California professor Christine Ford, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh
letter, speaks out about sexual assault allegation - The Washington Post
FILE PHOTO: Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh testifies during the third
day of his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on
Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., September 6, 2018. REUTERS/Alex
Wroblewski/File Photo (Alex Wroblewski/Reuters)
By Emma Brown
September 16 at 1:28 PM
Earlier this summer, Christine Blasey Ford wrote a confidential letter to a
senior Democratic lawmaker alleging that Supreme Court nominee Brett M.
Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her more than three decades ago, when they were
high school students in suburban Maryland. Since Wednesday, she has watched
as that bare-bones version of her story became public without her name or
her consent, drawing a blanket denial from Kavanaugh and roiling a
nomination that just days ago seemed all but certain to succeed.
Now, Ford has decided that if her story is going to be told, she wants to be
the one to tell it.
Speaking publicly for the first time, Ford said that one summer in the early
1980s, Kavanaugh and a friend - both "stumbling drunk," Ford alleges -
corralled her into a bedroom during a gathering of teenagers at a house in
Montgomery County.
While his friend watched, she said, Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed on her
back and 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. When she tried to scream, she said, he put his hand over
her mouth.
"I thought he might inadvertently kill me," said Ford, now a 51-year-old
research psychologist in northern California. "He was trying to attack me
and remove my clothing."
Ford said she was able to escape when Kavanaugh's friend and classmate at
Georgetown Preparatory School, Mark Judge, jumped on top of them, sending
all three tumbling. She said she ran from the room, briefly locked herself
in a bathroom and then fled the house.
Ford said she told no one of the incident in any detail until 2012, when she
was in couples therapy with her husband. The therapist's notes, portions of
which were provided by Ford and reviewed by The Washington Post, do not
mention Kavanaugh's name but say she reported that she was attacked by
students "from an elitist boys' school" who went on to become "highly
respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington." The notes say
four boys were involved, a discrepancy Ford says was an error on the
therapist's part. Ford said there were four boys at the party but only two
in the room.
Notes from an individual therapy session the following year, when she was
being treated for what she says have been long-term effects of the incident,
show Ford described a "rape attempt" in her late teens.
In an interview, her husband, Russell Ford, said that in the 2012 sessions,
she recounted being trapped in a room with two drunken boys, one of whom
pinned her to a bed, molested her and prevented her from screaming. He said
he recalled that his wife used Kavanaugh's last name and voiced concern that
Kavanaugh - then a federal judge - might one day be nominated to the Supreme
Court.
On Sunday, the White House sent The Post a statement Kavanaugh issued last
week, when the outlines of Ford's account first became public: "I
categorically and unequivocally deny this allegation. I did not do this back
in high school or at any time."
Through a White House spokesman, Kavanaugh declined to comment further on
Ford's allegation and did not respond to questions about whether he knew her
during high school. The White House had no additional comment.
Judge did not respond to emails seeking comment, and efforts to locate a
phone number or address for him were unsuccessful. In an interview Friday
with The Weekly Standard, before Ford's name was known, he denied that any
such incident occurred. "It's just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act
that way," Judge said. He told the New York Times that Kavanaugh was a
"brilliant student" who loved sports and was not "into anything crazy or
illegal."
Christine Ford is a professor at Palo Alto University who teaches in a
consortium with Stanford University, training graduate students in clinical
psychology. Her work has been widely published in academic journals.
She contacted The Post through a tip line in early July, when it had become
clear that Kavanaugh was on the shortlist of possible nominees to replace
retiring justice Anthony M. Kennedy but before Trump announced his name
publicly. A registered Democrat who has made small contributions to
political organizations, she contacted her congresswoman, Democrat Anna G.
Eshoo, around the same time. In late July, she sent a letter via Eshoo's
office to Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the ranking Democrat on the
Judiciary Committee.
In the letter, which was read to The Post, Ford described the incident and
said she expected her story to be kept confidential. She signed the letter
as Christine Blasey, the name she uses professionally.
For weeks, Ford declined to speak to The Post on the record as she grappled
with concerns about what going public would mean for her and her family -
and what she said was her duty as a citizen to tell the story.
She engaged Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer known for her work on sexual
harassment cases. On the advice of Katz, who believed Ford would be attacked
as a liar if she came forward, Ford took a polygraph test administered by a
former FBI agent in early August. The results, which Katz provided to The
Post, concluded that Ford was being truthful when she said a statement
summarizing her allegations was accurate.
By late August, Ford had decided not to come forward, calculating that doing
so would upend her life and probably would not affect Kavanaugh's
confirmation. "Why suffer through the annihilation if it's not going to
matter?" she said.
Her story leaked anyway. On Wednesday, The Intercept reported that Feinstein
had a letter describing an incident involving Kavanaugh and a woman while
they were in high school, and that Feinstein was refusing to share it with
her Democratic colleagues.
Feinstein soon released a statement: "I have received information from an
individual concerning the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme
Court," she wrote. "That individual strongly requested confidentiality,
declined to come forward or press the matter further, and I have honored
that decision. I have, however, referred the matter to federal investigative
authorities."
The FBI received a version of the letter with Ford's name redacted,
according to a Republican official with knowledge of the letter, and then
sent it to the White House to be included in Kavanaugh's background file.
The White House sent it to the Senate Judiciary Committee, making it
available to all senators.
As pressure grew, the New York Times reported that the incident involved
"possible sexual misconduct."
By then, Ford had begun to fear she would be exposed, particularly after a
BuzzFeed reporter visited her at her home and tried to speak to her as she
was leaving a classroom where she teaches graduate students. Another
reporter called her colleagues to ask about her.
