Using a victim’s trauma as a political weapon is the most vicious and immoral strategy I have ever seen in any election in this country. Last week, the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio, Vivek Ramaswamy, admitted that he had authorized a campaign video featuring the elderly mother of his Democratic opponent, Dr. Amy Acton. In the ad, Dr. Acton’s mother, from whom she has been estranged for 50 years, calls her daughter a “liar,” particularly for what she has said about “her past.” Though this is not directly mentioned in the ad, Dr. Acton’s “past” includes the sexual abuse Dr. Acton’s stepfather allegedly perpetrated against her when she was a child— allegations that resulted in the man’s indictment for rape (he fled the state before his trial) and Dr. Acton’s mother losing custody of Dr. Acton and her brother.   

The suggestion that Dr. Acton is a liar and, therefore, not suitable to be governor is a new low for Mr. Ramaswamy. Adding to this injury and insult, Vice President JD Vance and President Donald Trump have condoned Mr. Ramaswamy’s personal attack, resulting in a trifecta of cruelty. While many Republicans in Ohio and elsewhere have condemned the ad, including Gov. Mike DeWine, former Gov. John Kasich and U.S. Senator Jon Husted, who is up for re-election this year, most still support Mr. Ramaswamy’s candidacy.

We must all keep in mind the lessons that we as Catholics know from decades of dealing with thousands of cases of abuse that occurred within the church: Child sexual abuse is real. It is traumatizing. And these are crimes for which too few victims ever receive justice or healing.

Over the course of my law-enforcement career and my work with the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, I have listened to many tearful and frightened boys and girls as they told me of their physical, emotional and sexual abuse by a trusted adult or a supposed friend. Even harder to hear were the stories from children whose parents or caregivers used them as sexual partners or playthings and then threatened to punish them should they tell anyone about “their little secret.” More recently, I have known of many adults who still agonize over the abuses they suffered as children and of some who grieve because they unknowingly failed to protect children who were in their care.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggest that at least one in four girls and one in 20 boys experience some type of sexual abuse. As a result of excellent research on the impact of abuse and sexual assault, including studies commissioned by the Catholic Church, there is now a solid body of knowledge of the nature and scope of child sexual abuse, and of the immediate and the long-term harm experienced by victims. How is it, then, that there are still many seemingly intelligent people who refuse to acknowledge that these incidents occur and that the incidence of false reporting is rare?

In Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign ad, he used his opponent’s mother, who appears to be a vulnerable adult, as a proxy to accuse Dr. Acton of lying about her past. In other words, in continuing to defend the ad he is encouraging doubt about anything Dr. Acton says, even including the details of her abuse as a child. Mr. Ramaswamy now says the ad has “nothing to do with sexual abuse,” but why else would he build the ad around someone who has had no contact with Dr. Acton since she was a child? The fact is that Dr. Acton’s testimony provided the substantive proof that resulted in the indictment of her stepfather for a sex crime against her and the state’s removal of Dr. Acton and her younger brother from her mother’s care. Contrary to his goal of characterizing her as a flawed candidate, Mr. Ramaswamy only succeeded in demonstrating his lack of integrity.

Adding to this injury and insult, Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post that anybody whose mother spoke about her this way should be precluded from serving in office, and he encouraged Mr. Ramaswamy to keep running the ad. The vice president also supported the candidate’s messaging about Dr. Acton being a liar and dismissed the ad with the comment “Politics is a tough business.” As a lawyer and former legislator, Mr. Vance should have known to look at the facts before making judgments and public statements about a sexual abuse case. Emulating Mr. Trump’s oft-demonstrated misogyny is a bad choice for him.

The failure of these men of influence to understand, empathize or use mature judgment regarding this campaign message has continued to promote a false narrative and wrongly labeled the woman as a prevaricator. Sadly, these men are not the only abuse deniers in our society and are emblematic of the others, like the supporters and enablers of Jeffrey Epstein and his cohorts, or the defenders of the “boys will be boys” actions on college campuses.

Abused children still suffer from what I call the “avalanche of horribles”—the abusive acts, the embarrassment and shame of being removed from their homes and, at times, having to testify to strangers about the sordid details of their abuse. Fortunately, all states have legal processes for removing children from unsafe homes and placing them with other family members or in foster-care systems that provide temporary shelter, meals and compassion when it is most needed.

A better use of the money used to fund political campaigns like this would be to provide additional monetary support to these foster parents. They are the unrecognized heroes who open their homes at any time of day or night to take in a wounded child. Foster parents often use their own meager incomes to put another plate on the table, add another bed in the house or buy another toy for a removed child. Send some of that money to day-care centers, schools and youth-serving facilities and organizations to enhance their abilities to provide secure and safe spaces for young people, and to provide counselors who can recognize the signs of abuse and provide critical and timely emotional support to children in need.

Whether the intent of the ad was to label Dr. Acton as unfit for office because her mother believes her to be a liar, or to imply that she has falsely testified that she was a victim of sexual abuse, the result is the same. Any time a sex abuse victim is accused of dishonesty, all victims’ stories become questionable, and their trauma re-emerges. As a civil society, and a Christian nation, we must do better than this.  

We can’t expect that Mr. Ramaswamy, Mr. Vance or Mr. Trump will ever acknowledge Dr. Acton’s abuse or apologize for the grief they have caused her and countless other victims of abuse. The reason is as simple as it is sad. In politics, character assassination sometimes works.

Kathleen McChesney headed the F.B.I. field offices in Chicago and Portland, Ore., and was the F.B.I.’s executive assistant director for law enforcement. Dr. McChesney was also the founder and executive director of the Office of Child Protection of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.