Christine Blasey Ford: ‘Coming forward was terrifying’ but allowed her ‘to fulfill my civic duty’

Nov. 27, 2018 / 7:05 PM GMT

By Elisha Fieldstadt

Christine Blasey Ford, the California professor who testified that now-Justice Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers, said last week that “coming forward was terrifying” but gave her the chance “to fulfill my civic duty.”

Blasey Ford also wrote that money raised on her behalf through a GoFundMe campaign had been more than enough to ensure security for her and her family and that she will donate unused funds to organizations that help trauma survivors.

“Although coming forward was terrifying, and caused disruption to our lives, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to fulfill my civic duty,” Blasey Ford wrote on the GoFundMe page. “Having done so, I am in awe of the many women and men who have written me to share similar life experiences, and now have bravely shared their experience with friends and family, many for the first time.”

Kavanaugh strongly and repeatedly denied assaulting Blasey Ford. He was narrowly confirmed by the Senate to the Supreme Court in a 50-48 vote.

The GoFundMe was set up by Blasey Ford’s neighbors and colleagues in Palo Alto on Sept. 18 with a goal of raising $150,000. By the time she closed the account on Nov. 21, about 14,000 people had donated a total of nearly $650,000.

Following her testimony at Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing in late September, she started getting “serious threats against her” and “had to engage a security force to protect her family,” the GoFundMe description said.

Blasey Ford, a psychologist and professor at Palo Alto University and mother of two, wrote in an initial Oct. 3 message on the GoFundMe that she had moved her family four times because of safety concerns. Her Palo Alto neighbors told NBC Bay Area that they hadn’t seen the professor since before she gave her testimony.

On the day before Thanksgiving, Blasey Ford wrote that the the donations were a “godsend.”

“Because of your support, I feel hopeful that our lives will return to normal,” she wrote, adding that the money went toward a security team, a security system, relocation costs and other measures she took to keep her family safe.

She said anything not used for security purposes will go toward “organizations that support trauma survivors,” and she is researching which ones to donate to.

A GoFundMe set up for Kavanaugh raised about $490,000, but the organizer of that account wrote that “judicial ethics restraints” prevented Kavanaugh from accepting the money, and it was donated to the Archdiocese of Washington.