On Friday, the New Yorker reported the letter's contents but did not reveal
Ford's identity. Soon after, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E.
Grassley (R-Iowa) released a letter from 65 women who say they knew
Kavanaugh when he attended high school from 1979 to 1983 at Georgetown Prep,
an all-boys school in North Bethesda.
"Through the more than 35 years we have known him, Brett has stood out for
his friendship, character, and integrity," the women wrote. "In particular,
he has always treated women with decency and respect. That was true when he
was in high school, and it has remained true to this day."
As the story snowballed, Ford said, she heard people repeating inaccuracies
about her and, with the visits from reporters, felt her privacy being
chipped away. Her calculation changed.
"These are all the ills that I was trying to avoid," she said, explaining
her decision to come forward. "Now I feel like my civic responsibility is
outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation."
Katz said she believes Feinstein honored Ford's request to keep her
allegation confidential, but "regrettably others did not."
"Victims must have the right to decide whether to come forward, especially
in a political environment that is as ruthless as this one," Katz said. "She
will now face vicious attacks by those who support this nominee."
After so many years, Ford said she does not remember some key details of the
incident. She said she believes it occurred in the summer of 1982, when she
was 15, around the end of her sophomore year at the all-girls Holton-Arms
School in Bethesda. Kavanaugh would have been 17 at the end of his junior
year at Georgetown Prep.
At the time, Ford said, she knew Kavanaugh and Judge as "friendly
acquaintances" in the private-school social circles of suburban Maryland.
Her Holton-Arms friends mostly hung out with boys from the Landon School,
she said, but for a period of several months socialized regularly with
students from Georgetown Prep.
Ford said she does not remember how the gathering came together the night of
the incident. She said she often spent time in the summer at the Columbia
Country Club pool in Chevy Chase, where in those pre-cellphone days,
teenagers learned about gatherings via word of mouth. She also doesn't
recall who owned the house or how she got there.
Ford said she remembers that it was in Montgomery County, not far from the
country club, and that no parents were home at the time. Ford named two
other teenagers who she said were at the party. Those individuals did not
respond to messages on Sunday morning.
She said she recalls a small family room where she and a handful of others
drank beer together that night. She said that each person had one beer but
that Kavanaugh and Judge had started drinking earlier and were heavily
intoxicated.
In his senior-class yearbook entry at Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh made
several references to drinking, claiming membership to the "Beach Week Ralph
Club" and "Keg City Club." He and Judge are pictured together at the beach
in a photo in the yearbook.
Judge is a filmmaker and author who has written for the Daily Caller, The
Weekly Standard and The Washington Post. He chronicled his recovery from
alcoholism in "Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk," which described his own
black-out drinking and a culture of partying among students at his high
school, renamed in the book "Loyola Prep." Kavanaugh is not mentioned in the
book, but a passage about partying at the beach one summer makes glancing
reference to a "Bart O'Kavanaugh," who "puked in someone's car the other
night" and "passed out on his way back from a party."
Through the White House, Kavanaugh did not respond to a question about
whether the name was a pseudonym for him.
Ford said she left the family room to use the bathroom, which was at the top
of a narrow stairway. She doesn't remember whether Kavanaugh and Judge were
behind her or already upstairs, but she remembers being pushed into a
bedroom and then onto a bed. Rock-and-roll music was playing with the volume
turned up high, she said.
She alleges that Kavanaugh - who played football and basketball at
Georgetown Prep - held her down with the weight of his body and fumbled with
her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication. Judge stood across the
room, she said, and both boys were laughing "maniacally." She said she
yelled, hoping that someone downstairs would hear her over the music, and
Kavanaugh clapped his hand over her mouth to silence her.
At one point, she said, Judge jumped on top of them, and she tried
unsuccessfully to wriggle free. Then Judge jumped on them again, toppling
them, and she broke away, she said.
She said she locked herself in the bathroom and listened until she heard the
boys "going down the stairs, hitting the walls." She said that after five or
ten minutes, she unlocked the door and made her way through the living room
and outside. She isn't sure how she got home.
Ford said she has not spoken with Kavanaugh since that night. And she told
no one at the time what had happened to her. She was terrified, she said,
that she would be in trouble if her parents realized she had been at a party
where teenagers were drinking, and she worried they might figure it out even
if she did not tell them.
"My biggest fear was, do I look like someone just attacked me?" she said.
She said she recalled thinking: "I'm not ever telling anyone this. This is
nothing, it didn't happen, and he didn't rape me."
Years later, after going through psychotherapy, Ford said, she came to
understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact on her life.
"I think it derailed me substantially for four or five years," she said. She
said she struggled academically and socially and was unable to have healthy
relationships with men. "I was very ill-equipped to forge those kinds of
relationships."
She also said she believes that in the longer term, it contributed to
anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms with which she has
struggled.
She married her husband in 2002. Early in their relationship, she told him
she had been a victim of physical abuse, he said. A decade later, he learned
the details of that alleged abuse when the therapist asked her to tell the
story, he said.
He said he expects that some people, upon hearing his wife's account, will
believe that Kavanaugh's high school behavior has no bearing upon his
fitness for the nation's high court. He disagrees.
"I think you look to judges to be the arbiters of right and wrong," Russell
Ford said. "If they don't have a moral code of their own to determine right
from wrong, then that's a problem. So I think it's relevant. Supreme Court
nominees should be held to a higher standard."
Staff writers Beth Reinhard and Seung Min Kim and researchers Alice Crites
and Julie Tate contributed to this report.