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    Commonly used defense tactic strongly correlates with acceptance of rape myths – study

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    A new study, released amid controversy over allegations of sexual misconduct against several nominees for Donald Trump’s cabinet, reveals a positive correlation between people accused of wrongdoing who use Darvo (“deny, attack, reverse victim and offender”) defense tactics and sexual harassment perpetration and acceptance of rape myths.“These findings suggest Darvo isn’t just a response,” said Dr Sarah Harsey, assistant professor of psychology at the Oregon State University-Cascades and study lead author. “It reflects a broader perspective that condones victim-blaming and minimizes accountability.”Published on Wednesday in PLOS One, the study involved surveys of one group of 602 university students and another group of 325 “community members” – “regular folk”, Harsey said, found through Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s crowdsourcing service.Among students, researchers “found a positive correlation between Darvo use and both sexual harassment perpetration and acceptance of rape myths”. The community group showed “very strong correlations”.Harsey’s co-authors were Alexis Adams-Clark, a University of Oregon doctoral student, and Jennifer Freyd, professor emerit of psychology at Oregon and founder of the nonprofit Center for Institutional Courage.Freyd coined the term Darvo in the 1990s. She said the idea grew from watching “the hearings for Clarence Thomas and the response to Anita Hill”, the law professor who in 1991 said the then supreme court nominee sexually harassed her, only to see her own reputation dragged through the mud.“Clarence Thomas had a leadership role” in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Freyd said. “So it seemed to me like if there’s anyone who would have had a different response to the accusation, it was him. He would have said something like, ‘My memory is very different than yours. I’m disturbed to hear this is how you experienced things. I know these are very difficult conversations to have, and I want to understand what leads you to say this.’ But instead he and the other people who enabled him, it was a gang that attacked Anita Hill … and then I was seeing it all over.”Introducing their study, Freyd and her co-authors write that they aimed “to extend research on the connections between Darvo and sexual violence. We examined whether people who use Darvo as a means of responding to confrontations involving a range of wrongdoings also engage in behaviors and ascribe to beliefs that contribute to sexual violence.“Findings offer further confirmation of a link between Darvo and sexual violence and suggest this defensive response is part of a larger worldview that justifies participation in sexual violence and blames victims,” they added.The study is published amid new Washington scandal about sexual misconduct, not just regarding the blizzard of allegations against Donald Trump himself but also over accusations against Trump’s first pick for attorney general, Matt Gaetz; his pick for secretary of health, Robert F Kennedy Jr; and Pete Hegseth, the nominee for secretary of defense who was accused of sexual assault in 2017.On Sunday, the New Yorker reported a lawyer’s use of Darvo: insisting Hegseth “was completely innocent” and that his accuser “was the aggressor”, had “tried to blackmail him”, and “had previously brought a false rape charge against someone else, thus undermining her credibility”. The lawyer also demanded the release of investigative records on Hegseth’s accuser. The New Yorker said it asked authorities for such records, but none existed.Harsey said: “It is easy to find examples of Darvo in the context of sexual misconduct in the news nowadays. We started this project after the first Trump presidency, and now we are about to be faced with a second one. And so I think it’s relevance is pretty noticeable right now.“I hope that after reading the report, people will have words to put to things they already noticed. By naming Darvo, by knowing its associations with things like rape myth acceptance and sexual harassment perpetration … it sort of empowers people to take a step back and think, ‘Wait, this is Darvo. This is something research has looked at.’“Maybe we don’t have to take what [those using Darvo are] saying so seriously, because we know that this is a common tactic. We know that it’s connected to these other sort of undesirable constructs. Maybe we don’t have to believe and endorse these statements when we see Darvo out in the wild.’” More

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      Trump’s White House is filling with alleged sexual abusers … led by him

