Bush apologises for ‘good-natured’ grope as actresses speak out
Wheelchair-bound Former United States President George H.W. Bush has been accused of groping two actresses.
Bush apologised through a spokesman yesterday for what the first actress described as a sexual assault but which Bush said was intended as a friendly pat and a joke to put her at ease during a picture-taking session.
Heather Lind, who starred in the historical drama Turn: Washington’s Spies, accused Bush of groping her as they posed for photos together with his wife, Barbara Bush, and others during a promotional event for the show in 2014.
New York-based Jordana Grolnick claimed yesterday that Bush groped her last year and that Barbara Bush commented that he would “get himself put in jail”.
Lind’s allegation surfaced in an Instagram post featuring a photograph of Bush, 93, shaking hands with former President Barack Obama during an appearance of all five living former presidents at Sunday’s hurricane fundraising benefit.
In the post, Lind, 34, said that seeing that photo reminded her of her own meeting with the 41st President three years earlier, when, according to her, “he sexually assaulted me while I was posing for a similar photo”.
“He didn’t shake my hand. He touched me from behind from his wheelchair with his wife Barbara Bush by his side,” Lind wrote.
“He told me a dirty joke. And then, all the while being photographed, touched me again.”
Lind said the former first lady “rolled her eyes as if to say, ‘ not again’.”
The Instagram post, since deleted, carried the “MeToo” social media hashtag spawned by the recent outpouring of sexual assault and sexual harassment accusations levelled against former Hollywood executive Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein has denied engaging in non-consensual sex with anyone.
Bush’s spokesman, Jim McGrath, issued a statement in response to Lind’s post that sought to explain the former President’s behaviour as an attempt to make light of social awkwardness posed by his own physical disability during photo sessions.
Confined to a wheelchair, as Bush has been for about the past five years, “his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he take pictures”, McGrath said.
“To try to put people at ease, the President routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner.
“Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate,” McGrath wrote.
“To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologises most sincerely.” Representatives for the actress were not immediately available for comment on the President’s response to her allegations, and it was not clear what prompted her to take down the Instagram post in question.
Grolnick, meanwhile, told the website Deadspin that Bush groped her in August last year during the intermission of a play she was performing in at a Maine theatre.
A frequent patron of the theatre, Bush came backstage with his wife for a photo with the cast.
“We all circled around him and Barbara for a photo, and I was right next to him,” Grolnick told Deadspin.
“He reached his right hand around to my behind, and as we smiled for the photo he asked the group, ‘Do you want to know who my favourite magician is’?
“As I felt his hand dig into my flesh, he said, ‘David Cop-a-Feel’!” an apparent sexualised reference to famed magician David Copperfield.
Grolnick said the rest of her castmates “laughed politely and out of discomfort”, adding that Barbara Bush was nearby at the time of the incident.
“[She] said something along the lines of, ‘He’s going to get himself put into jail!’ to which we laughed harder.”