'It Felt Like Tentacles:' Model Describes Being Forcibly Groped By Donald Trump

Ex-model Amy Dorris says Trump assaulted her at the 1997 US Open.

In 1997, Amy Dorris went to the US Open in New York City with her boyfriend Jason Binn and his good friend Donald Trump. She was 24 at the time. It should have been a really exciting and fun thing for a young woman to do — going to a big city, sitting in VIP areas, hanging out with Lenny Kravitz and Sean Combs at a time when he still went by Puff Daddy, etc. etc.

It was not.

Why? Because, she says, Donald Trump ruined the trip by being a pig, sexually assaulting her and then coming on to her for the entire trip.

Via The Guardian :

Dorris, who was 24 at the time, accuses Trump of forcing his tongue down her throat, assaulting her all over her body and holding her in a grip she was unable to escape from.

"He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that's when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything.

"I was in his grip, and I couldn't get out of it," she said, adding: "I don't know what you call that when you're sticking your tongue just down someone's throat. But I pushed it out with my teeth. I was pushing it. And I think I might have hurt his tongue."

Wow, it sure would be entirely out of character for Donald Trump — a person who has bragged about groping women in this fashion and has a particular inclination towards blondes who look a whole lot like Amy Dorris — to do something like this. His lawyers can hardly believe it and are very certain that no such thing occurred, ever.

Surely, Donald Trump, who was married to Marla Maples at the time and would divorce her two years later, would not be bothered at all by his friend, who was obviously better looking than he was, bringing along his stunning blonde model girlfriend who was about 10 years younger than Maples. That definitely seems like a thing he would have been totally fine with. None of us can possibly imagine a scenario in which he would respond to something like this by going after his friend's girlfriend in a super creepy way.

Dorris remembers the details very clearly, as you would if someone as sleazy as Donald Trump was putting his grubby little hands all over you.

Dorris said the alleged assault occurred when she got up to go to the bathroom, which was hidden behind a partition wall just metres from where Trump's guests were watching the tennis. "I was having some issues with my contact lenses," she said. "I remember going in there to moisten my lens."

When she came out, she alleges, Trump was waiting outside. "Initially I thought that he was waiting to go to the bathroom, but that wasn't the case, unfortunately," she said. She alleges Trump forced himself on her after a brief exchange in which she recalls nervously laughing and telling him: "No, get away."

She alleged she told Trump "no, please stop" but "he didn't care". "It doesn't matter who you are," she said. "Any time anyone says no, no means no. And that just didn't work out for me. It wasn't enough."

"I just kind of was in shock," she added. "I felt violated, obviously. But I still wasn't processing it and just was trying to go back to talking to everyone and having a good time because, I don't know, I felt pressured to be that way.

The Guardian initially heard about the incident not through Dorris herself but through a modeling agent who knew her and told them about it. The Guardian confirmed her story with several other people, including the friend she called during her trip to New York because she was freaked out and wanted to make sure she had a place to stay if things got worse.

Her account was also corroborated by several people she confided in about the incident. They include a friend in New York and Dorris's mother, both of whom she called immediately after the alleged incident, as well as a therapist and friends she spoke to in the years since. All said Dorris had shared with them details of the alleged incident that matched what she later told the Guardian .

And, again, Trump's lawyers are denying all of this and claim that it's just some kind of last ditch effort, by a British publication, to make him look bad before the election.

Trump's lawyers said it seemed incredible that Dorris would voluntarily choose to be in the vicinity of Trump, at the US Open and the Versace memorial, in the days following the alleged assault. They said Binn had raised similar questions about her account. Trump's lawyers also questioned why Dorris sat next to Trump at the Versace memorial, when she could have sat the other side of Binn.

They said Dorris had never raised the allegations with a law enforcement agency or to Trump, and said the timing of the claims so close to the November presidential election suggested they might be politically motivated.

Yeah. Except the thing is, it would not have been that "incredible" in 1997. It just really wouldn't have been. It would have been the kind of thing you thought was super gross, told your girlfriends or your mom about, and then tried to move on from. Had this "come out" at the time, the media's reaction pretty much would have been "And?"

Dorris has said that she hadn't really fully processed it, which is common for trauma. And again, back then, it would not have been taken as seriously as it would be now. Imagine being a 24-year-old model from Florida, visiting New York — a city where she knows exactly one other person, wanting to make a good impression with all these famous people, and getting manhandled by Donald Trump, a freaking billionaire. It's easy to say things like "Why didn't she stand up for herself?" now, but that is a pretty damned intimidating situation.

Trump has said he's groped women. He copped to it. He very clearly did not think there was anything wrong with doing that, and so we'd have to assume that somewhere out there, there are women that he has groped. Amy Dorris certainly appears to have been one of them.

[ The Guardian ]

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