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AFP
Washington
When US President Donald Trump demanded to know why his Supreme Court nominee's sexual assault accuser did not come forward sooner, he sought to cast doubt over her claims.
His argument? If her story were true, Christine Blasey Ford would have spoken out back in the 1980s, when she says Brett Kavanaugh pinned her down and muffled her cries as he tried to pull off her clothes at a high school party.
Nonsense, replied his detractors, from women in his own party to thousands of ordinary women who flooded the internet to tell the stories of trauma, under a viral hashtag: #WhyIDidntReport.
"Because I was 18"and"I was scared"and"I didn't want to be defined by someone else's violent criminal act,"Gretchen Whitmer, who is running for governor of the US state of Michigan, tweeted using the hashtag.
Ford, a California professor, initially made the accusation in a confidential letter and only came out publicly because she felt her"civic responsibility"was"outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation,"she told The Washington Post.
But Republicans have alleged the last-minute allegation was a deliberate bid to prevent conservative Kavanaugh's appointment before crucial midterm elections in November.
After days of relative restraint, Trump -- himself the subject of groping and other sexual harassment allegations by multiple women, launched an all-out attack on Ford's credibility.
"I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed,"he tweeted Friday.
The US women's movement, simmering since worldwide anti-Trump marches the day after his inauguration, has already mobilized against Kavanaugh's conservative stances on abortion and birth control -- and is firmly behind Ford.
The Women's March organizers and other groups coordinated protesters to disrupt Kavanauagh's confirmation hearings, which began in early September.
Ford's lawyers allege she has received death threats since her identity became public, and one crowdfunding effort to cover her security costs raised more than $200,000 in three days.