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      Donald Trump was found civilly liable last year for the defamation and sexual abuse of the writer E Jean Carroll – just one of the more than 27 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. In January 2025, he will again be president of the United States – the first to take office with a court-adjudicated history of sex crimes.And it seems he’s eager to pack the White House with people just like him.Four of president-elect Trump’s cabinet-level nominees have faced serious allegations of sexual misconduct, ranging from workplace sexual harassment to assault, and a fifth is embroiled in a sexual abuse-related lawsuit.As Americans brace themselves for Trump 2.0, it’s time to be clear-eyed about the Maga machine: a history of alleged sexual criminality isn’t a bug, it’s a central part of the hardware; an organizing principle that clarifies how Trump and those like him view their power and how they intend to wield it.Trump’s first choice for attorney general, the former representative Matt Gaetz, was concurrently under investigation by the Department of Justice and the House ethics committee for allegedly violating federal sex-trafficking laws and statutory rape. The disgraced representative also reportedly bragged about his sexual conquests and showed nude photos of women to his fellow lawmakers. On Thursday afternoon, Gaetz announced he would be withdrawing his name from consideration to avoid being a “distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition”, just hours before CNN published a report about a second alleged sexual encounter between Gaetz and a 17-year-old. (The age of consent in Florida is 18.)Gaetz’s withdrawal provided a brief moment of relief. But, still, Trump’s would-be cabinet is filled with alleged criminals, all of whom the president-elect has vociferously defended, and all of whom deny wrongdoing.Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped for the made-up position of “efficiency czar”, reportedly exposed his penis to a SpaceX flight attendant in 2016 and offered to buy her a horse in exchange for sex. Musk’s company SpaceX paid her $250,000 in 2018 to settle the sexual misconduct claim. He was also sued this year by eight former SpaceX employees, who alleged that the CEO treated “women as sexual objects to be evaluated on their bra size, bombarding the workplace with lewd sexual banter”.Then there’s the nominee for secretary of defense, the Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who was accused of sexually assaulting a staff member of the California Federation of Republican Women in 2017.In the police report that was filed at the time, and which was obtained by the New York Times, the unnamed woman told law enforcement that Hegseth had taken her phone and blocked her exit from his hotel room before assaulting her. Though Hegseth was never charged with a crime, he did enter into a nondisclosure agreement with the woman, which included a financial settlement.Robert F Kennedy Jr was accused of sexually assaulting Eliza Cooney, a former family babysitter, in the late 90s. Trump now wants him to run the Department of Health and Human Services.Finally, Trump’s pick for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, was recently named in a lawsuit alleging that she and her husband, Vince McMahon, failed to stop an employee from sexually abusing children in the 1980s and 90s, when the McMahons were running World Wrestling Entertainment. (An attorney for McMahon told CNN that the lawsuit is “filled with scurrilous lies.”)These picks feel comically brazen, like shots fired directly at the #MeToo movement, which erupted in the wake of Trump’s election in 2016. It’s not a stretch to imagine that Trump, a man who has threatened to sue every one of his accusers and has openly bragged about grabbing women “by the pussy” without their consent, is attempting to exact revenge on a movement designed to use the collective to force consequences for a handful of powerful predators.#MeToo was just one piece of a slate of shifting gender norms over the last decade. Now, we’re living in the middle of a backlash.Roe v Wade has fallen, a known sexual abuser is re-entering the Oval Office, and the very online far right has found a new slogan: “Your body, my choice.”In Susan Faludi’s 1991 book Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women,she writes that these moments of backlash are not random. They are “preemptive strikes”, which “have always been triggered by the perception – accurate or not – that women are making great strides”.The perception that women were gaining status at the expense of men’s, combined with the real ways in which many men in this country are struggling economically, socially and mentally, has seemingly helped fuel the Trump campaign.Trump sneered at “childless cat ladies”, courted Joe Rogan listeners and crypto-bros, and trotted out Hulk Hogan to perform hyper-macho drag at the Republican national convention. The campaign deployed far-right influencers to wax poetic on X – which Musk owns – about the dangers of “toxic femininity” and mock the peeing habits of men who supported Kamala Harris.On election day, Trump senior adviser and noted white nationalist Stephen Miller tweeted a very particular plea: “Get every man you know to the polls.” After Trump’s win, the far right were out in full force celebrating what they clearly perceived not just as a win for their preferred political leader, but for their gender as a whole; they flooded X and TikTok with the phrases “your body, my choice” and “get back in the kitchen” and crafted supercuts of liberal women crying.Perhaps what Trump is counting on is that people who oppose the draconian agenda of his administration will be so exhausted by the piling horrors that they’ll get overwhelmed and give up – that all of the allegations will blend together and the backlash will become the norm. And yet, we know where a backlash brews, so does a resistance to it. More

