One new accuser, Julie Swetnick, was identified by her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, in a sworn statement prepared by him and submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday. In it, Swetnick said Kavanaugh and his friend Mark Judge were at a party where she was drugged and gang raped, although she didn't specifically identify either man as her attacker.
Swetnick alleged that Kavanaugh engaged "in abusive and physically aggressive behavior towards girls, including pressing girls against him without their consent, 'grinding' against girls and attempting to remove or shift girls' clothing to expose private body parts."
Swetnick says that in 1981 and 1982, she became aware of efforts by boys, including Kavanaugh, to "spike the punch at house parties" so as to "cause girls to lose their inhibitions and their ability to say 'No.'"
She further describes boys — including Kavanaugh and Judge — lining up outside bedrooms at parties to assault incapacitated girls.
A fourth, unnamed woman claimed Kavanaugh physically assaulted a woman he socialized with in the Washington area in 1998 while drunk, according to an anonymous complaint letter sent to Republican Senator Cory Gardner Wednesday, NBC reported Wednesday evening.
Kavanaugh's first accuser, Christine Blasey Ford, alleged in a written testimony that he held her down and attempted to rape her during a party while they were both in high school in the Washington suburb of Bethesda, he at Georgetown Preparatory School and she at Holton Arms — the same time period as Swetnick's allegations. Ford will testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee Thursday.
Kavanaugh, who according to Politico was interviewed Wednesday by the committee, will also testify Thursday. He has emphatically denied the allegations, calling them "ridiculous" and "from the Twilight Zone" in a statement released by the White House.
A committee aide told CNN Wednesday that an email sent to Avenatti by Republican committee staff said that Kavanaugh had "unequivocally denied all of the allegations" in a transcribed interview.
"Judge Kavanaugh understood that he testified under penalty of felony, subject to up to 5 years of imprisonment," the staffers said.
Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear spoke with Hannah Dickinson, associate professor at Hobart and William Smith Colleges and member of the Geneva Women's Assembly, about the wave of allegations and what they represent.
"In this case, it's important to hold two things at the same time," Dickinson said. "One is that sexual assault and violence against women are endemic across US society, and at the same time, that we know that sexual violence impacts women of all races and classes and backgrounds. We also know that in these super-elite, wealthy, private school circles, that this way of thinking about one's access to women's bodies is part of what gets taught in these kinds of cultural spaces."
"I think one of the things that's especially striking about the Kavanaugh case is that it's never just him; it's him and other friends, so you really get the sense that we're not just looking at one bad actor here, but one bad actor amidst a whole bunch of bad actors and a culture that seems to suggest to boys and men that if you harass and assault women as a teenager — no big deal. You can still have the great future of your dreams: being a supreme court justice."
She noted that, despite the emergence of allegations against Kavanaugh, Republican senators seem "committed" to confirming him as a justice.
She said the backlash against the accusers is "sickening," pointing to "how quickly the responsibility gets turned back on women: ‘Why were you there?,' ‘How are you credible if you're drunk?'"
"All these questions immediately shift the blame from where it clearly should stand," she said.
Dickinson noted that Kavanaugh is someone who "will make decisions about women's lives, women's bodies and women's rights; it's clear that he understands women only as property, as part of these frat boy culture games, and it's disgusting."
