Second Kavanaugh accuser: Who is Deborah Ramirez?
A second woman has accused U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of a sexual assault that she alleges happened decades ago.
Deborah Ramirez told The New Yorker over the weekend that Kavanaugh exposed himself to her while the two were freshmen at Yale University in the early 1980s.
Ramirez’s allegations came a week after Christine Blasey Ford accused Kavanaugh of another decades-old sexual attack where she claimed Kavanaugh, when he was in high school, attacked her in a bedroom during a party, groped her and tried to remove her clothing.
>>Who is Christine Blasey Ford, Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser?
Ford, who is a psychology researcher and professor at Palo Alto University in California, and Kavanaugh are scheduled to testify on Thursday in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
As Senate sets special Thursday hearing, Kavanaugh denounces new allegations against him https://t.co/3AhXR4Kzl2
— Jamie Dupree (@jamiedupree) September 24, 2018
Who is Ramirez and what does she say happened? Here’s what we know so far:
- Ramirez is 53 and attended Yale University at the same time Kavanaugh did.
- Ramirez says that on the night the alleged assault happened, Kavanaugh was one of a group of students, including herself, playing a drinking game in a dorm room at Lawrence Hall on Yale's campus.
- She said she and others at the party were intoxicated at the time.
- She said she has recently remembered that she was on the floor, slurring her words when a student exposed himself.
- She said she recalls seeing Kavanaugh pulling up his pants and laughing as she laid on the floor.
- Ramirez said "her memories contained gaps" and that that was the reason she did not come forward before. She said initially, she "was reluctant to characterize Kavanaugh's role in the alleged incident with certainty." She told the New Yorker that during the past week, she assess
- ]ed her memories and now feels "confident enough" to make the allegations public.
- Both Kavanaugh and the White House have denied the allegations.
>>Who is Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court?
- According to the New Yorker, the magazine was unable to identify any other witness who remembers seeing Kavanaugh at the party. One person, who was not identified and was not at the party, told the New Yorker he was "100 percent sure" that a person who told him about the incident the next day identified Kavanaugh as the student who exposed himself.
- Several people at the party and six other classmates of Ramirez have signed a statement disputing Ramirez's story.
