Four women accused Donald Trump of making unwanted sexual advances on them in reports published Wednesday. The accusations came days after a salacious leaked tape showed Trump bragging in 2005 about groping women under his celebrity status.
The allegations, made by Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks in The New York Times, Natasha Stoynoff in People, and Mindy McGillivray in The Palm Beach Post, came after Trump denied ever making unwanted advances when asked during Sunday’s presidential debate.
Leeds told The Times she was on a plane next to Trump, whom she had not yet met, in the early 1980s when the real-estate tycoon lifted her armrest and began touching her. She alleged that he grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.
“He was like an octopus,” she told The Times. “His hands were everywhere. … It was an assault.”
Leeds said she fled to the back of the plane, but never made a formal complaint. Instead she spoke with four individuals who The Times also interviewed to corroborate the claims.
The second woman, Crooks, said her incident occurred in 2005 — the same year as the damning leaked “Access Hollywood” tape was recorded.
Crooks, 22 at the time, said Trump began kissing her on the mouth after holding on to an extended handshake.
“It was so inappropriate,” she told The Times. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.”
Stoynoff wrote her own story in People, where she was a writer covering Trump when the unwanted contact allegedly occurred in December 2005 — just months before the leaked tape was recorded and when his third wife, Melania, was pregnant at the time.
She says she interviewed the couple at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach when Melania Trump went upstairs for a minute, leaving Stoynoff and Donald Trump alone to tour the mansion.
“We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us,” Stoynoff wrote in People. “I turned around, and within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat.”
Stoynoff alleges she tried to get him off her, and that he finally stopped when a butler entered the room “a minute later.” She also said Trump then told her they would “have an affair,” saying he would take her to dinner at a steakhouse when they returned to New York.
A colleague she told the next day encouraged her to tell their managing editor about the incident, but Styonoff said she didn’t — mostly because she felt so shocked, angry, and ashamed.
“Like many women, I was ashamed and blamed myself for his transgression. I minimized it (‘It’s not like he raped me…’); I doubted my recollection and my reaction,” she wrote (emphasis hers). “I was afraid that a famous, powerful, wealthy man could and would discredit and destroy me, especially if I got his coveted PEOPLE feature killed.”
Stoynoff said she asked to stop covering Trump for the magazine and never interviewed him again.
McGillivray alleged to the Palm Beach Post that Trump grabbed her rear in 2003. Trump and his campaign have not yet responded to her story. All four women had not previously come forward with their stories, but did so after Trump said in Sunday night’s presidential debate that his words from the 2005 leaked tape were “just words” and “locker room talk.”
source: Insider.com