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      RFK Jr sexual assault accuser says she chose to speak out after Super Bowl ad

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      A woman who publicly accused Robert F Kennedy Jr of sexual assault when she worked for him as a babysitter said she was motivated to do so when he released a campaign ad based on a famous advertisement for his uncle, President John F Kennedy.“I literally was just watching the Super Bowl and saw the ad and thought, ‘You’ve gotta be kidding me,’” Eliza Cooney told USA Today.Released when Kennedy was running for president as an independent, the ad attracted criticism from members of the famous Democratic political family. Kennedy Jr apologized – but kept the ad online.Nine months later, after dropping out of the presidential race and backing Donald Trump, Kennedy is Trump’s nominee for US health secretary.A hugely controversial choice given his promotion of vaccine conspiracy theories and other disputed health claims, Kennedy is also one of a number of Trump cabinet picks to be accused of sexual misconduct.Cooney initially told Vanity Fair about how she went to work for Kennedy in 1998, when she was 23 and he was a 45-year-old environmental attorney. Describing a series of unwanted advances, she said Kennedy ultimately “came up behind her … and began groping her, putting his hands on her hips and sliding them up along her rib cage and breasts”, before being interrupted by someone walking into the room.When Kennedy was asked about Cooney’s allegations, he told the BreakingPoints podcast he was “not a church boy … I have so many skeletons in my closet”, but refused to comment further.In the USA Today interview published on Wednesday, Cooney said: “I know that there are hard-working people who don’t have skeletons in their closet. And I wish we were electing people with fewer skeletons in their closet.”In July, it was widely reported that Kennedy sent a text to Cooney after the Vanity Fair story was published.He wrote: “I read your description of an episode in which I touched you in an unwanted manner. I have no memory of this incident but I apologize sincerely for anything I ever did that made you feel uncomfortable or anything I did or said that offended you or hurt your feelings. I never intended you any harm. If I hurt you, it was inadvertent. I feel badly for doing so.”Cooney told USA Today: “I don’t know if it’s an apology if you say, ‘I don’t remember.’ In the context of all his public appearances, it seemed a little bit – it didn’t match. It was like a throwaway.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionUSA Today said it had contacted a lawyer for a Kennedy non-profit and Trump’s transition team for comment.Perhaps busy dealing with allegations of sexual misconduct against Pete Hegseth, the nominee for defense secretary, and Matt Gaetz, then the nominee for attorney general, the Trump transition did not immediately respond. The next day, Gaetz withdrew from consideration for a cabinet post.Cooney said she was not speaking out about Kennedy “to try to stall his nomination or upend the confirmation”, but was “just doing it for the public record”, having first told people of the alleged assault during the #MeToo movement, beginning in 2017, when many women named their sexual abusers.Saying that for a long time she “brushed this off a little bit”, seeing sexual assault as “just the price of doing business”, Cooney added: “It’s remarkable that it’s as prevalent as it is. And I just wonder – have we made any progress? This is like a rewind.” More

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      A ‘gut punch’: Trump’s alleged sexual assault victims and their advocates on his win

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      When Donald Trump was elected to a second term last week, women who say he sexually assaulted them, and other victims of sexual abuse, voiced disappointment that a man repeatedly accused of sexual misconduct could once again become president, with one of them describing this win as a “gut punch”.More than two dozen women have made such claims against Trump, including E Jean Carroll, who was awarded nearly $90m total in two civil trials after jurors found that Trump sexually abused and defamed her. She said on X: “I tried to tell you.”Several survivors of sexual assault interviewed by the Guardian, as well as advocates for persons who have suffered abuse, said they were not surprised by Trump’s win. They felt it was another example of how sexual abuse is not taken seriously, or pointed to the fact that powerful people who perpetrate abuse seem to be able to avoid repercussions.Stacey Williams, who said she met Trump through Jeffrey Epstein about three decades ago, and told the Guardian that the now president-elect groped her at Trump Tower in 1993 in what seemed to be a “twisted game” with the late sex predator, is among the many processing election results.