Blasey Ford agrees to testify in dramatic Supreme Court confirmation showdown
WASHINGTON — When she first told a U.S. lawmaker her harrowing allegation of a 1982 high-school sexual assault at the hands of a prep-school kid now poised to become one of America’s most powerful judges, she was just an anonymous psychology professor in California — and wanted to stay that way.
But before long, Christine Blasey Ford knew better.
Politically, the stakes were enormous: the kid in question was Brett Kavanaugh, tapped as President Donald Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court. Within months, Blasey Ford faced an unbearable Sophie’s choice: be dragged out of obscurity or march into the line of fire, head up and eyes open.
“Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation,” she told the Washington Post in a coming-out story last week, placing herself squarely at the epicentre of a political earthquake that has made her a household name.