WASHINGTON — Christine Blasey Ford told the Senate Judiciary Committee today that the most “indelible” memory she has of her alleged assault and attackers in high school is “the uproarious laughter between the two, and their having fun at my expense.”
Ford told the committee she did not mix up Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge with other teens at the time.
“The person that was blamed for the incident is actually the person who introduced me to them originally. So he was a member of Columbia Country Club,” she said of the middle-school teacher named in Ed Whelan’s Twitter doppelganger theory. “And I don’t want to talk about him because I think it’s unfair, but he is the person that introduced me to them.”
Ford said under questioning from Sen. Pat Leahy (D-Vt.) that she remembers Kavanaugh and Judge “were laughing with each other.”
“I was, you know, underneath one of them while the two laughed — two friends having a really good time with one another,” she said.
Ford testified that she had one beer and “Brett and Mark were visibly drunk” when they pushed her into a bedroom and turned up loud music.
“Brett got on top of me. He began running his hands over my body and grinding into me. I yelled, hoping that someone downstairs might hear me, and I tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy,” the Palo Alto, Calif., professor said. “Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time, because he was very inebriated, and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit underneath my clothing. 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 yelling. This is what terrified me the most, and has had the most lasting impact on my life,” she said. “It was hard for me to breathe, and I thought that Brett was accidentally going to kill me.”
Ford testified that “Brett’s assault on me drastically altered my life,” and “for a very long time, I was too afraid and ashamed to tell anyone these details.”
“I did not want to tell my parents that I, at age 15, was in a house without any parents present, drinking beer with boys,” she added. “I convinced myself that because Brett did not rape me, I should just move on and just pretend that it didn’t happen.”
She said the incident was revealed to her husband in a 2012 therapy session because he couldn’t understand why she was insisting on a second front door in their home remodel.
After Kavanaugh’s name was included on a shortlist of Supreme Court nominees in July, Ford continued, “I thought it was my civic duty to relay the information I had about Mr. Kavanaugh’s conduct so that those considering his nomination would know about this assault.”
“On July 6, I had a sense of urgency to relay the information to the Senate and the president as soon as possible, before a nominee was selected. I did not know how, specifically, to do this,” she said, adding that she reached out to her congressional representative, Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.), and anonymously left a message on the Washington Post confidential tip line. “This was an extremely hard thing for me to do, but I felt that I couldn’t not do it.”
Eshoo delivered a letter from Ford, who told the committee that she wrote the letter without help, to Judiciary Committee Ranking Member on July 30.
“Senator Feinstein wrote that she would not share the letter without my explicit consent, and I appreciated this commitment,” Ford said. “Sexual assault victims should be able to decide for themselves when and whether their private experience is made public.”
Ford said she and her family have had to move twice due to harassment since her name was revealed.
The professor said she saw Judge once at the Potomac Village Safeway several weeks after the attack, so finding out what dates Kavanaugh’s friend worked there could better help her pinpoint when the attack happened.
Kavanaugh was scheduled to testify this afternoon, after Ford left the hearing room.
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