'I had tears running down my cheeks': Christine Blasey Ford's sisters commend her decision to testify in Kavanaugh hearing
- Relatives of Christine Blasey Ford said they admired her decision to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to give her testimony on Thursday.
- "I can tell you I had tears running down my cheeks," Ford's sister-in-law said. "It was so difficult to listen to, and I know a lot of people around the country felt the same way."
- Ford and Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who is accused of sexual misconduct by numerous women during his high school and college years, delivered emotionally charged accounts testimonies that riveted much of the country.
Relatives of Christine Blasey Ford, the professor who accused Judge Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her at a party in the 1980s, said they admired her decision to appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee to share her story on Thursday.
"I've heard her talk about many different kinds of feelings very genuinely and I can feel her pain really," Deborah Peters, Ford's sister-in-law, said during an interview with CNN host Kate Bolduan on Friday. "I just was impressed by her bravery and I just felt like I was right there with her in the pain, as I think a lot of people probably felt."
"I think Christine presented her accounting of the events that happened to her and she deserves for others to be interviewed and the truth to come out," Peters added, seeming to refer to conservative author Mark Judge, a friend of Kavanaugh's, who Ford claims was present during the alleged sexual assault.
Judge denied the allegation and previously suggested he was unwilling to cooperate with the Judiciary Committee.
But following the committee's decision to advance Kavanaugh's nomination to a full Senate vote on Friday - a move that Senate leaders agreed to delay until after the FBI conducts a new background check on Kavanaug - Judge, through his attorney, said he was willing to speak to investigators on the alleged incident.
"If the FBI or any law enforcement agency requests Mr. Judge's cooperation, he will answer any and all questions posed to him," attorney Barbara Van Gelder said.
Ford's sister-in-law, Sandra Mendler, also said she wept from watching her testimony.
"I can tell you I had tears running down my cheeks," Mendler said. "It was so difficult to listen to, and I know a lot of people around the country felt the same way."
Ford, who initially requested anonymity after submitting her allegation, was hesitant to agree to appear to the hearing: "I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified. I am here because I believe it is my civic duty to tell you what happened to me while Brett Kavanaugh and I were in high school," she said during her opening remarks on Thursday.
Mendler and Peters said they watched Ford's emotional testimony and saw at least part of Kavanaugh's afterward.
Kavanaugh repeated his denials during his testimony, but stopped short of claiming Ford had fabricated the incident.
"I'm not questioning that Dr. Ford may have been sexually assaulted by some person in some place at some time," Kavanaugh said in his opening remarks. "But I have never done this to her or to anyone. That's not who I am, it is not who I was."
"I am innocent of this charge," Kavanaugh said. "I intend no ill will to Dr. Ford and her family."