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Blasey Ford says ‘100 per cent’ certain Kavanaugh assaulted her

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WASHINGTON: University professor Christine Blasey Ford told senators on Thursday that she remains “100 per cent” certain that Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s nominee for the US Supreme Court, was the person who sexually assaulted her at a party decades ago.


In extraordinary and at times emotional testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Blasey Ford, a psychology professor in California, said it was “absolutely not” possible that she had mistakenly identified Kavanaugh as her attacker.


Some conservative scholars have suggested Blasey Ford’s accusation was a case of mistaken identity, but Blasey Ford, 51, insisted she has a “100 per cent” level of certainty that it was Kavanaugh who assaulted her.


The testimony — made under oath at a high-stakes hearing — is damning for Kavanaugh, whose nomination is facing intense scrutiny, as two other women also have come out identifying themselves as victims of sexual misconduct by the federal judge.


Blasey Ford claims Kavanaugh tried to rape her at a party in 1982 when he was a 17-year-old high school student and she was 15.


Asked how she could be so sure it was Kavanaugh who attacked her, Blasey Ford responded with confidence: “The same way that I’m sure that I’m talking to you right now. Just basic memory functions.”


The “trauma-related experience” was seared into her brain, she said.


Kavanaugh, 53, has strenuously denied assaulting anyone and insists he is the victim of a “smear campaign.”


Senior Senate Democrat Patrick Leahy was among those who questioned her bluntly about the attack, asking about her strongest memory of the incident.


“Indelible in the hippocampus (the part of the brain that is the centre of emotion and memory) is the laughter, the uproarious laughter between the two, and they are having fun at my expense.”


Blasey Ford testified that Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge, both “visibly drunk,” pushed her into an upstairs room at the party and locked the door.


Kavanaugh, she added, proceeded to jump on top of her, and when she yelled for help, “Brett put his hand over my mouth to stop me from screaming.”


“I was underneath one of them while the two laughed,” she said.


“I am here today not because I want to be,” the 51-year-old Blasey Ford told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a charged hearing room.


“I am terrified,” she said, her voice quavering on the verge of tears as she recounted the details of the 1982 incident which she says took place at a party in a suburban Maryland home. “I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school,” Blasey Ford said.


Trump watches testimony on board Air Force One: President Donald Trump watched the testimony on board Air Force One, the White House said.


Trump’s spokeswoman Sarah Sanders told reporters accompanying the president back to Washington from the UN General Assembly in New York that he was watching Christine Blasey Ford testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee, with a slight delay.


She added that the president had not spoken to Kavanaugh on Wednesday or Thursday.


The Republican president has fiercely defended his court pick against multiple accusations of sexual misconduct dating back decades to his youth, but said on Wednesday he would watch the hearing and was open to changing his mind. — AFP


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