#MeToo spurred Kavanaugh accuser to open up about alleged attack year before his nomination, friends say

The fog was just lifting at Capitola beach one morning this July when Christine Blasey Ford confided in two friends. She had written her congresswoman and anonymously tipped off the Washington Post with her explosive story, claiming Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh had sexually assaulted her in high school.

But now she was worried that her name would come out. She was bracing for an avalanche of attacks and searching her memory for anyone, anything, that could validate her story.

“I’ve been trying to forget this all my life, and now I’m supposed to remember every little detail,” one of those friends, Jim Gensheimer, recalled Blasey Ford saying that summer day while watching her kids participate in a Junior Lifeguard program. “They’re going to be all over me.”