"I cannot be satisfied by simply saying, 'I’m sorry for what happened to you. I will be satisfied when I know there is real change and real accountability and real purpose."

Said Anita Hill, after Joe Biden called her and talked to her for a long time about the hearings he chaired on the confirmation of Clarence Thomas. Quoted in the NYT. What, exactly, is Biden supposed to say about how he handled things?

[S]he cannot support Mr. Biden for president until he takes full responsibility for his conduct, including his failure to call as corroborating witnesses other women who were willing to testify before the Judiciary Committee. By leaving them out, she said, he created a “he said, she said” situation that did not have to exist....

In recent interviews, Ms. Hill and others involved in the confirmation fight portrayed Mr. Biden’s handling of the hearing as at best inept and at worst deeply insensitive. They fault his refusal to seriously investigate her accusations and take public testimony from other potential witnesses who said the future justice had acted inappropriately with them. Justice Thomas has denied any inappropriate behavior.

One of those potential witnesses, Sukari Hardnett, a lawyer in Silver Spring, Md., said in an interview that she decided to come forward while watching the hearing when she “saw what they were doing to Anita Hill and how they were literally trying to trash her.” Ms. Hardnett wrote a letter detailing her own experiences and submitted it to the committee through the dean of her law school, expecting to be called to testify. But she said she was not.

Another woman who sought to testify, Angela Wright, called Mr. Biden “pretty much useless” last year in an interview. Ms. Wright, Ms. Hartnett and one other woman, Rose Jourdain, who died in 2010, were ready to back up Ms. Hill’s account before the committee, but Mr. Biden ended the hearings before they were heard from in public. Over the years, Mr. Biden has suggested they either backed out or were reluctant.

Ms. Hill said there was “no evidence” of that. But if it is true, she said, there is a possible explanation: “They saw a flawed process where they weren’t going to be heard and they might end up being destroyed.”...

The 1991 hearings were a surreal spectacle, as senators prodded an obviously uncomfortable Ms. Hill through awkward testimony about penis size, pubic hair and a pornographic film star known as Long Dong Silver — shocking public discourse at the time. But even before the hearings began, Ms. Hill said, she was “already disappointed” in Mr. Biden....