Ford is scheduled to testify Thursday morning before the Judiciary Committee, with Kavanaugh testifying separately, after she is finished.

This image released by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018 in Washington, shows Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh's calendar, from the Summer of 1982. (Photo: AP)

Washington: In detailed calendar pages provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh listed in green-and-white squares the activities that filled his summer when he was 17 years old — exams, movies, sports and plenty of parties.

The calendars were submitted by Kavanaugh's lawyers as evidence as he prepares to testify Thursday in response to allegations from Christine Blasey Ford, a woman who says he sexually assaulted her when they were both teenagers and when he was drunk. Kavanaugh denies the allegation. The calendar pages are from the summer of 1982, which is when Ford says she believes the assault occurred.

This image released by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018 in Washington, shows Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh's calendar, from the Summer of 1982. (Photo | AP)

This image released by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Wednesday, Sept. 26, 2018 in Washington, shows Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh's calendar, from the Summer of 1982. (Photo | AP)

In written testimony before the Senate hearing, Kavanaugh says he never had a "sexual or physical encounter of any kind" with Ford and had never done anything "remotely resembling" the conduct she describes.

Ford is scheduled to testify Thursday morning before the Judiciary Committee, with Kavanaugh testifying separately, after she is finished.

Nothing on the calendar appears to mention Ford, who has said she was a "friendly acquaintance" of Kavanaugh's at the time.

The May through August calendar pages mention several parties at various houses and also a beach week, highlighted in all caps the week after his exams end. Ford says she doesn't remember where or exactly when the assault took place.

It's unclear if the calendars will affect the opinions of the senators on the committee about Ford's allegation. Though a snapshot of Kavanaugh's life that summer, several days are blank and it's unlikely the calendar documents every single thing he did.

Kavanaugh's calendar does appear to list activities with two people who Ford said were at the gathering where she says she was assaulted — Mark Judge and Patrick J. Smyth, who was known as P.J. She has said Judge was in the room when it happened.

Read: 'Drunk' Kavanaugh used to behave inappropriately with girls: New accuser

On July 1, he scribbled, "Go to Timmy's for skis w/Judge, Tom, P.J., Bernie, Squi." On July 28, he writes: "Go to Judge's."

Otherwise Kavanaugh lists normal teenage activities — playing basketball, seeing popular 1982 movies like "Poltergeist" and "Rocky III" and even a college interview for Yale, which he eventually attended.

It also appears that Kavanaugh got into trouble with his parents from time to time. On three Fridays in July, he writes that he was "grounded."</s>An examination taken by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was released Wednesday, showing she passed a polygraph test over the sexual assault allegations she's lodged against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The August 7 examination, held in a Maryland Hilton Hotel, consisted of a one-page, handwritten statement by Ford, an interview and two questions: Is any part of your statement false? And, Did you make up any part of your statement?

She answered both with a no. The Virginia-based examiner, Jeremiah Hanafin, noted both answers were deemed "not indicative of deception," according to the report obtained by USA TODAY.

The report was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday ahead of Ford's planned testimony on Thursday. In a letter to the committee's leadership, Ford's attorneys said they would not provide any of Ford's medical records of the alleged assault.

"Any request that she expose her private medical records for public inspection represents an unacceptable invasion of privacy to which no reasonable person would consent," her attorneys wrote. "Under no circumstances will we grant any such request."

Ford's attorneys have repeatedly noted Ford's medical records as a way to corroborate her story. She is said to have talked about the assault during a 2012 couple's therapy session, well before Kavanaugh was a nominee for the nation's highest court.

Hanafin, who lists online that he provides polygraph services in Arlington, Virginia, wrote in his report that two other analysis' was conducted, both concluding Ford's answers showed no signs she was lying. One concluded the probability of deception was less than .02.

Ford's signed handwritten note reiterated her claims of a sexual assault at a house party when she and Kavanaugh were teens.

