If I asked you how many women have reported being sexually harassed or assaulted by President Trump, how many would you say? Five? 10?
No fewer than 16 women have come forward to report being sexually harassed or assaulted by the president. In the latest video from Brave New Films, we put all of their stories together for the first time.
As a society, we are finally beginning to hold powerful men to account for abusing for their positions and influence to harass and abuse women. But this movement for accountability will ring hollow if it doesn’t apply to the most powerful, and public, sexual harasser in America—the president.
In the post–Harvey Weinstein (or Roy Moore, Louis C.K., etc.) world we live in, we cannot ignore 16 women who over the course of decades in a broad range of situations encountered the same pattern of manipulation, misogyny, harassment and abuse.
We owe it to these women, and to all women, to hold President Trump to account.
Cathy Heller met Trump at a Mother’s Day brunch in 1997. She tells us he forcibly tried to kiss her. “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips.”
Jill Harth was getting a tour of Trump’s home in 1993 when, she tells us, he sexually assaulted her in his daughter Ivanka’s bedroom, “pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again, and I had to physically say: ‘What are you doing? Stop it.’”
Temple Taggart was a 21-year-old competing in the Miss USA pageant in 1997 when she tells us Trump forcibly kissed her. “He kissed me directly on the lips. I thought, ‘Oh my God, gross.’ He was married to Marla Maples at the time. I think there were a few other girls that he kissed on the mouth. I was like ‘Wow, that’s inappropriate.’”
Cassandra Searles, a former Miss Washington, tells us that in 2013 Trump treated the contestants “like cattle” and “continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”
Jessica Leeds sat next to Trump on an airplane in the late 1970s, when she tells us he grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt. “He was like an octopus.” “His hands were everywhere.” “It was an assault.”
Kristin Anderson was at a Manhattan nightclub in the early 1990s when she tells us a man suddenly put his hand up her skirt, touching her genitals. She recognized Trump—someone she had never met. “He just stuck his hand up my skirt.”