One of the women is Jessica Leeds, who claims that Trump groped her when they were on a first-class flight to New York 30 years ago.
- Oct 13, 2016
AceShowbiz - Donald Trump's "grab them by the p***y" comment was inspired by events that really happened. After he said during last weekend's presidential debate that he never did the inappropriate things he descibed in his recently-leaked conversation with Billy Bush, multiple women came forward to accuse him of making unwanted sexual advances on them in the past.
The New York Times has talked to two of the ladies, including 74-year-old Jessica Leeds who claimed she was "assaulted" by Trump on a flight 30 years ago. She was a traveling saleswoman living in Connecticut at the time. She was sitting next to the real-estate tycoon on a first-class flight to New York when he suddenly lifted the arm-rest between them and began touching her.
"He was like an octopus. His hands were everywhere," said Leeds, who's now living in Manhattan. Following the incident, she rushed to the back of the plane to escape Trump's advances. "I was angry and shook up," she said.
However, she chose to stay quiet about it because all men made unwanted advances on women in the 1970s and early 1980s. "We accepted it for years," she explained. "We were taught it was our fault."
Another woman coming forward to the publication was Rachel Crooks. She was 22 and working as a receptionist at Bayrock Group, a real estate company based in Trump Tower in Manhattan, when Trump kissed her on the mouth without permission while they were in an elevator in 2005.
Crooks was left super upset by the incident. She returned to her apartment in the Bay Ridge section of Brooklyn and "hysterically" cried as she shared the story with her boyfriend at the time, Clint Hackenburg.
"I asked, 'How was your day?' She paused for a second, and then started hysterically crying," Hackenburg said. "I think that what was more upsetting than him kissing her was that she felt like she couldn't do anything to him because of his position. She was 22. She was a secretary. It was her first job out of college. I remember her saying, 'I can't do anything to this guy, because he's Donald Trump.' "
Trump has responded to the accusations. His team issued a statement on Wednesday, October 12, slamming the New York Times and the article which they deemed "fiction." "For the New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr Trump on a topic like this is dangerous," the statement read.
"To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election," it continued. "It is absurd to think that one of the most recognizable business leaders on the planet with a strong record of empowering women in his companies would do the things alleged in this story, and for this to only become public decades later in the final month of a campaign for president should say it all."