"I was pushed into a bedroom and was locked in the room and rush onto a bed," she wrote. "Brett laid on top of me and tried to remove my clothes while groping me. He held me down and put his hand on my mouth to stop me from screaming for help."

Along with the polygraph examination, Ford and her attorneys sent over four signed declarations late Tuesday from people she told about the alleged sexual assault over the years in hopes to support her claims.

Kavanaugh also sent in a 1982 calendar, attempting to show he wasn't present at the party where the alleged assault happened. Ford has noted she did not remember the exact date of the party but the calendar is filled with social gatherings and other gatherings.</s>Across the country, Americans were transfixed Thursday by television coverage of Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh as they testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ford spoke of her allegation that the Supreme Court nominee had sexually assaulted her when they were teenagers in 1982. Kavanaugh vehemently denied it.

Such was the drama that President Trump put off a scheduled meeting with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, the White House issuing a statement that the president "spoke with Rod Rosenstein ... and they plan to meet next week. They do not want to do anything to interfere with the hearing."

After hours of emotional testimony and sometimes fiery rhetoric, the day ended with a presidential tweet. Trump praised Kavanaugh, calling the federal appeals court judge's testimony "powerful, honest, and riveting." While Trump's comment was meant as a positive review of his nominee's testimony, it also served as a succinct headline for the entire proceeding.

The next step comes Friday morning when the Judiciary Committee is expected to vote on Kavanaugh's nomination to the Supreme Court.

Here are four takeaways from the hearing:

Since the allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh were first reported in the media in recent weeks, comparisons with the 1991 Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings have been everywhere. The hearing Thursday delivered even more fodder for the conversation.

At the start of the hearing with Ford, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, recounted how 27 years ago she was passing through an airport when she "saw a large group of people gathered around a TV to listen to Anita Hill tell her story." At the time Feinstein was a former mayor. Today she is the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee. In 1992, she was one of a record number of women elected in Congress in the "year of the woman."

When Hill testified before the then-all male Judiciary Committee, there was no social media, no Twitterverse or Facebook friends. Thursday, there were four women on the Democratic side of the dais, and Americans were watching not just on TVs in airports and bars, but also in parks and streets and even subways on their smartphones.

In 1991, there was also no #MeToo movement, the vast cultural and legal reckoning of the last year on the issue of sexual misconduct that has toppled several powerful men in media, entertainment and business — and even the onetime federal appeals court judge Alex Kozinski, who Kavanaugh clerked for early in the 1990s.

What will the long-term effects of Thurday's hearing be? Will history record the hearing as an inflection point that changed the Supreme Court confirmation process? Will it change how the public thinks about sexual assault allegations?

Brett Kavanaugh, his nomination to the Supreme Court on the line, gave an opening statement of some 45 minutes in which he angrily denounced the charges against him, showing much more emotion than he did in the initial round of questioning earlier this month or during his interview on Fox News earlier this week. He not only denied being at a party with Ford, but blasted his confirmation process as politicized, declaring, " 'Advice and consent' has been replaced with 'search and destroy.' "

What was also striking was his harsh and very un-Supreme-Court-like denunciations of Democrats on the committee and his assertion that the opposition to his confirmation "amounted to revenge on behalf of the Clintons." Kavanaugh served as a staff attorney on independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Bill Clinton back in the 1990s.

As with much of Thursday's proceeding, Kavanaugh's anger and defiance echoed with the 1991 confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas when Anita Hill accused Thomas of sexual harassment. Back then, Thomas decried his situation as a "high-tech lynching."

The defiant tone Kavanaugh set for his defense won praise from the president immediately as the hearing ended. "Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him. His testimony was powerful, honest, and riveting," Trump tweeted. "Democrats' search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!"

