Hillary Roberts, a Seattle attorney, says watching the Kavanaugh hearing was painful.
"I feel like I am reliving this experience, and I feel like a lot of people are," Roberts said. "I felt so much sympathy for Dr. Ford when she is being asked on national TV why she didn't report or questioned about that. You have to go through it to know."
Roberts says she does know because it happened to her when she was 25 years old.
One night in 2009, she agreed to meet a friend at Seattle bar.
"I recall having one or two drinks and then nothing for 12 hours, and then waking up to being assaulted and how disorienting and terrifying that was," Roberts said.
She turned to her sister who urged her to go to the police.
"I was interviewed in the public waiting area of the downtown precinct about a sexual assault ... I did not feel comfortable and I think whatever courage I had fled," Roberts said.
She decided to keep it to herself and suppress her emotions.
It wasn't until eight years later that something triggered her.
"It was because of the women who were coming forward to report allegations of assault about President Trump," Roberts said.
President Trump has strongly denied the allegations.
"To see these people - so brave - to go out on a national stage and talk about something so painful and personal, I felt like I could do that and I needed to do that," Roberts said.
She came forward, saying she believed she was drugged, then raped in 2009 by Matt Hickey.
She is not alone. A total of 11 women have now come forward accusing Hickey of having sex or attempting to have sex under false pretenses or when they were too intoxicated to give consent, according to court documents.
The women were able to confront him in court where he received a sentence of less than three years.
"He had to hear us before he was left to pay the consequences of what he had done," Roberts said.
After what she has been through, she says it's easy to understand how the Kavanaugh hearing might trigger other survivors.
"I don't want people to look at this and say I don't need to come forward because no one will listen to me," Roberts said. "To anyone who has been assaulted, your voice matters, it really does."
