Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who accused Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, said Tuesday she was “surprised” by the kindness of some Republican senators during her testimony in 2018.
Ford released a memoir this week titled “One Way Back” that describes her experience of testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2018 about her allegations brought against Kavanaugh. On Tuesday’s episode of ABC’s “The View,” she recounted what she went through after she made her accusations public.
Co-host Sara Haines asked Ford if she was prepared for a “skeptical” response from lawmakers during her testimony, noting that the professor wrote in her new book that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) would not make eye contact with her during the hearing.
“I was prepared ahead of time that, that none of the Republicans were going to speak with me, and they were going to use an outside interviewer. And so I was actually surprised at how kind some of the other Republican senators were who broke that protocol and said hello,” she said, adding that then-Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) were kind to her.
Ford accused Kavanaugh ahead of his confirmation hearings in the Senate of sexually assaulting her during a party they both attended in the early 1980s. She had accused him of pinning her down on a bed, groping her and putting his hand over her mouth — accusations Kavanaugh denied.
Her accusations became the center of the Senate’s confirmation hearings into Kavanaugh, who was later confirmed to the Supreme Court even after some GOP senators said Ford’s testimony was credible.
She said Tuesday she decided to come forward at the time because it would have been “more difficult” not to.
“So I realized that as soon as Justice Kennedy retired, that it was a possibility. And I started to be concerned about it when I saw his name in the news on the shortlist. And I thought it was imperative that I shared, share the data. And I knew, I knew it was gonna be difficult,” she said.
“But I also realized it was gonna be more difficult to not say anything, that I would feel terrible if I didn’t say anything, and that I wanted to share the information that I had about him,” she added.
Despite the difficulty of coming forward and the backlash she immediately received from doing so, Ford said that she would do it all again.
“I would definitely do it again,” she said, which was met with applause from the audience.
“So I would do it again. It was terrible afterwards for a couple of years. I had a couple of very bad years, but I survived. I survived; it’s survivable,” she added.
The Hill has reached out to Graham for comment.