“I think what we were all hoping was that [the] truth would come through and the stories would affect people’s vote once they had [them] in front of them.”But, she said: “Disinformation won this election at the end of the day, and if we don’t figure out an answer for that, I don’t have a lot of hope for this country.”Emails to Trump’s camp did not receive an immediate response. Trump has previously denied all allegations of misconduct.Williams said that she was in Pennsylvania canvassing for five days. “Some of the women would say: ‘Will you please tell my husband your story?” she recalled.One woman even brought Williams into the house, so she could tell the woman’s brother her account. Williams did and “I saw him just kind of like, sink.” To her, the reaction suggested that he had not heard this account before.“I didn’t get the impression he even knew that Trump was an offender.“I had never wanted to tell my story, I knew it was going to be sort of a big media firestorm and blow up – that’s a lot to take on, let alone all the backlash and the misogyny,” she also said. “I was bracing myself for that, but it was worth it if I could get my message out there.“None of it mattered. All he had to do was say: ‘Eh, she’s lying,’” Williams said, prompting his followers to take the same tack. “Everyone’s like: ‘OK, let’s move on.’ That’s a lot to stomach.”Among the women who have come forward with allegations against Trump is Amy Dorris, a former model, who told the Guardian that he sexually assaulted her at the US Open tennis tournament in 1997. Dorris alleged that Trump forced his tongue down her throat, groped her body and kept her in a grip from which she could not escape, in an incident that made her feel “sick” and “violated”.Two other prominent accusers include Natasha Stoynoff and Jessica Leeds, who testified in court for Carroll’s civil proceedings against Trump. Stoynoff said that Trump assaulted her in a room at Mar-a-Lago about 20 years ago, when People magazine had sent her there to interview him about his first year of marriage to his third wife, Melania Trump.Leeds came forward in 2016 claiming that Trump grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt when they were seated next to each other on an airplane in the 1970s. At a campaign rally, Trump responded by saying: “Believe me, she would not be my first choice. That I can tell you,” and a campaign spokesperson said her allegation was “fiction”.Marissa Hoechstetter, who successfully pushed for New York’s watershed Adult Survivors Act, among other extensive advocacy, following her abuse at the hands of a now convicted obstetrician, said Trump’s win underscored that many people don’t see sexual violence as a problem.“It reaffirms that sexual violence is tolerated and it’s not disqualifying,” Hoechstetter said. “I don’t think it’s whether or not we proved that he did these things – I feel like it was [proved] – we’ve proved that people still don’t care.”“I’m not shocked by it; it’s a good reminder for us all that sexual violence is not an issue that people are willing to make big decisions on. There are other factors that are more important to them.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHoechstetter believes that Trump’s victory could have a “chilling effect down the line”. His win doesn’t take away survivors’ advocacy efforts, but “it negates all of the work that went into trying to hold him accountable in a court of law,” potentially deterring accusers from coming forward if they see that nothing will happen – especially given the immense personal toll that comes with speaking out.Erica Vladimer, co-founder of the Sexual Harassment Working Group, said she wasn’t surprised that Trump won despite his reported behavior towards women. (The Sexual Harassment Working Group is comprised of former New York city and state legislative staffers who have experienced harassment, abuse, and retaliation by officials, and seeks to change laws and policies to protect workers.)“I have never been under this illusion that the fact that Trump is a serial sexual harasser and a sexual abuser was top of mind for most voters – that it was a priority when it came to who they were going to vote for as president,” Vladimer said. “And yet, that does not make this gut punch any easier to stomach.”“Until our institutions, the people who hold that power, are willing to say this is not OK, I think we’re going to see men like Trump continue to amass power and enable this permission structure that has really been there for a long time,” Vladimer said.Trump’s second win prompted questions about why a president’s character does not appear to matter to voters – as well as about the character of those he surrounds himself with. The Florida Republican congressman Matt Gaetz, who has been investigated for alleged sexual misconduct and trafficking, is Trump’s attorney general pick. Gaetz denies any wrongdoing.Weeks before the 2016 election, a hot mic recording from the Access Hollywood television show emerged. In this recording, Trump boasted that he could sexually assault women due to his fame, saying: “Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything … Grab ’em by the pussy. You can do anything.”Following Trump’s win, the phrase “your body, my choice” – which had circulated in far-right circles for several years – gained momentum on social media. