Trump faces raft of allegations about behavior towards women

Donald Trump is facing a torrent of allegations about his behaviour towards women, countering his claims at last week’s debate that he had only engaged in “locker room talk” and that his remarks about groping women without their consent in a leaked 2005 recording were “just words”. Nearly 10 allegations surfaced late on Wednesday. Two women, Jessica Leeds and Rachel Crooks, told the New York Times that Trump had groped or kissed them without consent. “He was like an octopus,” Leeds said of the airplane encounter 35 years ago. “His hands were everywhere.”

Another woman, Mindy McGillivray, claimed she was groped by the Republican nominee at a Trump foundation event in Florida while Natasha Stoynoff, a reporter for People magazine, said Trump forced himself on her in 2005. Two Miss USA contestants claimed Trump walked in when they were naked in a dressing room. “Mr Trump just barged right in, didn’t say anything, stood there and stared at us,” one told The Guardian. Five Miss Teen USA contestants also told Buzzfeed he had entered their dressing room while the young women – aged between 15 and 19 – were getting changed. And a recording emerged in which Trump appears to sexualise a 10-year-old girl. A spokesman for the campaign called the allegations a “co-ordinated character assassination” and his lawyers have since threatened to sue the New York Times.

HUFFINGTON POST

Lisa Boyne, a health food business entrepreneur, described a disturbing episode in the mid-1990s: While at a restaurant with her and others, she said Trump paraded women in front of their table, looked under women’s skirts, and commented on whether they were wearing underwear.

“It was the most offensive scene I’ve ever been a part of,” Boyne told The Huffington Post on Thursday. “I wanted to get the heck out of there.”

The story, recounted in detail by Boyne, is another in a growing list of allegations that Trump has engaged in serial sexual assault

The incident she describes took place in the summer of 1996. At the time, Boyne was a 25-year-old think tank employee living in Manhattan who had become good friends with Sonja Morgan, then Sonja Tremont, and now a cast member on Bravo’s “Real Housewives of New York.”

One night that summer, Boyne said that Morgan, who was well-connected in New York’s elite social circles, invited her to dinner in Lower Manhattan with Trump and John Casablancas, the famed modeling agent who died in 2013. Trump and Morgan picked Boyne up at her apartment.

According to Boyne, Trump dominated the conversation in the limo, boasting of his sexual conquests and rating their attractiveness.

“He was constantly talking about himself, who he was dating, who he was sleeping with, who he was trying to sleep with,” Boyne said. “I just remember feeling very surprised and upset.”

Once at the restaurant, the group met up with Casablancas, who had brought along five or six models. It quickly became clear to Boyne that this was an opportunity for Trump to meet young, attractive women. Months earlier, Trump’s then-wife Marla Maples had allegedly been caught sleeping with a bodyguard. (Trump and Maples would officially divorce in 1997.)