Amy Dorris' friend: No politics in sex-assault claim against Trump

Former model Amy Dorris, the latest woman to accuse President Donald Trump of sexually assaulting her years ago, did not go public with her story because the presidential election is just 46 days away, according to a close friend.

Dorris is not political and has no agenda, said Caron Bernstein, a former top model who became friends with Dorris in 2008. Dorris was simply ready. “It had nothing to do with anything political,” said Bernstein, a rape survivor who accompanied Dorris through the decision and interviews with Lucy Osborne, t he 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 Rat on mother of 13-year-old twin daughters, knew she would face enormous blowback f rom Trump supporters, Bernstein said. Dorris knew reporters would be relentless in pursuing her. She knew her motives would be questioned, along with every detail of her recollection of 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 years old at the ti me, said the alleged assault occurred when she went to the bathroom, which was hidden behind a partition wall near Trump's other guests, who were watching the tennis matches, according to the Guardian report.

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, touched her all over her body and held her in a grip from which 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 strongly 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.

Bernstein, who lives in New York, said her husband, a good friend of Dorris in 1997, was the first person Dorris told about Trump's alleged assault. In 2008, Bernstein's husband introduced the two women. It was a year after Bernstein said she was raped by a photographer. The women exchanged their stories and have been friends since.