What is most heartbreaking to me is the young women who don't report [being raped] because they were drinking, and they feel like it was their fault that they were drinking. I mean, that is so common.
Claire McCaskillYou can be a victim of a crime and not exercise great judgment. And when women have been sexually assaulted, they feel like they have to have been perfect in order to have anybody believe them. They think nobody will believe them unless a stranger jumped out from behind a bush with a knife - not that they got too drunk and that a guy they thought they knew, you know, took advantage of them in a physical, assaultive way.
Claire McCaskillWhen you work in the United States Senate, and you are around people of all different ideas and beliefs, you realize that what our Founding Fathers did that was so genius, is that they made the Senate the place where compromises are supposed to happen because of the makeup of the Senate.
Claire McCaskillI'm a moderate. I hang out in the middle. I vote against my party with some regularity and try to compromise. It doesn't appear right now that the Republican Party is welcoming moderates any more.
Claire McCaskillI'm the only United States Senator in the country that I'm aware of that's had the far left up on TV and the far right up on TV against me at the same time.
Claire McCaskillThere are people who have legitimate concerns about false accusations and the impact that can have on a young person's life when they have been falsely accused. Kirsten [Gillibrand] and I are not unaware that that is an issue we need to be concerned about, and that's why we have made changes in the legislation to address not just the rights of the victim, the accuser, but also of the accused.
Claire McCaskill