From calls to C-SPAN from women who told their own stories of being sexually assaulted to a surge in calls to the National Sexual Assault Hotline, Ford's testimony evoked an outpouring of women telling their own stories of surviving sexual misconduct and sexual violence. As the Washington Post reported:



It's a phenomenon that began last week, when President Trump seemed to question via Twitter why Ford hadn't reported her alleged assault at the time some 36 years ago.

Responding to Trump, social media users flooded Twitter and other online platforms such as Facebook sharing their stories and using the hashtag #WhyIDidntReport.

4. Did bringing in an outside expert to question Ford backfire?

A bit of second-guessing that began early in the hearing was about the decision by Republicans on the committee to use an outside expert on sex crimes to question Ford. They were in a difficult position, in terms of optics, as the GOP contingent on the panel consists of 11 white men.

The expert, Rachel Mitchell, sat behind a desk in front of the GOP side, the 11 men looming behind her. And from the start, she was faced with a difficult task. Her questioning of Ford was limited to five-minute increments, after which she would have to stop and interrupt her line of inquiry in order to allow a Democratic senator to go next and speak with Ford, as the Democrats on committee used their allotted time to question Ford directly.

At the end of the questioning of Ford, Mitchell, the head of the sex crimes unit at the Maricopa County Attorney's Office in Arizona, acknowledged what had become obvious: that there is "no study that says that this setting in five-minute increments is the best way" to question a victim of sexual assault.

Beyond that though, it was not clear what Mitchell was trying to ascertain or accomplish. Ford's fear of flying was one area that Mitchell homed in on, getting Ford to admit that, despite her concerns and reluctance to fly to Washington for an interview by the committee, she had flown for vacations and professional conferences.

There were also a number of questions to try to determine who paid for the polygraph test that Ford took, in what seemed to be an effort to find out if Ford had a financial backer. Ford's attorneys told the panel that they paid for the polygraph, and that they were representing her pro bono.

Mitchell began the questioning of Kavanaugh as well, but Republican senators soon decided to ask their own questions, and use their time to defend Trump's high court nominee. It was a marked shift from Republicans' hesitancy to question Ford. Through the final stretch of the hearing, Mitchell was not given the opportunity to probe Kavanaugh's testimony as she was with Ford's.</s>Democratic California Rep. Ted Lieu implied that Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s Thursday testimony proves he’s an “angry” drunk, in a Thursday tweet.

“If Brett Kavanaugh can be this angry on national TV, imagine what he’s like when he gets inebriated,” Lieu wrote on Twitter Thursday.

Kavanaugh testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee after testimony from Christine Blasey Ford, who accused him of sexually assaulting her when the two were in high school.

“This confirmation process has become a national disgrace,” Kavanaugh said at Thursday’s hearing. “The Constitution gives the Senate an important role in the confirmation process, but you have replaced with ‘advise and consent’ with ‘search and destroy.’”

Other California lawmakers also called attention to Kavanaugh’s demeanor.

“Kavanaugh’s angry defiance starting to look unhinged – not the choirboy temperament he previously tried to project,” Democrat California Rep. Jared Huffman wrote on Twitter Thursday. “If he’s this aggressive while sober, imagine stumbling drunk at 17. I believe Dr. Blasey Ford (and) the other accusers. This man does not belong on the Supreme Court.”

“Judge Kavanaugh’s speech is that of an angry man who does not look like he can be judicial,” Democratic California Rep. Jackie Speier wrote on Twitter Thursday. “For the good of the Supreme Court he should withdraw now.”

Lieu called for lawmakers to look into impeaching Kavanaugh, who currently sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, on Twitter Wednesday.

“Based on the numerous allegations of sexual assault against Judge Brett Kavanaugh, including these new criminal allegations by Julie Swetnick, the House Judiciary Committee must immediately start an investigation into Judge Kavanaugh to see if he should be impeached,” Lieu wrote on Twitter Wednesday.

Ford alleges that the judge pinned her down and attempted to remove her clothing when they were both minors.

A version of this article appeared on The Daily Caller News Foundation website.

