Ford recounts ‘laughter’ in alleged Kavanaugh sexual attack.
CHRISTINE BLASEY Ford declared yesterday that Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her as he and a friend shared “uproarious laughter” in a locked room at a 1980s high-school gathering, recounting her allegations to the Senate Judiciary Committee and a riveted nation in a drama that threatens to derail Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination.
Her account, delivered in a soft and sometimeshalting voice, came as the Judiciary panel began an extraordinary session that Republicans hope will let them salvage Kavanaugh’s chances of joining the high court. She showed no hesitancy in affirming the crucial question about the alleged incident, telling senators her certainty that Kavanaugh was her attacker was “100 per cent”.
The conservative jurist’s Senate confirmation had seemed assured until Ford came forward, and then other women emerged with additional allegations of sexual misconduct. Kavanaugh, now 53, has denied them all and awaited his own chance to testify later Thursday. It has become less clear that Republican leaders will be able to hold GOP senators behind US President Donald Trump’s nominee.
In an election-season battle that’s being waged along a polarised nation’s political and cultural fault lines, Trump and most Republicans have rallied behind Kavanaugh. They’ve accused Ford and the other women of making unproven allegations and have questioned why they’d not publicly revealed them for decades.
Ford has said Kavanaugh trapped her on a bed and tried undressing her, grinding his body against her and muffling her cries with her hand. “I believed he was going to rape me,” she said in her opening statement.
Democrats have rallied strongly behind Ford. Asked by Patrick Leahy of Vermont for her strongest memory of the alleged incident, Ford mentioned the two boys’ “laughter – the uproarious laughter between the two and having fun at my expense.”
The 51-year-old California psychology professor spoke carefully and deliberately during the hearing, using scientific terminology at one point to describe how a brain might remember details of events decades later. The boys’ laughter was “indelible in the hippocampus,” she said.