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a thinktank that studies extremism, identified “a 4,600% increase in mentions of the terms ‘your body, my choice’ and ‘get back in the kitchen’ on X”.Gloria Allred, who in her decades as an attorney has advocated for survivors, including five Trump accusers, said: “a theme of the former president’s recent campaign appeared to be male chauvinism” and referred to the American Psychological Association guidance that recognizes “traditional masculinity is psychologically harmful” to men and boys.But, “I believe that women and girls will also suffer from this version of toxic masculinity, and they are endangered by it. Evidence of this is now seen online where some young men seem comfortable saying ‘your body, my choice’, which could be the mantra of rapists, sexual harassers and child molesters,” Allred said in a statement.“I wonder how these young men would feel if other men decided that they had a right to rape, beat or abuse the bodies of the young men’s mothers, sisters, aunts or grandmothers,” Allred’s statement continued. “My guess is that when these young men get older and have daughters they will regret their words.”Mariann Wang, an attorney whose practice focuses on survivors who has also represented Trump accusers, said his win was “devastating”.“It is an expression, yet again, that millions of people do not prioritize the safety of their mothers, their sisters, their daughters or their friends,” she said in a statement.“That said, I’ve also seen the enormous courage and power of so many women willing to keep fighting for their rights and for equality all these years,” Wang said. “And as devastating as this is, I know all those women and men who support them will keep fighting.” More

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      Sexual misconduct allegations against Donald Trump – a timeline

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      A former model has accused Donald Trump of groping and sexually touching her in 1993, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between him and Jeffrey Epstein, who she claims introduced them.Stacey Williams, who was a model in the 1990s, said she first met Trump in 1992 after being introduced by Epstein. Williams said that while on a walk with Epstein in early 1993, he suggested they stop by Trump Tower. Soon after they arrived, she alleges, Trump pulled her toward him and started groping her, putting his hands “all over my breasts”, waist and her buttocks. Williams said she froze and that she believed she saw the men smiling at each other.A Trump spokesperson has denied the allegations, calling them politically motivated and “unequivocally false”.The allegation of groping and unwanted sexual touching follows a well-documented pattern of behavior by Trump. This is a list of many of the allegations made against the former president. Trump has denied all the claims:2013Cassandra SearlesAge: 24, Location: Miss USA 2013 pageant
      “He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room.”
      The former Miss Washington 2013 alleged in a comment on Facebook that Trump repeatedly grabbed her buttocks and invited her to his hotel room.Source: Facebook, via Yahoo News2007Summer ZervosAge: Early 30s, Location: Trump Tower and a hotel in Los Angeles
      “He then grabbed my shoulder and began kissing me again very aggressively and placed his hand on my breast.”
      The former contestant on The Apprentice has accused Trump of groping and kissing her on two occasions. She settled a defamation suit against Trump without compensation in 2021.Source: Gloria Allred press event2006Ninni LaaksonenAge: 20, Location: Outside the Ed Sullivan Theater before an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman
      “Trump stood right next to me and suddenly he squeezed my butt.”
      The former Miss Finland alleges Trump grabbed her buttocks during a photoshoot before an appearance on The Late Show with David Letterman.Laaksonen said: “Somebody told me there that Trump liked me because I looked like Melania when she was younger. It left me disgusted.”Source: Finnish newspaper Ilta-Sanomat2006Jessica DrakeAge: 32, Location: A golf tournament in Lake Tahoe
      “When we entered the room he grabbed each of us tightly in a hug and kissed each of us on the lips without asking for permission.”
      Drake alleges Trump forcibly kissed her and two female friends on the lips and when rebuffed, pursued her, asking: “How much?”Source: Gloria Allred press event2006Samantha HolveyAge: 20, Location: Miss USA 2006 pageant
      “He would step in front of each girl and look you over from head to toe like we were just meat, we were just sexual objects, that we were not people.”
      The former Miss North Carolina alleges Trump would barge into the pageant dressing room and inspected women like “meat”.Source: CNN2005Rachel CrooksAge: 22, Location: Outside the elevator in Trump Tower
      “[Trump] kissed me directly on the mouth.”
      Crooks, then a receptionist at real estate firm Bayrock Group, whose offices are in Trump Tower, said she introduced herself to Trump outside the building’s elevator one morning. Trump began kissing her cheeks, and then “kissed me directly on the mouth”, she said.“It was so inappropriate … I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that,” said Crooks.Source: New York Times2005Natasha StoynoffAge: 40, Location: A closed-door room in Mar-a-Lago
      “I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat.”
