WASHINGTON (CN) - Concluding a four-hour session at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Christine Blasey Ford gave emotional testimony Thursday about a night "seared" into her memory, a night when she says Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh locked her in a bedroom and tried to rape her.
"My motivation in coming forward was to be helpful and provide facts about how Mr. Kavanaugh's actions have damaged my life, so that you can take that into serious consideration as you make your decision about how to proceed," Ford said, reading from prepared remarks. "It is not my responsibility to determine whether Mr. Kavanaugh deserves to sit on the Supreme Court. My responsibility is to tell you the truth."
Seated beside her attorney, Ford testified at the Senate Judiciary Committee this morning over two weeks after reports of her previously anonymous claims derailed a confirmation vote that once seemed inevitable.
Ford went public days later, telling the Washington Post that she attended a small social gathering when she was 15 where Kavanaugh forced her into a bedroom, pinned her down and attempted to remove her clothes.
Describing these allegations this morning, Ford told the committee that in 1982 she and Kavanaugh had been peers within the constellation of elite, Beltway-area high schools. On the day of her alleged assault, Ford said she attended a gathering at a home in Bethesda, Maryland, with at least five other people, including Kavanaugh and his friend, Mark Judge. Kavanaugh and Judge were "visibly drunk," she said, and forced Ford into a bedroom when she walked up a narrow flight of stairs in the home.
She said they locked the door, and that Kavanaugh jumped on top of her while Judge stood nearby, periodically egging him on. At one point, she believed Kavanaugh was "accidentally" going to kill her as he put his hand over her mouth to muffle her cries for help, she said.
Ford acknowledged that she does not remember certain details of the night, including how she got to the house or where exactly the gathering took place, but assures the committee the rest of the night is "seared into [her] memory." Kavanaugh, who has been a judge on the D.C. Circuit since 2006, maintains meanwhile that he never committed sexual assault.
Now a professor psychology at Palo Alto University, Ford said she did not tell anyone about the alleged assault until 2012, when she told her husband about it in a couples counseling session to explain why she wanted to put two front doors on their house as they did remodeling work.
Ford told the committee she did not tell anyone else about the incident until this July, when she thought it was her "civic duty" to come forward with the allegation as Kavanaugh was on President Donald Trump's shortlist of candidates to succeed the now-retired Supreme Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Ford relayed the information to Representative Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who on July 30 passed it to Senator Dianne Feinstein, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. Ford also called the Washington Post's tip line, according to her prepared remarks.
Since coming forward, Ford said she has received threatening calls and been forced to move from her home and live under the watch of guards.
