Oct. 1 (UPI) — The high-profile sex assault accusations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh may be encouraging more victims to come forward.
A national sexual assault hotline said Monday it saw the busiest day in its history on Friday, the day after Dr. Christine Blasey Ford told Senate lawmakers she was assaulted by Kavanaugh at a party in 1982.
On Thursday, Ford told the Senate judiciary committee a drunken Kavanaugh pushed her into a room, got on top of her and placed a hand over her mouth while trying to remove her clothes. She said she escaped, but the memory stuck with her.
More than 3,000 people called the National Sexual Assault Hotline the following day — the most in a single day in the hotline’s 24-year history, the Rape Abuse and Incest National Network said.
RAINN also said the hotline saw a 338 percent increase in calls between Thursday and Sunday.
“History shows us that when high-profile allegations such as these are in the news it often causes others to reach out, too,” RAINN President Scott Berkowitz said. “Over this past year, following the cases of [Harvey] Weinstein and [Bill] Cosby and the explosion of #MeToo, our numbers have been growing pretty rapidly.
“But we’ve never seen anything like this before.”‘
Kavanuagh has strongly denied Ford’s accusations, saying he never sexually assaulted anyone. Kavanaugh testified before the Senate panel after Ford.
President Donald Trump nominated Kavanaugh to the high court bench in July, but his appointment is now stalled in the Senate while the FBI investigates the claims of Ford and at least one other accuser. The bureau has until the end of this week to submit its findings. The Senate is poised to vote on Kavanaugh’s nomination after the FBI inquiry.
In September, RAINN said it helped more than 28,500 survivors and relatives — an average of 950 per day. That’s an increase of more than 10,000 phone calls over September 2017.
