Fla. woman says Trump groped her

For former model Amy Dorris, the latest woman to accuse President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her years ago, the decision to go public with her story wasn’t related to the fact that the presidential election is near, according to a close friend.

Dorris is not political and has no agenda, said Caron Bernstein, a former model who became friends with Dorris in 2008.

“It had nothing to do with anything political,” said Bernstein, a rape survivor who accompanied Dorris through the decision and interviews with Lucy Osborne, the reporter who broke the story in the British newspaper The Guardian on Thursday. “The ball dropped, and it just happened to drop now.”

Dorris, a Boca Raton mother of 13-year-old twin daughters, knew she would face a backlash from Trump supporters, Bernstein said. Dorris knew reporters would pursue her and her motives and memory would be questioned regarding how Trump allegedly accosted her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the U.S. Open in New York on Sept. 5, 1997.

Dorris, who was 24 at the time, said the alleged assault occurred when she went to the bathroom, which was hidden behind a partition wall near Trump’s other guests.

Dorris alleges that Trump was waiting outside and forced himself on her after a brief exchange in which she recalls nervously laughing and telling him: “No, get away.”

She said Trump forced his tongue down her throat, groped her and held her so tightly she could not escape. Trump ignored her pleas to stop, Dorris told The Guardian.

“His hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything,” Dorris said, recalling how she used her teeth to try to force his tongue out of her mouth. “I felt trapped.”

Dorris told her boyfriend what had happened, Bernstein said. When he approached Trump to confront him, Trump told him, “She’s way out of your league,” Bernstein recalled Dorris telling her.

Via his lawyers, Trump denied that he ever harassed, abused or behaved improperly toward Dorris, according to The Guardian. Trump was 51 at the time and married to his second wife, Marla Maples.

Dorris kept the ticket stub to the event and has six photos with Trump from the four days she spent around Trump while accompanying her boyfriend, who was a friend of Trump, according to the Guardian report.