We are committed to truth and accuracy in all of our journalism. Read our editorial standards.</s>WASHINGTON – As the Senate Judiciary Committee prepared on Friday to vote on the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh, more than a dozen clergy gathered at the Senate Hart Office Building to express their opposition to the controversial pick.

Speaking to a small crowd gathered on Capitol Hill, the group specifically expressed support for Christine Blasey Ford, the California psychology professor who alleged to the same committee on Thursday that she had been sexually assaulted by Kavanaugh in high school, when she was 15 and he was 17.

Religious leaders of all faiths spoke to a crowd about sexual violence, truth and morality. One held a sign that read, “I believe Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.”

More: Senate panel to vote on Brett Kavanaugh after assault testimony

“If you are one of those women, we believe you. God loves you and we will stand with you until this injustice is over,” said Amber Neuroth, a pastor from Alexandria, Virginia.

A women's march was also planned to coincide with the expected vote of the Judiciary committee.

As the vote approached, protesters made their way to the Dirksen Senate Office building, where Judiciary Committee senators were scheduled to meet. Protesters shouted words of support to Democratic senators as they made their way inside and urged Republican senators to change their minds.

“You have a daughter! Do the right thing!” one demonstrator shouted at Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.

Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. stopped to speak to the protesters.

"I truly appreciate all of you being here,” he said. “It means a lot and inspires us.”</s>WASHINGTON — Republican leaders scheduled a Friday vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, following a day-long hearing in which senators heard testimony from a woman who alleges he sexually assaulted her when they were teens.

However, it was unclear whether Republicans had the votes to confirm the nominee after an emotional hearing where Christine Blasey Ford detailed her allegations that Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed and tried to remove her clothes at a party when they were both teens.

Ford told the Senate Judiciary Commitee she was "100 percent" confident Kavanaugh was the person who held her down and tried to remove her clothes at a party when they were both teens in 1982. Kavanaugh vehemently denied the allegations.

Friday's vote in the Senate Judiciary Committee was scheduled for 9:30 a.m.

Confirmation by Kavanaugh would be an important milestone for Republicans and the president as it would tilt the balance of power on the high court to conservatives.

But Democrats have pointed to the array of accusations and lack of an FBI investigation as a reason to slow down the hearing, potentially allowing more accusations to surface.

President Donald Trump voiced his support for a Friday vote on Twitter, saying Kavanaugh's testimony was "powerful, honest, and riveting."

"Judge Kavanaugh showed America exactly why I nominated him," the president said. "Democrats’ search and destroy strategy is disgraceful and this process has been a total sham and effort to delay, obstruct, and resist. The Senate must vote!"

In testimony that was both fiery and at times tearful, Kavanaugh said the sexual assault allegations had harmed his family and his name. He professed his innocence and accused Democrats of "character assassination." Kavanaugh also pledged to fight for this nomination, saying: "you'll never get me to quit."</s>At a suburban high school party in 1982, a man trapped a woman in a room, pinned her to a bed and began drunkenly groping her as he attempted to remove her clothes. He put his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream as his drunk friend watched and egged him on.

This, by no means, is a unique account — but it’s a very important one. The accuser, California university professor Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, publicly came forward about these allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh days before a Senate Judiciary Committee meeting was set to vote on his nomination. On Tuesday, Sept. 18, the committee officially canceled it’s Sept. 20 meeting, delaying its vote.

The committee called for a hearing to examine the matter, and Ford — who agreed to testify in a public hearing on Thursday — will inevitably have to stand trial and relive her trauma amid doubts, threats and mockery.

To further stress matters, Deborah Ramirez, 53, came forward in The New Yorker accusing Kavanaugh of sexual misconduct when they were both attending Yale University. According to Ramirez’s account of that night during the 1983-84 school year, Kavanaugh exposed himself at a party and thrusted his penis in her face, touching her with it as she pushed him away.

