September 16, 2018
ACTIONS HAVE CONSEQUENCES:
California professor, writer of confidential Brett Kavanaugh letter, speaks out about her allegation of sexual assault (Emma Brown, September 16, 2018, Washington Post)
After so many years, Ford said she does not remember some key details of the incident. She said she believes it occurred in the summer of 1982, when she was 15, around the end of her sophomore year at the all-girls Holton-Arms School in Bethesda. Kavanaugh would have been 17 at the end of his junior year at Georgetown Prep.At the time, Ford said, she knew Kavanaugh and Judge as "friendly acquaintances" in the private-school social circles of suburban Maryland. Her Holton-Arms friends mostly hung out with boys from the Landon School, she said, but for a period of several months socialized regularly with students from Georgetown Prep.Ford said she does not remember how the gathering came together the night of the incident. She said she often spent time in the summer at the Columbia Country Club pool in Chevy Chase, where in those pre-cellphone days, teenagers learned about gatherings via word of mouth. She also doesn't recall who owned the house or how she got there.Ford said she remembers that it was in Montgomery County, not far from the country club, and that no parents were home at the time. Ford named two other teenagers who she said were at the party. Those individuals did not respond to messages on Sunday morning.She said she recalls a small family room where she and a handful of others drank beer together that night. She said that each person had one beer but that Kavanaugh and Judge had started drinking earlier and were heavily intoxicated.In his senior-class yearbook entry at Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh made several references to drinking, claiming membership to the "Beach Week Ralph Club" and "Keg City Club." He and Judge are pictured together at the beach in a photo in the yearbook.Judge is a filmmaker and author who has written for the Daily Caller, The Weekly Standard and The Washington Post. He chronicled his recovery from alcoholism in "Wasted: Tales of a Gen-X Drunk," which described his own blackout drinking and a culture of partying among students at his high school, renamed in the book "Loyola Prep." Kavanaugh is not mentioned in the book, but a passage about partying at the beach one summer makes glancing reference to a "Bart O'Kavanaugh," who "puked in someone's car the other night" and "passed out on his way back from a party."Through the White House, Kavanaugh did not respond to a question about whether the name was a pseudonym for him.Ford said she left the family room to use the bathroom, which was at the top of a narrow stairway. She doesn't remember whether Kavanaugh and Judge were behind her or already upstairs, but she remembers being pushed into a bedroom and then onto a bed. Rock-and-roll music was playing with the volume turned up high, she said.She alleges that Kavanaugh -- who played football and basketball at Georgetown Prep -- held her down with the weight of his body and fumbled with her clothes, seemingly hindered by his intoxication. Judge stood across the room, she said, and both boys were laughing "maniacally." She said she yelled, hoping that someone downstairs would hear her over the music, and Kavanaugh clapped his hand over her mouth to silence her.At one point, she said, Judge jumped on top of them, and she tried unsuccessfully to wriggle free. Then Judge jumped on them again, toppling them, and she broke away, she said.She said she locked herself in the bathroom and listened until she heard the boys "going down the stairs, hitting the walls." She said that after five or ten minutes, she unlocked the door and made her way through the living room and outside. She isn't sure how she got home.
If, as all testimony about his subsequent life suggests, this was the sort of youthful drunken indiscretion that is all too common amongst students, then it does not define the Judge's character. However, it does seem serious enough that it should provide the basis of a "no" vote. No one, after all, is entitled to a Court seat and there are plenty of equally well-qualified candidates to choose from without such an incident in their past.
Posted by Orrin Judd at September 16, 2018 2:54 PM
