Christine Blasey Ford, America’s reluctant star witnessBy Courtney Weaver
In a town full of headline-seekers and attention-grabbers, she was the one person desperate to escape the limelight. And yet there she was — a star witness before the US Senate judiciary committee.
“I am not here because I want to be here,” the once anonymous Christine Blasey Ford said on Thursday, her voice breaking. “I am terrified. 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.”
Ms Ford had stepped out of the newspaper pages and into the public consciousness. The 51-year-old research psychologist was reliving what she described as one of the worst nights of her life: an attempted rape she says occurred at the hands of President Donald Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court when she was 15 and has haunted her ever since.
Over the course of more than eight hours, Ms Ford and Mr Kavanaugh offered conflicting accounts of a sexual assault that she swears happened, and he swears did not.