Another woman has revealed a story of sexual assault at the hands of President Donald Trump. According to former model Amy Dorris, Trump forced himself on her when she was at the US Open tennis tournament with him and others in September 1997. She has many details — she says that the assault took place outside the bathroom in Trump’s VIP box, which she says was separated from the other guests in the VIP area by a small partition wall. Dorris, who was there with her then-boyfriend, Jason Binn, who was a friend of Trump’s, was 24 at the time of the incident, while Trump was 51. Dorris says, specifically, that Trump forced his tongue down her throat and groped her.
“I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it” — former model Amy Dorris accuses Donald Trump of sexual assault at 1997 U.S. Open https://t.co/UEBNFkW8yH
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) September 17, 2020
According to The Guardian, Dorris’s account “was… corroborated by several people she confided in about the incident… [including] 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.” Every one of these corroborators said that Dorris had told them details that matched up with the story that she explained to The Guardian. Dorris first shared her story with the publication 15 months ago, but the former model explains that she only now felt ready to go public with her account. Trump and his supporters have, in the past, antagonized women who have revealed stories of sexual assault perpetrated by the president.
Referring to her daughters, Dorris said:
‘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. And I’d rather be a role model. I want them to see that I didn’t stay quiet, that I stood up to somebody who did something that was unacceptable… I’m sick of him getting away with this. I’m tired of being quiet. It’s kind of cathartic. I just want to get this out. And I want people to know that this is the man, this is our president. This is the kind of thing he does and it’s unacceptable.’
Trump’s legal team has denied Dorris’s allegations, but she is not the first woman to tell a similar story — and there is a tape of Trump bragging while with Access Hollywood about committing sexual assault.
