Ronan Farrow said Monday that Deborah Ramirez came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct against Brett Kavanaugh after Senate Democrats learned independently of the incident in order to “tell her own story before others did for her.”
“She came forward because Senate Democrats came looking for this claim. She did not flag this. This came to the attention of people on the hill independently, and it has co cornered her into an awkward position,” Farrow, who detailed Ramirez’s allegation in a Sunday New Yorker article, told ABC’s George Stephanopolos on Good Morning America.“She said, point-blank, I don’t want to ruin anyone’s life, but she feels this is a serious claim. She considers her own memories credible and she felt it was important to tell her own story before others did for her.”
In the article Farrow and co-author Jane Mayer recount Ramirez’s claim that Kavanaugh, then a freshman at Yale, drunkenly thrust his penis in her face during a dorm party. While there are no eyewitness accounts included in the reporting, Farrow and Mayer did speak with one fellow classmate who claims to have heard about the incident around the time it occurred.
The New York Times was unable to corroborate Ramirez’s accounts after interviewing “several dozen” people in an attempt to do so.
Pressed by Stephanopolos about Ramirez’s delay in coming forward, Farrow described her hesitance as “extremely typical.”
“This jumped out at me. You said at first she wasn’t sure if this was Kavanaugh last week, and you write after six days of carefully assessing her memories and consulting with her attorneys she did become confident that it was him.” Stephanopolos asked.
“And I would say that’s extremely typical with these stories when you are dealing with drama and alcohol,” Farrow responded.“The more caution that I have dealt with in cases like this frequently say, I want to take time and search myself and make sure that I can affirmatively stand by these claims in the face of what she knew would be a crucible of partisan pushback which is what she is receiving now.”
Ford and Kavanaugh are scheduled to testify publicly before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.