Former model Amy Dorris has alleged that in 1997, then-real estate businessman Donald Trump “shoved his tongue” down her throat at a tennis tournament and ignored her plea for him to stop.
Dorris, who was 24 at the time, told the Guardian that Trump forcefully gripped her in such a way that she could not escape while he groped her.
“He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off,” Dorris alleged to the Guardian in an interview published Thursday. “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.”
Trump’s lawyers told the Guardian that the President has denied ever harassing, abusing or behaving improperly toward Dorris.
Dorris told the Guardian that Trump accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the U.S. Open in New York in September 1997.
“I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it,” Dorris told the Guardian. She recalled telling Trump “no, please stop” but “he didn’t care.”
“I felt violated, obviously,” Dorris said.
Dorris documented as evidence her ticket to the US Open and six photos of her together with Trump, who was then dealing in real estate and married to his second wife, Marla Maples.
Dorris said her then-boyfriend Jason Binn, who at the time regarded Trump as his “best friend,” took her to meet Trump at his office in Trump Tower in Midtown Manhattan, on Friday, Sept. 5, before they went together to the US Open and were joined by other friends of Trump in his private box.
“He came on very strong right away,” Dorris said of Trump. “It seemed typical of a certain guy, people who just feel like they’re entitled to do what they want … even though I was there with my boyfriend.”
Several people she told about the alleged incident, including a friend in New York and the former model’s own mother, have also backed up her claims.
Dorris told the Guardian that she called both immediately after the incident. A therapist and friends who were also privy to the alleged encounter also recounted details from the incident that matched Dorris’ retelling of the incident to the Guardian.
Dorris, who is now a mother of two, said she had considered speaking publicly about the incident in 2016, when several women leveled similar accusations against Trump when he launched his first bid for president. She opted not to share her story at that time because of fears that her family might be harmed as a result.
As her daughters become teenagers, her attitude has changed.
“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.”
