Christine Blasey Ford gives rivetingly convincing evidence

This may be premature because, as I write, Professor Christine Blasey Ford is still answering questions about the assault she said she suffered at the hands of Judge Brett Kavanaugh when he was 17 and she was 15 at high school. She is giving very powerful evidence, it is dramatic and traumatic and wholly believable. It is difficult to imagine how Kavanaugh, nominee for the Supreme Court, can give an account that I assume will dispute her allegations. He has disputed everything up to this point. What is very disturbing and appalling is that since her name came into the public domain she has been subjected to a torrent of hatred and mysogeny, so much so that she and her family have had to move away for their own safety. It says a whole lot about the state of mind of certain people in the United States that they felt it was their right to attack and abuse a woman who had been brave enough to come forward about an alleged sex assault against her in the 1980s. Social media is fun when it's used for entertaining, pleasureable or informative reasons. But to use social media to spit out violence and hatred and prejudice should be criminally unlawful. This poor woman who has been speaking with tremendous dignity to the Senate Judiciary Committee and with the whole world able to watch on live stream on their mobiles, has already been trashed by the president of the United States. Perhaps it's no wonder that hate-filled bullyboys and maybe bullygirls too around the country have targeted Dr Ford as if she is some common street girl. From the evidence so far, this has been the most disturbing part of her testimony. Her friends advised her to make the alleged attack public, they advised her to go to the newspapers, they advised her to get a lawyer. But she knew, because she said so, that if she did she would run the risk of being villified by people who will never understand why a woman would keep secret such an incident for more three decades. Her fears were justified and now she will always be known as the woman who brought down President Trump's nominee for the Supreme Court - if that is what happens. And it surely will.