Christine Blasey Ford's Testimony Is a Detailed Account of Brett Kavanaugh's Alleged Assault
Christine Blasey Ford, a professor, mother, and former childhood acquaintance of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, will testify in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday. There, she will recount her side of the story for Senators, and the world at large, sharing in great detail the night she says Kavanaugh assaulted her.
Ford’s prepared opening remarks were released Wednesday, in which she shared just how deeply the alleged event from 1982 affected the rest of her life.
“I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school,” Ford wrote. She explained how she and Kavanaugh attended nearby schools—hers an all-girls academy and his an all-boys. Their social circles intersected. As she recounted, they weren’t quite friends but knew of one another well enough. But, in the summer of 1982 their worlds would collide, and for Ford, Kavanaugh would from then on become an ever-present figure in her memory.
“One evening that summer, after a day of swimming at the club, I attended a small gathering at a house in the Chevy Chase/Bethesda area. There were four boys I remember being there: Brett Kavanaugh, Mark Judge, P.J. Smyth, and one other boy whose name I cannot recall,” she wrote. When Blasey Ford walked in, Kavanaugh and Judge were already visibly drunk. She had only one beer throughout the night.
When she made her way up the stairs to the second floor of the house to use the bathroom, that’s when Blasey Ford said the attack began.
“I was pushed from behind into a bedroom. I couldn’t see who pushed me. Brett and Mark came into the bedroom and locked the door behind them. There was music already playing in the bedroom. It was turned up louder by either Brettor Mark once we were in the room,” she wrote. “I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me. He began running his hands over my body and grinding his hips into me. I yelled, hoping someone downstairs might hear me, and tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy. “
From there, she alleges that Kavanaugh attempted to take off her clothes, but had trouble due to his intoxication and the fact that she was wearing a one-piece bathing suit.
“I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help. When I did, Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming. This was what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life. It was hardfor me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me,” she said.
During the assault, she writes, Judge jumped on the bed, which made all three of them tumble over. That, Ford wrote, was the moment she escaped. From there, she ran into the bathroom and locked the door until the boys left. She then ran down the stairs and out the door. As she explained, she has thought of that event frequently as it was “seared into my memory and have haunted me episodically as an adult.”
In the remarks, Ford explained how she tried every avenue available to her to warn the committee about Kavanaugh and her allegations against him. She first called and met with Congresswoman Anna Eshoo and her staff, and finally sent a letter to Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein promised to keep the letter confidential, but it soon leaked, prompting Ford to tell her story herself, which she did to the Washington Post earlier this month.
Her testimony, along with the answers to questioning will be heard in full on Thursday. They will also be heard alongside Kavanaugh’s own testimony. The conservative judge released his prepared remarks, which read in part, “There has been a frenzy to come up with something — anything, no matter how far-fetched or odious — that will block a vote on my nomination,” adding he unequivocally denies the claims brought by Ford.
However, she won’t be the last woman he has to answer for. Since Ford came forward, two more women have joined in with their own accusations against him. On Wednesday, Julie Swetnick, a woman who also knew Kavanaugh in high school, alleged that Kavanaugh and Judge were both present at a party where she was drugged and “gang raped.” A third accuser, Deborah Ramirez, is a former Yale University classmate of Kavanaugh’s. As she explained to The New Yorker, Kavanaugh exposed himself to her at a party in college and “thrust his penis in her face,” causing her to “touch it without her consent as she pushed him away.”
Still, none of these accusations against Kavanaugh will stop him from pursuing the highest court in the land. As he will tell the committee tomorrow, “The efforts to destroy my good name will not drive me out.”
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