C-SPAN caller discusses her own sexual assault: ‘This brings back so much pain’

A C-SPAN caller on Thursday opened up about her own sexual assault experience amid Senate testimony provided earlier that day by Christine Blasey Ford.

The caller shared with C-SPAN host Steve Scully that the hearing was bringing back “so much pain” and reminded her of her own molestation experience in the second grade.

{mosads}“I’m a 76-year-old woman who was sexually molested in second grade,” the caller, named Brenda from Missouri, said during the channel’s live coverage of the hearings. “This brings back so much pain.”

She added that she thought she “was over this” but Ford’s Thursday testimony, in which she discussed her allegation that Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her in the early 1980s, was “just breaking” her heart.

“Thought I was over it but it’s not. You will never forget it. You get confused and you don’t understand it but you never forget what happened to you,” she added. 

Brenda from Missouri calls C-SPAN
“I’m a 76-year-old woman who was sexually molested in 2nd grade. This brings back so much pain. Thought I was over it but it’s not. You will never forget it. You get confused & you don’t understand it but you never forget what happened to you.” pic.twitter.com/uCgroeQ4B5

— CSPAN (@cspan) September 27, 2018

Scully asked Brenda what her age was at the time she was sexually assaulted.

“I was in the second grade, and it was a seventh grader at my school, and you know on rainy days they have you march around the school back then because they couldn’t let you out. And I would see him, and I would get so upset,” she responded.

“I’ve had a weight problem my whole life because I was so afraid that someone was going to hurt me. And I’m married, I have a wonderful family; I have a wonderful husband, and a child and great-grandchildren and grandchildren, and I thought I was over this,” she added. “I have not brought this up for years until I heard this testimony, and it’s just breaking my heart.”

In Thursday’s testimony, Ford said Kavanaugh pinned her to a bed during a high school party in 1982, grinding himself against her and attempting to remove her clothes. She said she thought he would have raped her if he wasn’t so drunk and if she wasn’t wearing a one-piece bathing suit under her clothes.

“I was pushed onto the bed and Brett got on top of me. He began running his hands over my body and grinding into me,” Ford said during a gripping testimony. “I yelled, hoping someone downstairs might hear me, and tried to get away from him, but his weight was heavy. Brett groped me and tried to take off my clothes. He had a hard time because he was very inebriated, and because I was wearing a one-piece bathing suit underneath my clothing.”

Kavanaugh has denied the allegation in previous statements and is scheduled to respond to the allegations before the Senate Judiciary Committee later Thursday. 

The Kavanaugh-Ford hearing will likely go down as one of the most-watched news events of the year and is being covered in its entirety Thursday by C-SPAN, ABC, CBS, CBSN, NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, HLN, Fox Business, PBS, Univision, Telemundo, Newsmax and One America News, as well as dozens of streaming options online.