      Stoynoff alleges Trump forcibly kissed her. As a People Magazine reporter, Stoynoff said she was sent to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump for a story about his first wedding anniversary with Melania, where he forced himself on to her.“We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds he was pushing me against the wall and forcing his tongue down my throat,” wrote Stoynoff.Source: People2005Jennifer MurphyAge: 26, Location: Outside an elevator after an interview
      “I was thinking ‘Oh, he’s going to hug me’, but when he pulled my face in and gave me a smooch. I was like ‘Oh – kay.’”
      The former contestant on The Apprentice alleges Trump forcibly kissed her after a job interview.Source: Grazia magazine2003Melinda McGillivrayAge: 23, Location: At Mar-a-Lago during a concert by Ray Charles
      “All of a sudden I felt a grab, a little nudge. I think it’s Ken’s camera bag, that was my first instinct. I turn around and there’s Donald. He sort of looked away quickly. I quickly turned back, facing Ray Charles, and I’m stunned.”
      McGillivray alleges Trump grabbed her buttock in a pavilion behind the main house in the middle of a group of people. Ken Davidoff, who was Mar-a-Lago’s official photographer, said he remembered McGillivray telling him on the night: “Donald just grabbed my ass!”Source: Palm Beach Post2001Tasha DixonAge: 19, Location: Backstage at the 2001 Miss USA pageant
      “Our first introduction to him was when we were at the dress rehearsal and half-naked changing into our bikinis.”
      The former Miss Arizona alleges Trump entered dressing rooms while her fellow contestants were “half-naked”.Source: CBS NewsEarly 2000sKaren JohnsonAge: Unknown, Location: Mar-a-Lago
      “I was grabbed and pulled behind a tapestry, and it was him. And I’m a tall girl and I had six-inch heels on, and I still remember looking up at him. And he’s strong, and he just kissed me. I was so scared because of who he was.”
      The former dancer has claimed she was grabbed by Trump during a New Year’s Eve party at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida in the early 2000s, when he allegedly groped and forcibly kissed her. Johnson, in an interview for a 2019 book, alleged the assault happened just out of sight from other guests, including her husband, and that, just like his Access Hollywood tape boast that his fame allowed him to get away with grabbing women “by the pussy” without consent, he did the same to her.Source: Esquire2000Bridget SullivanAge: 19, Location: Backstage at the 2000 Miss USA pageant
      “The time that he walked through the dressing rooms was really shocking. We were all naked.”
      The former Miss New Hampshire alleges Trump walked in to the dressing room unannounced while contestants were naked.Source: BuzzFeed1998Karena VirginiaAge: 27, Location: Waiting for a car after the US Open in New York
      “Then his hand touched the right side of my breast. I was in shock.”
      Virginia alleges Trump grabbed her arm and touched her breast.Source: Gloria Allred press event1997Amy DorrisAge: 24, Location: US Open
      “He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything. I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it.”
      The former model accused Trump of sexually assaulting her at the US Open tennis tournament, accosting her outside the bathroom in his VIP box at the event in New York on 5 September 1997. She spoke to the Guardian in 2020 from her home in Florida and provided evidence to support her account, including corroborators, her ticket to the US Open and photos of her sitting next to Trump at the Open. He was 51 at the time and married to his second wife, Marla Maples.Source: The Guardian1997Cathy HellerAge: 44, Location: A Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago
      “He took my hand, and grabbed me, and went for the lips.”
      Heller alleges Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips in public at a Mother’s Day brunch at Mar-a-Lago when, she said, she met Trump and he immediately kissed her on the lips, fighting her when she pulled away.“He was pissed. He couldn’t believe a woman would pass up the opportunity,” she said.Source: The Guardian1997Temple TaggartAge: 21 Location: A 1997 Miss USA pageant event and in Trump Tower
      “He kissed me directly on the lips. I thought, ‘Oh my God, gross.’ He was married to Marla Maples at the time.”
      The former Miss Utah alleged Trump forcibly kissed her on the mouth on two occasions, including the first time she met him.Trump also kissed her on the mouth during a meeting at Trump Tower, she claimed, where he recommended the she lie about her age to advance her career.Source: The New York Times1997Mariah BilladoAge: 18, Location: Backstage at the 1997 Miss Teen USA pageant
      “I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my God, there’s a man in here.’”
