The powerful teen athlete grinding on top of her and fumbling with her clothes had his hand clamped over her mouth.
This week, 36 years after the ordeal at a high school party, the victim recalled: “I thought he might inadvertently kill me.”
Christine Blasey Ford, now 51, claims the 17-year-old who assaulted her after pushing her into a bedroom was Brett Kavanaugh — the man Donald Trump has nominated as a judge of the highest court in the land.
Kavanaugh, 53, has furiously denied the allegations — but they could derail Trump’s presidency.
The conservative dad of two, who has long been a judge of the lower District Court, has backed the idea of boosting presidential power so no criminal or civil actions can be taken against the nation’s leader.
This could be a huge advantage to a commander-in-chief facing allegations that he colluded with Russia and paid off mistresses over reported affairs.
Meanwhile, mid-term elections are due in just seven weeks, with the President’s Republican Party already worried about losing its two-seat majority in the Senate.
And self-proclaimed “p***y grabber” Trump is already unpopular with women voters, with just 29 per cent approving of the job he is doing, according to a recent poll.
His nomination of right-wing Kavanaugh had already caused protests by women, because the judge is on record as questioning the legality of abortions. On the Supreme Court, he would potentially have the power to overturn abortion law.
Kavanaugh’s supporters believe the assault claim is a left-wing plot to delay his appointment until after the November mid-term elections.
By then, the Republicans may no longer have enough Senate votes to confirm his appointment on the court and ramp up conservative numbers on the all-important judicial bench.
Despite the ruckus that greeted Trump’s announcement of his choice of Kavanaugh to replace a judge who is retiring, it seemed he would still coast his way through a Senate rubber-stamping of the choice.
That was until Sunday night, when Ford went public with her claims.
In late July, after Trump announced his nomination, Ford, a psychology professor from northern California, had sent a confidential letter detailing her accusation to Senator Dianne Feinstein. Feinstein sits on the Judiciary Committee which oversees top legal appointments.
Ford also contacted the Washington Post, but insisted she did not want to make her claims public.
Instead she hired sexual harassment lawyer Debra Katz and took a polygraph test administered by a former FBI agent.
The results concluded that she was being truthful when she said a statement summarising her allegations was accurate.
But last week her story leaked out — and despite reports not naming her, the media descended.
Finally, on Sunday, Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University, decided to speak out.
She told the Post: “Now I feel like my civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.”
Ford explained that she has not spoken with Kavanaugh since that night at a house party in the wealthy Maryland suburb of Bethesda in 1982.
And she told no one at the time what had happened to her — terrified she would get into trouble if her parents found out she had been at a party where there was alcohol.
She says school athlete Kavanaugh was “stumbling drunk” during the attack and her lawyer Debra Katz has said: “She believes that if it were not for the severe intoxication of Brett Kavanaugh, she would have been raped.” The psychologist, whose work has been published in academic journals, said she recalled thinking: “I’m not ever telling anyone this. This is nothing, it didn’t happen and he didn’t rape me.”
But after going through psychotherapy, Ford said she came to understand the incident as a trauma with lasting impact.
She added: “I think it derailed me substantially for four or five years.”
Her husband Russell added to the Washington Post: “I think you look to judges to be the arbiters of right and wrong.
“If they don’t have a moral code of their own to determine right from wrong, then that’s a problem. So I think it’s relevant. Supreme Court nominees should be held to a higher standard.”
Ford claims that Kavanaugh’s pal Mark Judge witnessed the attack, and that the pair “laughed maniacally” throughout.
She escaped when Judge leaped on top of them on the bed, causing her to fall to the floor.
Judge, now a conservative author and filmmaker, also denies knowledge of the attack, telling the New York Times: “It’s just absolutely nuts. I never saw Brett act that way.”
The pair were students at and all-boys’ private school and knew Ford socially.
In his senior-class yearbook entry at Georgetown Prep, Kavanaugh made several references to drinking, claiming membership to the “Beach Week Ralph Club” and “Keg City Club”.
In Mark Judge’s yearbook page, he includes the quote from Noel Coward: “Certain women should be struck regularly, like gongs.”
In Judge’s 2005 book God and Man and Georgetown Prep, he writes: “(It) was a school positively swimming in alcohol, and my class partied with gusto.”
Ford said she told no one of the childhood incident in any detail until 2012, when she was in couples’ therapy with Russell, who she wed in 2002.
The therapist’s notes, reviewed by The Washington Post, do not mention Kavanaugh’s name but say she reported that she was attacked by students “from an elitist boys’ school”.
She noted at the time that the students went on to become “highly respected and high-ranking members of society in Washington”.
Kavanaugh strongly denies allegations of sexual misconduct calling it “completely false”.
He said: “I have never done anything like what the accuser describes — to her or to anyone.”
He is due to defend himself at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing into the allegations on Monday.
However, it is not clear if Ford will also attend the hearing about the issue as she has said she wants the FBI to investigation the allegations first.
She is now in hiding, after allegedly receiving death threats over her claims.
Former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has demanded the White House request such a probe immediately.
She said the precedent was Anita Hill’s sexual-harassment allegation against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas in 1991. It led to a background check by the FBI before his eventual appointment
Anita Hill, who worked with Thomas, claimed he had harassed her, boasted about his manhood and discussed scenarios of a deeply pornographic and sadistic nature with her.
Her most memorable claim was that Thomas asked aloud who had put pubic hair on his can of Coke.
Like Kavanaugh, Thomas strongly denied the accusations against him. He still serves on the Supreme Court, where he would be one of Kavanaugh’s co-judges.
Meanwhile, a letter has now been released from 65 women who say they knew Kavanaugh when he attended high school from 1979 to 1983 at Georgetown Prep.
It says: “Through the more than 35 years we have known him, Brett has stood out for his friendship, character and integrity.
“In particular, he has always treated women with decency and respect. That was true when he was in high school, and it has remained true to this day.”
Trump, for the moment, is standing by his nominee.
He said on Monday: “He is one of the great intellects and one of the finest people than anybody has known.
“An outstanding judge. Respected by everybody. Never even had a little blemish on his record. He is somebody very special.”
COURT CHECKS ON LAWMAKERS
It can tell a President that his actions are not allowed and dictate to Congress that a law it has passed violates the Constitution.
The Supreme Court consists of the chief justice and eight associate justices, who are nominated by the serving President and confirmed by the Senate.
Once appointed, justices have lifetime tenure unless they resign, retire or are removed from office.
The Court is currently finely balanced – with four conservatives and four liberals.
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