A university professor on Thursday said she was “100 per cent” certain that Brett Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, sexually assaulted her 36 years ago, telling a dramatic US Senate hearing she feared he would rape and perhaps accidentally kill her.

Christine Blasey Ford, her voice sometimes cracking with emotion, appeared in public for the first time to detail her allegation against Kavanaugh, a conservative federal appeals court judge chosen for a lifetime job on the top US court. He also faces allegations of sexual misconduct by two other women.

Kavanaugh was due to testify later before the Judiciary Committee in a momentous hearing that could determine whether he will be confirmed by the Senate after a pitched political battle between Trump’s fellow Republicans and Democrats who oppose the nominee. Kavanaugh has denied the allegations by all three women.

“With what degree of certainty do you believe Brett Kavanaugh assaulted you?” Democratic Senator Richard Durbin asked Ford. “One hundred per cent,” she replied, remaining firm and unruffled through hours of testimony even under questioning by a sex crimes prosecutor hired by the committee’s Republicans.

Ford, a psychology professor at Palo Alto University in California, said a drunken Kavanaugh attacked her and tried to remove her clothing at a gathering of teenagers in Maryland when he was 17 years old and she was 15 in 1982.

Ford said “absolutely not” when Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein asked her if it could be a case of mistaken identity, as Kavanaugh has suggested.

The hearing, which has riveted Americans and intensified the political polarisation in the US, occurred against the backdrop of the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault.

“I have found your testimony powerful and credible and I believe you,” Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal told Ford.

While some Republicans and Trump have called the allegations by Ford and the two other women against Kavanaugh part of a smear campaign, Ford told the committee, “I am an independent person and I am no pawn.”

Ford was seated at a table in the packed hearing room flanked by her lawyers, facing a bank of senators. Cameras from news photographers clicked as she entered the room and took her seat, smiling nervously. Ford told the senators she was “terrified” to testify but felt it was her civic duty come forward.

“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 under my clothing.

“I believed he was going to rape me. I tried to yell for help,” Ford said, adding that Kavanaugh and a friend of his, Mark Judge, were “drunkenly laughing during the attack.” Reuters