      The former Miss Vermont Teen USA and other unnamed accusers allege Trump walked into the dressing room unannounced while teen beauty queens aged 15 to 19 were naked.Source: Washington Post1996 Lisa Boyne Age: 25, Location: A New York restaurant
      “[Trump] stuck his head right underneath their skirts.”
      Boyne alleges Trump insisted the female models walk across the table and that he looked up their skirts, commenting on whether they were wearing underwear and their genitalia.Source: The Huffington PostEither 1995 or 1996E Jean CarrollAge: 52, Location: Bergdorf Goodman, New York City
      “He leaned down and pulled down my tights.” She said: “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”
      A New York jury found Trump sexually abused the advice columnist in a New York department store changing room 27 years ago. The verdict in May 2023 for the first time legally branded a former US president as a sexual predator. But as it is the result of a civil not criminal case, the only legal sanction Trump faces is financial.Carroll testified in court, telling jurors: “He leaned down and pulled down my tights.” She said “I was pushing him back. It was quite clear I didn’t want anything else to happen.”Source: The Guardian1993Stacey WilliamsAge: in her twenties, Location: Trump Tower
      “He pulled me into him and started groping me, he put his hands all over my breasts, my waist, my butt and I froze … deeply confused … his hands were moving all over me.”
      The former model spoke to the Guardian about how she met Trump through the late sexual abuser Jeffrey Epstein, whom she was dating at the time, and has accused the former president of groping and sexually touching her in an incident in Trump Tower, his office and residence complex on New York’s Fifth Avenue, in what she believed was a “twisted game” between the two men.Source: The Guardian1993Jill HarthAge: early 30s, Location: One of the children’s bedrooms at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate
      “He pushed me up against the wall, and had his hands all over me and tried to get up my dress again.”
      A former business partner, Harth alleges Trump forcibly kissed her on the lips and groped her breasts and grabbed her genitals, in what she referred to in a 1997 lawsuit as “attempted rape”. On a previous occasion, she alleges, he groped her under the table during dinner with colleagues at the Plaza Hotel.Harth later dropped the lawsuit after settling with Trump in a separate breach of contract case, according to the AP.Source: The GuardianEarly 1990s Kristin AndersonAge: Early 20s, Location: China Club, a Manhattan nightclub
      “He did touch my vagina through my underwear.”
      Anderson alleges Trump put his hand up her skirt and touched her genitals through her underwear.Source: The Washington Post1989Ivana TrumpAge: 40, Location: The master bedroom of the Trump Tower triplex
      “I referred to this as a ‘rape’, but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”
      In a divorce deposition, Trump’s first wife used “rape” to describe an incident that transpired between them. After a settlement was reached, and the rape allegation became public in a 1993 book, Ivana softened the claim. As part of her nondisclosure agreement, she was not allowed to discuss her marriage to Trump without his permission.Source: Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald J Trump1980sJessica LeedsAge: 38, Location: A first-class cabin of a plane
      ‘He was like an octopus … His hands were everywhere’
      Leeds alleges Trump groped grabbed her breasts and tried to put his hand up her skirt.Source: The New York Times More

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      A woman says Trump groped her in front of Jeffrey Epstein. Will anyone listen? | Moira Donegan

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      Does sexual assault matter politically? Eight years ago, in October of 2016, many people thought that it did. When the Access Hollywood tape was released on 7 October of that year, and audio blared from every cable news channel in which Donald Trump, attempting to impress the celebrity interviewer Billy Bush, bragged that his stardom meant he could grab women “by the pussy”, the incident was, for a moment at least, widely believed to have ended his presidential bid. The clip sparked outrage, condemnation and calls for Trump to drop out of the race – including from sitting Republican governors, senators and representatives. The Republican National Committee suspended support for Trump’s campaign in response to the tape. His political career was widely assumed to be over.It wasn’t. The allegations of sexual misconduct by more than two dozen other women that were made in the days, weeks and years thereafter – including from reporters, models, yoga instructors, Mar-a-Lago regulars, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA contestants, strangers he sat next to on planes, women who worked for him, entrepreneurs, adult film stars, advice columnists and one woman who had the misfortune of attending a Mother’s Day brunch event at a Trump-owned property – did not, either. For all the seriousness and solemnity with which Republican politicians condemned Trump in the days following the release of the Access Hollywood tape – for all their furrowed brows and reverent declarations that alleged sexual assault is no laughing matter – ultimately, the Republican party establishment lined up behind Trump. So did their voters.It