should not be blamed for any of her husband’s misdeeds.
Clinton’s website has been altered in recent months to remove “you have the right to be believed, and we’re with you” from a web page about campus sexual assault.
An archived copy of the site shows that the now-deleted line was on the page as of Nov. 30. According to Buzzfeed, the line was removed before Feb. 4, nearly a month after Broaddrick published her now-viral tweet.
Hillary Clinton’s campaign website as of Aug. 14, 2016
Hillary Clinton’s campaign website as of Nov. 30, 2015
The scrubbed line can still be heard in the video of Clinton’s remarks that is on her website.