Kavanaugh accuser Christine Blasey Ford releases sworn declarations from husband, three friends

WASHINGTON - Attorneys for Christine Blasey Ford, the woman who says Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her when both were teenagers, have sent four sworn declarations to the Senate from people who say Ford told them of her allegations before Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court.

The declarations - from Ford's husband and three friends - do not provide direct corroboration of the alleged attack but suggest Ford shared details about her recollection in the years prior to Kavanaugh's nomination by President Donald Trump on July 9.

Only one account, from Russell Ford, the husband of the California professor, has been previously reported.

The declarations were released by Ford's lawyers a day before she and Kavanaugh are scheduled to appear at a high-stakes hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Ford is expected to detail her allegations that Kavanaugh drunkenly pinned her to a bed, groped her and put his hand over her mouth to stifle her screams as he tried to take off her clothes at a house party in the early 1980s.

Kavanaugh has denied the allegation as well as an accusation by another woman, Deborah Ramirez, a classmate of Kavanaugh's at Yale University, who told the New Yorker magazine that he exposed himself to her at a party when they were both first-year students.

In one of the declarations released Wednesday, Adela Gildo-Mazzon, who describes herself as a good friend of Ford, said Ford shared her allegations about a sexual assault while the two were eating at a pizzeria in Mountain View, California.

"During our meal, Christine was visibly upset, so I asked her what was going on," Gildo-Mazzon says. "Christine told me she had been having a hard day because she was thinking about an assault she experienced when she was much younger. She said that she had been almost raped by someone who was now a federal judge."

Gildo-Mazzon says she contacted Ford's lawyers after reading her account in a Washington Post story published on Sept. 16.

Another friend, Keith Koegler, says Ford told her in early summer 2016 of having experienced a sexual assault when she was much younger.

Koegler says while their children were playing together, Ford expressed anger about what she thought was a light sentence for a Stanford University student who had been convicted of sexual assault after raping an unconscious woman.

Koegler says Ford was "particularly bothered by it because she was assaulted in high school by a man who was now a federal judge in Washington, D.C."

Shortly after Justice Anthony M. Kennedy resigned from the Supreme Court, Koegler says Ford shared in an email that Kavanaugh was her alleged attacker.

A third friend, Rebecca White, says in another declaration that she encountered Ford while walking her dog in 2017. Ford told her that she had recently read a social media post by White in which she wrote about her own experience with sexual assault, according to White.

"She told me that when she was a young teen, she had been sexually assaulted by an older teen," White says. "I remember her saying the assailant was now a federal judge. I have always known Christine to be a trustworthy and honest person."

In his declaration, Russell Ford says his wife first shared the details of a sexual assault during a couple's therapy session in 2012.

"I remember her saying that the attacker's name was Brett Kavanaugh, that he was a successful lawyer who had grown up in Christine's hometown, and that he was well-known in the Washington, D.C. community," Russell Ford says. "In the years following the therapy session, we spoke a number of times about how the assault affected her."

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The Washington Post's Seung Min Kim and Emma Brown contributed to this report.