A friend of Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, says Ford told her about the alleged incident last year.
Rebecca White, identified by local outlet The Mercury News as a friend and neighbor of Ford’s, told the outlet that Ford spoke to her about an incident with a “federal judge” who “might be a contender for a Supreme Court position one day.”
{mosads}White said Ford reached out to her after she posted her own personal story about sexual assault under the hashtag #MeToo on her Facebook page in 2017.
“She reached out to me afterward, supporting me and my story and that she had something happen to her when she was really young and that the guy was a federal judge,” White told The Mercury News. “She said she had been assaulted. She said hers had been violent as well, physically scary, fighting for her life.”
White said Ford struggled with the incident because the judge was “a super powerful guy and he might be a contender for a Supreme Court position one day.”
Another woman that was identified as a friend of Ford’s, Kirsten Leimroth, said Ford previously told her that she had been “almost raped by a high school acquaintance,” though she could not recall when the conversation took place.
Leimroth added that it is “preposterous” that Ford would fabricate the claim.
“There’s absolutely no way it’s made up,” Leimroth told the newspaper. “She had to have her kids stay somewhere else. She had to shut down all social media. Why would she do that?”
Leimroth said the alleged incident “wasn’t [Ford’s] first time meeting [Kavanaugh],” as the two ran in similar social circles.
Ford says Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed, groped her and attempted to remove her clothes during a high school party in the 1980s. She says the incident has caused her lasting emotional trauma and provided The Washington Post with notes from 2012 therapy sessions that corroborate her account.
Ford and Kavanaugh, who has denied the allegation, are set to testify in a public hearing on Monday.