WASHINGTON: Weeks before the US president’s re-election bid, a former modelhas alleged Donald Trump groped and forcibly kissed her in 1997.
Amy Dorris told Britain’s The Guardian that Trump sexually assaulted her inhis VIP suite at the US Open tennis tournament in New York — claims hedenied via his lawyers.
“He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. Andthen that´s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey andall over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything,” Dorris said in aninterview.
“I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it,” she added.
Trump has faced more than a dozen allegations of sexual misconduct,including a claim by prominent American columnist E Jean Carroll that heraped her in a department store changing room in the mid-1990s.
But he brushed them aside in his run for the White House.
Shortly before the 2016 election, a tape recording emerged from 2005 inwhich he was heard boasting about how his fame allowed him to “grab” womenby the genitals when he wanted.
Trump dismissed this as “locker room banter” but subsequently apologized.
Dorris was 24 at the time of the alleged incidents. Trump was 51 andmarried at the time to his second wife, Marla Maples.
The accuser provided *The Guardian* with several photos showing her inTrump’s company, and multiple people corroborated her account, saying shetold them at the time.
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She says she told Trump to stop but “he didn’t care.” She added: “I feltviolated, obviously.”
Asked why she continued to be around Trump in subsequent days, Dorrisresponded: “That’s what happens when something traumatic happens — youfreeze.”
But Trump’s attorneys told the newspaper that her version of events wasunreliable and there would be other witnesses if she had been assaulted.
They suggested in comments to *The Guardian* that the allegation could bepolitically motivated, coming weeks before Trump faces Joe Biden in theNovember 3 election.
Dorris, now 48, said she decided to come forward to be a role model for herteenage twin daughters.
She first told *The Guardian* her story more than a year ago, but asked thenewspaper not to publish it.
“I’m sick of him getting away with this,” Dorris said. -APP/AFP
