On September 16, after media reported anonymous allegations and reporters started to track down her identity, Ford went public.
[34] Ford had wrestled with the choice to make her identity known, weighing the potential negative impact it could have on her,
[35][36] but ultimately spoke to
The Washington Post, alleging that Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in the summer of 1982 when she was 15 and he was 17.
[37][38][39] She said that, while his friend
Mark Judge watched, Kavanaugh, intoxicated, held her down on a bed with his body, grinding against and groping her, covering her mouth when she tried to scream and trying to pull her clothes off.
[40][41] Finding it hard to breathe, she thought Kavanaugh was going to kill her.
[13] She recounted escaping when Judge jumped on the bed and toppled them.
[7] As corroboration of her account, Ford provided the
Post with the
polygraph results as well as session notes from her
couples therapist written in 2012.
[7]
The therapist's notes do not name Kavanaugh but record Ford's claim of being attacked by students "from an elitist boys' school" who went on to become "highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington". The therapist's notes also say four boys were involved, which Ford attributed to an error by the therapist; Ford said in 2018 that four boys were at the party but only two were involved in the incident.
[7] Ford's husband recalled that she had used Kavanaugh's last name in her 2012 description of the incident, and that she said he might one day be nominated to the Supreme Court.
[7] In an individual therapy session in 2013, Ford described a "rape attempt" that occurred in her late teens