Bush ‘made Cop-a-feel joke as he groped second woman’
FORMER US president George HW Bush has apologised again after a second woman accused him of groping her.
Actress Jordana Grolnick said Mr Bush touched her bottom at a theatre last year – while making a crude joke playing on the name of illusionist David Copperfield.
She said that, as the wheelchair-bound 93-year-old posed for a picture, he reached around her and asked: ‘Do you want to know who my favourite magician is?’
‘As I felt his hand dig into my flesh, he said, “David Cop-afeel”,’ Miss Grolnick told US website Deadspin.
The New York actress had been working on a production of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Maine, where Mr Bush often spends his summers in the town of Kennebunkport.
The claim follows accusations earlier this week by actress Heather Lind that Mr Bush, who suffers a condition similar to Parkinson’s, had groped her in the same way three years ago.
The ex-president’s spokesman Jim McGrath said: ‘At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures.
‘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. To anyone he has offended, President Bush apologises most sincerely.’
According to Miss Grolnick – who posted the picture on social media site Instagram – after the incident others in the room laughed while former first lady Barbara Bush ‘said something along the lines of, “He’s going to get himself put in jail!”’
Miss Lind claimed Mr Bush had told a ‘dirty joke’ as he groped her in 2014. He was posing for a picture with her and her co-stars while promoting a historical TV show. In a since-deleted post online, 34-year-old Miss Lind said: ‘He didn’t shake my hand.
‘He touched me from behind from his wheelchair with his wife Barbara Bush by his side.’
Offering advice to others in similar situations, Miss Grolnick said: ‘What I’ve come to realise is that if we tolerate these small comments and grazes from men on the street or former presidents, they might assume that it’s okay with us, and they may take it as permission to do who knows what else.
‘I realise that making light of the situation was the wrong move. It wasn’t OK for him to do that to me.’
Mr Bush, who was in the Oval Office from 1989 to 1993, had apologised to Miss Lind over that incident earlier this week.
‘It wasn’t OK for him to do that’