In light of this recent accusation, Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California called for an “immediate postponement” of any action regarding Kavanaugh’s nomination and for the FBI to investigate both women’s allegations.

This mounting case is significant for several reasons, most of which is that it will signal just how seriously the U.S. Senate and Supreme Court treats allegations of sexual misconduct, especially amongst its own members and nominees. If the Senate Judiciary Committee fails to handle this matter with sensitivity, accuracy and deliberation, we may see a shameful repeat of American history.

In 1991, Anita Hill accused Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment. Hill delivered her testimony before an all white, male Senate Judiciary Committee — a panel that truly didn’t grasp, or care to understand, the seriousness of sexual assaults and the poor character of those who commit them. After a lengthy debate, the U.S. Senate confirmed Thomas to the Supreme Court by a vote of 52-48.

In an opinion piece for the New York Times, Hill, an attorney and professor at Brandeis University, noted the parallels between Thomas’s 1991 confirmation hearing and Kavanaugh’s present hearing, and detailed how the current committee can get this one right.

“To do better, the 2018 Senate Judiciary Committee must demonstrate a clear understanding that sexual violence is a social reality to which elected representatives must respond,” Hill said in her op-ed. “A fair, neutral and well-thought-out course is the only way to approach Dr. Blasey and Judge Kavanaugh’s forthcoming testimony.”

Taking Hill’s guidelines into account, the committee can achieve justice where it had failed 27 years ago. But we’re going to need more than that if we, as a nation, want to take sexual assault allegations seriously and prevent them in the first place. We need to address how men, especially those in power, treat women at home, on the street and in the workplace.

While the #MeToo movement has furthered progress on this issue and begun to shape the cultural lens, there’s still men out there who continue to perpetuate a culture of sexual abuse and harassment. The daily microaggressions perpetrated by men against women — the catcalls, the unwanted touches, the eerie wanton glances — all add up to the insurmountable dread a woman feels any time she’s alone with a strange man. But the perpetrator of more serious sexual misconduct is seldom a stranger.

According to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network, seven out of 10 rapes are committed by someone the victim knows, and 45 percent of those known perpetrators are acquaintances, such as classmates, coworkers and bosses.

Not only are Ford’s, Ramirez’s and Hill’s allegations against these men believable, they’re all too common. When men, especially those in positions of power, are accused of sexual assault, they use all their influences to discredit their accusers. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board sought to refute Ford’s claim in an op-ed by implying that the timing of her allegation (days before Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing) signifies a “calculated political ambush.” By questioning Ford’s motives, they shifted blame and doubt from Kavanaugh to her in an attempt to invalidate everything she says.

When men work to discredit or make light of women’s serious sexual misconduct allegations — like when Donald Trump Jr. mocked Ford’s claims of attempted rape on his Instagram — it hurts the survivor while also damaging the credibility of women everywhere and their right to live without fear of sexual harassment.

Ultimately, we need men to be allies — to call out your friends when they make a sexist joke, to intervene when you see someone being verbally or physically harassed, and to treat allegations of sexual assault seriously and with care. I hope the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee take at least this last appeal to heart, not just for Ford and Ramirez, but for women everywhere.</s>She was a 17-year-old high school student when she was drugged, raped and impregnated by a college freshman she knew.

The New York woman woke up with her bra pulled up and her pants pulled down. The man who gave her the beer that made her sick was lying next to her.

It wasn't until she went to the doctor a month later that the girl, previously a virgin, understood what had happened.

She was pregnant. The worst part, she says, was the abortion.

A week of news about sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, culminating Thursday in the congressional hearing at which both Kavanaugh and Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testified, has brought all of the memories rushing back.

"I have listened to every second and cried and felt anxious and angry," says the woman, now 40.

The Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN) warned on its website that it was "experiencing unprecedented wait times for our online chat." RAINN's sexual assault hotline had a 147 percent increase in calls over its normal volume, RAINN estimated.

