Washington Post: She feared she would die at the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally. In court, she faced the white supremacists who were there.

By Ellie Silverman, Washington Post. Read the full article here.

CHARLOTTESVILLE — Natalie Romero looked straight ahead from the witness stand as she fielded questions about the 2017 Unite the Right rally weekend, when a neo-Nazi fractured her skull in a car-ramming attack.

Romero’s questioner was one of the rally headliners, Richard Spencer, a white supremacist who says his race makes him superior to her.

Romero, who is Colombian American, testified that she was in court this Friday because she was tired of hiding. She wanted to tell the truth.

She said she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks and flashbacks. She has an emotional support dog named Luna, who was with her in Charlottesville.

She was the first witness to testify in a federal civil trial where a jury will decide if two dozen white supremacists and hate groups named in a lawsuit engaged in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence during the rally four years ago...

...Romero is one of the nine plaintiffs bringing this suit, including three others who were directly hit when defendant James A. Fields Jr. sped his car through a crowd of protesters, and then reversed back up the street.

They are represented by attorneys Karen Dunn and Roberta Kaplan, who are presenting expansive evidence they say shows months of violent planning. A Reconstruction-era statute designed to protect newly emancipated Black people from the Ku Klux Klan underpins this case. Integrity First for America, a civil rights nonprofit organization, is backing the lawsuit.

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