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PALO ALTO — Will she or won’t she?
As pressure builds for Christine Blasey Ford to testify Monday about her sexual assault allegations against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, a burgeoning group of friends, neighbors and activists is supporting her either way.
Whether she appears or not, a banner will still fly over her neighborhood on Thursday, saying “Thank you, Christine. We’ve got your back.” A candlelight vigil on a Palo Alto street corner is still planned for Sunday night. Letters of support are stuffing her mailboxes at home and at her office, and a GoFundMe page has been set up to help pay her legal bills. By Wednesday evening, a new hashtag, #DearProfessorFord, became the top trending topic on Twitter, including a video of some of the #MeToo celebrity proponents supporting her story, including Chelsea Handler and America Ferrara.
“She has done so much already. I don’t think there is any requirement for her to testify at all,” said Karin Roland, a campaign organizer with UltraViolent, a Washington, D.C.-based women’s advocacy group that has hired the plane to fly over Palo Alto. “This is a person who at great personal risk has come forward publicly and told her story. Not just that she sent a letter to her representative and senator. She took a polygraph. She sat down and did an interview about this awful and traumatizing story. She has no further obligation.”
Whether Blasey Ford will testify Monday — despite Republicans rejecting her call for an FBI investigation first — has transfixed a politically polarized nation. If she doesn’t testify, would it cast doubt on her allegations? Would it let down the #Metoo movement, denying them the face of a new standard bearer?
Both sides appear to be at a stalemate.
On Wednesday, Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, set a 10 a.m. Friday deadline for Blasey Ford to commit to a Monday hearing.
At the same time, Blasey Ford’s lawyer, Lisa J. Banks, released a statement Wednesday saying that the judiciary committee’s plan to “move forward with a hearing that has only two witnesses is not a fair or good faith investigation; there are multiple witnesses whose names have appeared publicly and should be included in any proceeding.”
Rushing a hearing, she said, “is unnecessary, and contrary to the committee discovering the truth.”
Blasey Ford, 51, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University, approached U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo and U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein with her story in July, and on Sunday her allegations were published in the Washington Post. She had hoped to remain anonymous, but when her name leaked out and reporters started knocking on her door, she decided to go public, her friends say.
She claims that in the early 1980s, Kavanaugh was “stumbling drunk” and sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers at a high school party. She contends that he groped her, tried to strip off her clothes and put his hand over her mouth to muffle her screams. One of his friends, Mark Judge, interrupted the assault, she alleges, giving her the chance to flee.
Blasey Ford, who is married with two teenage boys, moved out of her house Sunday when the Washington Post story ran. She has since been the subject of death threats and abusive comments, her lawyer says.
Kavanaugh has unequivocally denied that any assault ever happened, as has Judge. Kavanaugh already has agreed to defend himself at the hearing Monday.
A brief bipartisan agreement earlier this week for Blasey Ford to testify Monday quickly disintegrated as Democrats echoed her calls for an FBI investigation and Republicans argued that an investigation wasn’t necessary.
“You chose to sit on the allegations until a politically opportune moment,” Grassley wrote in a barbed letter Wednesday to Feinstein, who has served on the committee alongside him for 25 years.
Supporters of the Supreme Court nominee across the country agree, including Carol Greenleaf of Saratoga, a former member of the Palo Alto Republican Women club. She finds Blasey Ford’s allegation “fishy,” she said, and doesn’t think it deserves an FBI investigation.
“I’m very suspicious that she waited until just before the vote to bring this up,” said Greenleaf, 81. “I don’t believe her, and I feel very sorry for men being accused of things they didn’t do.”
But her supporters call her brave, whether she testifies or not
“It’s a really, really tough situation. I don’t know what she should do,” said Tanya Bakhru, a San Jose State associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies. “I think it’s been tremendously courageous and patriotic to come forward.”
The onus, she said, “is on our elected representatives to do their job.”
Still, the decision whether to testify is clearly an excruciating one, her friends and colleagues said Wednesday.
“If she had asked me, I would have recommended she not come forward” in the first place, said Helena Chmura Kraemer, a Stanford emeritus professor who has co-authored a book and journal articles with Blasey Ford. “My experience in academia is that the whistleblower gets punished more than the person on whom the whistle is blown.”
As of Wednesday afternoon, more than 400 current and former students, mentees and professional colleagues of Blasey Ford had signed another letter in support.
“Dr. Blasey Ford has put herself in the crossfire of a national debate, which is no small act,” the letter reads in part. “She spoke out because she felt morally compelled to provide additional data on the character and moral code of a man who may be determining our citizens’ futures for his lifetime. This is Christine Blasey Ford the scientist, the biostatistician, the teacher.”
Regardless of how credibly Blasey Ford may appear before Congress, victims advocates say, accepting the invitation to a public hearing could be traumatizing.
“Getting questioned publicly on TV by 21 senators sounds like about the least victim-friendly process one could even imagine,” said Stanford Law Professor Michele Dauber, who led the recall campaign against Santa Clara County Judge Aaron Persky over his controversially short sentence for a Stanford swimmer charged with sexual assault.
Susan Deller Ross, a Georgetown law professor who worked on the legal team of Anita Hill, who testified about sexual harassment allegations against nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991, said Blasey Ford deserves an FBI investigation.
“I think it’s important if she does decide to testify that she explains the impact this had on her,” Ross said. “The general public still doesn’t really understand what that’s like.”
With the possibility of an FBI investigation increasingly unlikely, Blasey Ford has a quick and fateful decision to make.
“I’m not sure why everyone decided today that the truth hangs in this testimony. Her story, her statement is out there. She came forward. That should be enough,” said Kristen Podulka, one of Blasey Ford’s neighbors who has started a thank-you letter campaign to her. “And now she’s saying I’m not going to get in a roomful of angry white men and answer their questions without them doing their investigation. She learned what happened to Anita Hill. We have seen this show before.”
