SAN FRANCISCO – Over nearly four decades, Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her, racked up a list of university degrees and professional accolades, including a Ph.D. in psychology, positions at Stanford University, a professorship and multiple academic publications.

But it is a day in 1982, when the then-15-year-old prep school student attended a party with boys from a nearby boys school, that is destined to make Ford a household name.

Ford said Kavanaugh, 17 at the time, and a friend trapped her in a bedroom of a house in Montgomery County, Maryland, where the party was held. She said the friend watched while Kavanaugh tried to pull off her clothes. When she tried to yell, Kavanaugh put his hand over her mouth to stop her, she said.

The friend jumped on top of them, knocking all three off the bed and allowing Ford to escape, she told The Washington Post in an interview posted Sunday night.

Kavanaugh denied the allegation, calling it "completely false." In a statement Monday, he said, “I have never done anything like what the accuser describes – to her or to anyone."

By Monday morning, a Wikipedia page about Ford had been created and the previously little-known biostatistician was the subject of dozens of articles and television reports, as well as a mocking Instagram post from President Donald Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr., written in crayon.

Ford and Kavanaugh are scheduled to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Monday about the allegations. The hearings will delay a committee vote on Kavanaugh's nomination and carry with them echoes of the testimony in 1991 of Anita Hill, who accused Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearings to become a Supreme Court justice.

The sudden rush into the spotlight began very differently for Ford. In early July, she anonymously contacted the Post's tip line when Kavanaugh made the shortlist of possible nominees for the Supreme Court position opened by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy.

On July 30, Ford sent a confidential letter to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., via her congresswoman, Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., in which she outlined the story about the possible nominee but asked for confidentiality.

She decided not to speak publicly over fears of what it would do to her and her family, she told the Post. She hired Debra Katz, a Washington lawyer whose firm focuses on whistle-blower, employment and sexual harassment laws.

Her attempts to remain private failed, and the first reports of allegations involving Kavanaugh surfaced. Reporters called Ford, visited her home and attempted to speak to her as she left a class she taught.

Ford told the Post her "civic responsibility is outweighing my anguish and terror about retaliation.” She gave an on-the-record interview, which was published Sunday night.

Since then, her online presence has both diminished and grown. She removed her LinkedIn profile but gained a Wikipedia page created by a stranger.

The researcher and scientist has led a low-key life until now. Ford, 51, is a professor and research psychologist who teaches research design and education clinical psychology at Palo Alto University and in a consortium program with Stanford University’s School of Medicine.

Palo Alto University in California is a professional school that offers undergraduate and graduate programs in psychology, counseling and research. The consortium program with Stanford’s School of Medicine grants students a doctorate in clinical psychology. Ford's position was confirmed by the university.

She works with students on experimental and clinical trial design and data analysis, according to the university’s website.

Biostatisticians analyze data collected in medical or biological studies and use it to draw conclusions. They work with researchers and scientists to design medical experiments and human trials to ensure the results are scientifically valid and meaningful.

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Ford has numerous academic publications, under the name Christine Blasey, including a book on using statistical analysis in research, trauma symptom predictors after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and whether brain imaging in individuals with autistic spectrum disorder shows different responses in the recognition of emotion in people’s faces.

According to a since-deleted Linkedin profile reported by the San Jose Mercury News, Ford worked as a visiting professor at Pepperdine University and as a research psychologist at Stanford’s Department of Psychiatry.

She has an undergraduate degree from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and a master’s in psychology from Pepperdine University in California and in education from Stanford University. She has a Ph.D. in educational psychology research design from the University of Southern California.

Ford is a registered Democrat, according to The Washington Post. In June, she was one of thousands of people who signed a letter from the group Physicians for Human Rights urging the Trump administration to end the practice of separation of immigrant and asylum-seeking children from their parents.

According to an article that ran in the Mercury News in April, she planned to attend a March for Science in Oakland, California, in which she was to wear a knitted cap with a pattern of a brain in it. The march was billed as a nonpartisan celebration of science but featured many signs expressing skepticism about Trump administration policies that many scientists see as being hostile to science.

Ford attended Holton-Arms, an all-girls school in Bethesda, Maryland. The school, founded in 1901, begins in third grade and continues through high school. It is unclear how many years Ford attended the school.

The period during which she said the assault occurred was in the summer of 1982, when she was 15 and attending the high school.

More than 200 former students of the school signed a letter in support of Ford.

She married Russell Ford in 2002. He is an engineer at Cygnus, which provides scientific, technical and logistical support services for health professionals, scientists and government agencies. According to the Mercury News, the couple live in Palo Alto and have two children.

As of Monday evening, more than 70 edits had been made to her Wikipedia page, which was set to require confirmation of all edits to restrict vandalism.