The woman who is accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her in high school has come forward to detail the allegations.
Christine Blasey Ford, a 51-year-old professor at Palo Alto University in California, described the incident in great detail as well as the trauma it caused her.
Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh “groped her over her clothes, grinding his body against hers and clumsily attempting to pull off her one-piece bathing suit and the clothing she wore over it.”
She also said Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth when she attempted to scream for help.
“I thought he might inadvertently kill me,” Ford said. “He was trying to attack me and remove my clothing.”
Kavanaugh last week denied the allegations, which were first reported last week.
“I categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation,” Kavanaugh said in a statement provided by the White House. “I did not do this back in high school or at any time.”
The White House reportedly provided the same statement to the Post on Sunday.
I have no doubt that this is how Ford remembers the incident now. But it wasn’t until 2012 that she revealed the incident to a therapist. In the intervening decades, could she have exaggerated or augmented certain aspects of the alleged assault?
Kavanaugh was with a friend, Mark Judge, when the incident occurred and Judge simply says Ford is “absolutely nuts.”
Ford told the Post that Kavanaugh and a friend, Mark Judge, were both “stumbling drunk” when they took her into a bedroom while they were at a house in suburban Maryland. Judge and Kavanaugh were both students at Georgetown Preparatory School.
Judge and Kavanaugh pushed Ford onto a bed in the room, where rock-and-roll music was playing at a high volume, Ford alleged.
According to her, Kavanaugh “held her down with the weight of his body and fumbled with her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication,” the Post reported. She added that both of the boys were laughing “maniacally.”
Did Kavanaugh hold her down “with the weight of his body” or was he just drunkenly lying on top of her? Was Ford drunk too? The woman was traumatized — what young girl wouldn’t be? But with so many years having passed between the time of the incident and now, who can be sure what happened?
I hate to minimize what Ms. Ford now remembers as a traumatic experience. In truth, this is a story repeated many times on college campuses and other places where young men and women gather. Men can be pigs and adding alcohol to young hormones can be an incendiary mix.
The question for senators is whether this incident — if true in all respects — should disqualify Kavanaugh from serving. Democrats now won’t dare vote for him, fearing the wrath of their base, so Republicans have no margin for error.
The vote is scheduled for Thursday.
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