Bush Snr ‘sorry’ for groping – at 90

ACTRESS SAYS HE TOUCHED HER BEHIND Actress Heather Lind describes ‘sexual assault’ by HW from wheelchair.

Former US president George HW Bush on Wednesday apologised through a spokesperson for what an 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 photo session.

Heather Lind, who starred in the AMC cable television network’s historical drama Turn: Washington’s Spies, accused Bush of groping her as they posed for photos with his wife and others during a promotional event for the show in 2014.

The allegation surfaced in an Instagram post from Lind featuring a photograph of Bush, 93, shaking hands with former president Barack Obama during an appearance of all five living former presidents at a hurricane fundraising benefit.

Lind, 34, said 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’”.

Bush’s spokesperson, Jim McGrath, sought to explain Bush’s behaviour as an attempt to make light of social awkwardness posed by his own physical disability during photo sessions.

“To try to put people at ease, he routinely tells the same joke and on occasion has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner.” –