ISLAMABAD: A former model has accused Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her at the 1997 US Open.
Amy Dorris, then 24, alleges that Trump groped her in his VIP box at the New York tournament.
According to international media reports, Dorris said the now-president forced himself on her outside a bathroom in the box.
Trump has vehemently denied ever having harassed or behaved inappropriately towards Dorris.
Dorris said, “I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it. It felt like there were tentacles on me that I couldn’t rip off. I was trying to get his arms off of me and they would not come off because I wasn’t strong enough.”
Dorris, now 48, is the latest of at least two dozen women who have accused Trump of different forms of sexual misconduct, ranging from harassment to rape.
Numerous pictures that she says were taken around the time of the incident show her posing with Trump, and her account was reportedly verified by a number of people she spoke to at the time about what had happened. Those people include Dorris’s mother and a friend. She also spoke with other friends and a therapist in the years that followed. The mother-of-two said she thought about coming forward in 2016, when Trump first ran for the presidency, but wanted to protect her family. “Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you don’t let anybody do anything to you that you don’t want,” she said.
Dorris said that in 1997 she was living in Boca Raton, Florida, often going to Miami as part of her work as a model.
She was introduced to Trump after being taken to New York by her then-boyfriend, fashion and lifestyle publisher Jason Binn, who was a close friend of Trump's.
She describes meeting Trump at the famous Trump Tower building in Manhattan before departing to attend the US Open. Dorris says the assault occurred when she left the group to use a bathroom, which was behind a partitioning wall within the box. She says that Trump was stood outside the bathroom when she emerged, and that he advanced on her following a short exchange. She recounted telling him, "No, get away", but said he "didn't care".
Dorris spent time in Trump's company a number of times in the days following the alleged incident.
Asked why, she said she had travelled to New York with Binn and had "no money, nowhere to go", adding that people will often "freeze" after suffering traumatic experiences.
Dorris said she had listened to the accusations laid out against Trump by other women and that she was "sick of him getting away with this".