WASHINGTON: A university professor on Thursday said she was “100 per cent” certain Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, sexually assaulted her 36 years ago, telling a dramatic US Senate hearing she feared he would rape and accidentally kill her.

In his testimony, Kavanaugh made an angry denial.

Christine Blasey Ford, her voice sometimes cracking with emotion, appeared in public for the first time to detail her allegation against Kavanaugh, a conservative federal appeals court judge chosen for a lifetime job on the top US court.

Kavanaugh, seeking to salvage his nomination, appeared after Ford finished her appearance, and they were never in the hearing room together.

Calling himself a victim of “grotesque and obvious character assassination,” Kavanaugh, speaking passionately, said he “unequivocally and categorically” denied Ford’s allegation.

The momentous hearing could determine whether Kavanaugh will be confirmed by the Senate after a pitched political battle between Trump’s fellow Republicans and Democrats who oppose the nominee.

Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, said over four hours of testimony that a drunken Kavanaugh attacked her and tried to remove her clothing at a gathering of teenagers in Maryland when he was 17 years old and she was 15 in 1982.

Kavanaugh said he wanted to testify as soon as Ford’s allegation first emerged and was not surprised that other allegations followed.

“In those 10 long days, as was predictable and as I predicted, my family and my name have been totally and permanently destroyed by vicious and false additional accusations.” The delay in scheduling a hearing “has been horrible to me and my family, to the Supreme Court and to the country,” Kavanaugh said.

“I will not be intimidated into withdrawing from this process,” Kavanaugh added.

Looking sombre, Kavanaugh was accompanied by his wife as he entered the hearing room. He sharply attacked Democratic senators, saying he was the victim of “a calculated and orchestrated political hit”. He was careful not to denounce Ford, noting that he wished her “no ill will”. He said that he was not questioning that Ford might have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time, but that he had never assaulted her or anyone.

“I am innocent,” he said.

The hearing, which has riveted Americans and intensified the political polarisation in the United States, occurred against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault.

Published in Dawn, September 28th, 2018