Woman says she was groped by Trump at 1998 U.S. Open
Another woman came forward Thursday to accuse Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump of inappropriate physical contact, alleging that Trump unexpectedly put his arm around her and touched her breast while attending the U.S. Open tennis tournament in 1998.
Karena Virginia, who was 27 at the time, said she had attended a match with a group of doctors. She was waiting alone outside the tennis complex to be picked up by a car service when she encountered Trump. She said he began making comments about her appearance to a group of men.
“Look at her legs,” she recalled him saying before approaching her, wrapping his arm around her and then reaching down to her breast. “Don’t you know who I am?” she said he asked. She said the encounter ended moments later when her car arrived.
Virginia, now 45 and a yoga instructor, made her allegations at a news conference in New York with women’s rights lawyer Gloria Allred, a prominent supporter of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.
Virginia said she decided to speak out publicly in support of other accusers after watching Trump dismiss their claims as “lies” and “fiction.”
Virginia had given an interview about her experience to the Washington Post earlier in the week but on Wednesday canceled a scheduled Thursday morning on-camera interview without explanation.
Virginia’s husband, New York lawyer Charles Virginia, told the Post that his wife had confided in him about the experience when they met, about a year after it occurred. She told him about encountering Trump and “that she had been touched inappropriately and that she had been cowed by it,” he said.
Karena Virginia had said she would provide the Post with the names of additional people she had told about the incident at the time but did not do so.
Allred told reporters that Virginia had told her husband and “some friends” about Trump’s behavior, but she did not name them.
A Trump campaign spokeswoman, Jessica Ditto, dismissed Virginia’s allegations.
“Voters are tired of these circuslike antics and reject these fictional stories and the clear efforts to benefit Hillary Clinton,” Ditto said, describing Allred as a “discredited political operative.”
Virginia is the 10th woman to speak publicly, accusing the Republican candidate of inappropriate sexual advances since the disclosure by the Post of a 2005 video in which he bragged that his celebrity gave him the ability to grab women by their genitals.
Virginia said the U.S. Open incident left a mark on her.
“It took me years to get over this experience,” she told the Post. “I’m tall, and I was wearing high heels at the U.S. Open, and I was wearing a miniskirt. After that experience happened, I didn’t wear high heels or a miniskirt for a few years. I started wearing skirts that went down to my knees.”