The wave of calls started to come long before Brett Kavanaugh was nominated for the Supreme Court. They started when Bill Cosby's victims appeared on New York Magazine's cover and picked up during the stream of Harvey Weinstein stories.

And yet Portland's Sexual Assault Resource Center still saw a 400 percent increase Thursday of people who requested long-term help to deal with their trauma after a sexual assault, said Executive Director Amy Beard. Even more just wanted to talk in the moment.

On Thursday, Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of assaulting her during a party in high school, gave testimony to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in one of the most public moments of the #MeToo movement. She was immediately followed by Kavanaugh, who also answered questions and denied he had assaulted Ford.

Two other women have accused Kavanaugh of assault and harassment during his high school and college years.

The televised airing of the allegations awakened a need for many women – and people of all genders – to either privately seek help or publicly share their own experiences.

The National Sexual Assault Hotline, run by anti-sexual violence nonprofit RAINN, reported that calls were up 201 percent during the hearings.

When someone calls the hotline, Beard said, they reach staff who are also deeply tired and disturbed by the hearings few seemed able to turn away from.

Except for Jen Downer, who didn't watch the hearings Thursday. She said she was exhausted and outraged even before that, like many women. Instead, she spent the past few days watching her friends tell their own stories about being survivors of sexual assault.

And she was moved to tell her own story for the first time.

"I just had enough," she said, standing on the front steps of the World Trade Center.

On Friday, she joined several dozen people in downtown Portland to rally around Ford. The demonstration, organized by NARAL Pro-Choice, was meant to rally people to publicly say they believe Ford's story and oppose Kavanaugh's nomination.

"In the state of things being so divided, there is solidarity we can find and there is support we can find as a society," Downer said after the rally ended with a chant of "Justice for survivors, no Justice Kavanaugh."

Cicely Thrasher stood beside her, holding a simple black sign with "Believe Survivors" in white letters.

She woke up uncontrollably crying Friday morning. She shook, lying in bed.

She had "rage watched" nearly a dozen hours of testimony and punditry the day before and couldn't brush away the feeling.

Thrasher said she was struck by the calm restraint of Ford as she answered the senators' questions and how it contrasted with a blustering, angry Kavanaugh. She said she was mad that so many praised Kavanaugh's demeanor when she feels women are often deemed hysterical for showing anger and emotion in professional settings.

"I think the injustice of it all, the inequity of it all, drove me out here today," Thrasher said.

The need to be heard has almost taxed the nine-person staff to the breaking point at Sexual Assault Support Services in Eugene. Director BB Beltran said that the normally quiet summer for the lone agency to deal with sexual assault in Lane County was missing this year.

The current influx of people seeking help after the public hearings coincides with a routine uptick at the start of the school year for the University of Oregon, as well as Lane Community College and Northwest Christian University.

Students who are unfamiliar with drugs and alcohol, who are experiencing freedom for the first time, often end up in harm's way or causing harm. Others are attacked in dorm rooms by new or old friends.

Beltran's staff is there to tell survivors of sexual assault that they are believed, they are cared for and that they are taken seriously. The majority of her staff are not mandatory reporters -- people who are required by law to tell authorities when a minor has experienced abuse -- and that's on purpose. While school counselors might be compelled to start a legal process if a student discloses an assault, Beltran wants people of all ages to choose how widely their accusations are shared.

Many don't want to report their assault to law enforcement, Beltran said, for many of the reasons on display in the Kavanaugh hearing -- fear that their experience would be dismissed or minimized.

"Survivors have historically had to bear the brunt of the burden of their experience and offenders have for the most part not been held accountable," Beltran said. "What's happening is why survivors feel very unsure about whether or not to come forward or whether to report."

But this time, something strange happened. Perpetrators of sexual violence started to call the Sexual Assault Support Services hotline. They asked what they could do to make amends -- a problem Beltran's staff is unprepared for.

"We don't know. That's not our role," Beltran said.

They do try to prevent those wrongs from occurring. Sexual Assault Support Services in Eugene and Sexual Assault Resource Center in Portland reach out to professional and community groups and work in colleges and high schools to educate students about consent and boundaries to try to head off events like the one Ford described, in hopes there are fewer calls the next time a survivor tells her story.

"If we want to envision a world in which these things simply don't happen, then we have to envision how that world would be different," Beard in Portland said. "Then we have to create them in this world today."

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com

503-294-5923

@MollyHarbarger