More: An unwavering Christine Ford: I'm '100 percent' sure that Brett Kavanaugh assaulted me

More: Peppering testimony with psychological terms, Ford appears as an alleged victim and an expert witness

More: For sexual assault survivors, tips for dealing with onslaught of triggering news

Clinical psychologist Melissa Sporn says some people are able to "compartmentalize and push negative experiences into a place far from their consciousness."

But even they have had trouble escaping the round-the-clock news of sexual assault.

"I think, to some degree, we are all triggered by the news these days," says Sporn, who practices in McLean, Virginia. "But for those with abuse histories it is a barrage of reminders and alerting stimuli."

Her advice: "Know that it is OK to take a break from media and technology. Sometimes just hitting the off button can enable your system to recharge and allow you to exhale."

An anonymous survivor of an attempted sexual assault while in middle school shared her story 40 years later during the debate over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh.

For one 50-something California woman, it was taking sanitary napkins off a grocery store shelf for her middle school daughter this summer that triggered a 40-year-old memory of an attempted sexual assault.

She cried uncontrollably in the car as she recalled that her older, teenage male attackers backed off only when they saw she had her period.

In a way, the woman says, she has found the news this week to be healing, because so many people have condemned sexual assault. Still, the news has triggered her once-suppressed memories

"The thought of calling out the guys who did this to me is overwhelming," says the woman. "Calling out a judge up for Supreme Court is astounding, especially in this political climate."

USA TODAY does not name victims of sexual assault.</s>President Trump had said he would be paying close attention to the testimony of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh and Christine Blasey Ford, the woman accusing him of sexual assault decades ago.</s>Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington, Sept. 5, 2018, for the second day of his confirmation hearing to replace retired Justice Anthony Kennedy.

WASHINGTON - An examination taken by Dr. Christine Blasey Ford was released Wednesday, showing she passed a polygraph test over the sexual assault allegations she's lodged against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

The August 7 examination, held in a Maryland Hilton Hotel, consisted of a one-page, handwritten statement by Ford, an interview and two questions: Is any part of your statement false? And, Did you make up any part of your statement?

She answered both with a no. The Virginia-based examiner, Jeremiah Hanafin, noted both answers were deemed "not indicative of deception," according to the report obtained by USA TODAY.

The report was sent to the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday ahead of Ford's planned testimony on Thursday. In a letter to the committee's leadership, Ford's attorneys said they would not provide any of Ford's medical records of the alleged assault.

"Any request that she expose her private medical records for public inspection represents an unacceptable invasion of privacy to which no reasonable person would consent," her attorneys wrote. "Under no circumstances will we grant any such request."

More: Brett Kavanaugh's 1982 calendar being used as evidence against sexual assault allegations

More: Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford offers Senate four people she told about assault claims

Ford's attorneys have repeatedly noted Ford's medical records as a way to corroborate her story. She is said to have talked about the assault during a 2012 couple's therapy session, well before Kavanaugh was a nominee for the nation's highest court.

Hanafin, who lists online that he provides polygraph services in Arlington, Va., wrote in his report that two other analysis' was conducted, both concluding Ford's answers showed no signs she was lying. One concluded the probability of deception was less than .02.

Wolf's signed handwritten note reiterated her claims of a sexual assault at a house party when she and Kavanaugh were teens.

"I was pushed into a bedroom and was locked in the room and rush onto a bed," she wrote. "Brett laid on top of me and tried to remove my clothes while groping me. He held me down and put his hand on my mouth to stop me from screaming for help."

Along with the polygraph examination, Ford and her attorneys sent over four signed declarations late Tuesday from people she told about the alleged sexual assault over the years in hopes to support her claims.

Kavanaugh also sent in a 1982 calendar, attempting to show he wasn't present at the party where the alleged assault happened. Ford has noted she did not remember the exact date of the party but the calendar is filled with social gatherings and other gatherings.
Christine Blasey Ford, who has accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, testifies before the Senate.