might be a sign of how far we have fallen that the political world, this week, barely seemed to notice when the veteran model Stacey Williams came forward to say she was groped by Trump in 1993, while the pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein – a close friend of Trump’s and Williams’s boyfriend at the time – looked on. Williams’s account mirrors those provided by many of Trump’s other accusers: like them, she seems to have been lewdly groped by Trump, who grabbed her breasts and buttocks in an abrupt and perfunctory fashion. Indeed, what happened to Williams sounds a bit like how Trump himself has described his conduct: “I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything.”This time, there were no calls for Donald Trump to drop out of the race; no solemn condemnations; no handwringing over whether Trump’s boorishness, his braying entitlement, or his violent and vulgar treatment of women and girls might disqualify him from the power and supposed honor of the position that he’s seeking. No one bothered to point out that someone who assaults women – let alone someone who does so as routinely and prolifically as Trump is said to have done – does not deserve to be the president. Even the Democrats mostly shrugged.Part of this, to be sure, is because hardly anyone is surprised by Trump anymore. There are few minds most Americans will ever know as intimately as we have all been forced to know Trump’s. We know his narcissism, its surprising pettiness; we know his monumental vanity, his cynicism, his relentless dishonesty; we know the uncanny self-awareness of his humor – though it never, ever comes at his own expense – and we know the compass-like constancy of his devotion to his own short-term self-interest.We even know that he was friends with Epstein, whose predations on underage girl children Trump joked about in an interview with New York Magazine in the 90s. We know, already, how he behaves towards women; we have been shown. We’ve learned not only from the more than two dozen women who have told us, not only from the sworn testimony of Stormy Daniels, not even only from the jury’s verdict in the civil suit for rape and assault that was brought against him, successfully, by the writer E Jean Carroll. We know from watching him, as we have been compelled to do, now, for the better part of a decade.What might be more revealing, then, is what the non-response to Stacey Williams’s story tells us about ourselves. In the wake of Donald Trump’s election – and in direct response to the indignity American women faced when a man who bragged about and was alleged to have serially committed sexual assault was elevated to a position of superlative authority – the #MeToo movement faced a mass public reckoning over sexual violence, and its prevalence and impunity in all sectors of American life.Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey, two investigative reporters at the New York Times, published their first story about the predations of the Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein on 5 October 2017 – just two days shy of the one-year anniversary of the Access Hollywood tape. For a heady moment, powerful men who did the kinds of things Trump has been accused of – and has bragged about doing – were losing their positions of dignity and power as a result. Even Republican politicians were not immune: Roy Moore, a far-right Republican Senate candidate, lost his election in no less a deep-red state than Alabama after nine women accused him of sexual misconduct against them while he was in his 30s and they were in their teens.Many solemn declarations were made then, too: about the long-overdue reckoning, the pain of survivors, the need to reconsider sexual scripts, the eroticization of inequality, and the ways inequality had been weaponized to demean women and keep them from public life. All of this proceeded while Trump sat in the Oval Office. None of it could touch him: everyone presumed he was immune from any accountability for the way he treated women, and he was.Maybe other men are now, too. The #MeToo movement was a large and internally fractious movement, but if it can be said to have had a singular goal, it might have been this: to resolve our culture’s cognitive dissonance about sexual violence. For decades, the world operated on a kind of grim hypocrisy: everyone – from the law to the HR department, from Hollywood to your weekend hobby group – professed to abhor sexual violence, to take it maximally seriously. But, in practice, sexual violence was not taken very seriously at all: the incidents were minimized, the prevalence was shrugged off, the victims were blamed, demonized and smeared as vindictive or hysterical for ever bringing it up.Everyone said they hated sexual violence and that they thought it mattered; most people acted as if they thought it didn’t. The goal of #MeToo could be said to bring actions into line with words: to make people behave as if they thought sexual violence was as wrong as they said it was. Instead, it may have resolved the cognitive dissonance in the other direction: now people admit that they care very little about sexual violence. Their actions, I suppose, finally match their words.Before the Guardian broke Williams’s story, there was a flutter of rumors about an impending accusation on social media. These were flamed by Mark Halperin, a onetime political journalist, who took to his YouTube show on Wednesday to say that he had been pitched a story about Trump that “could end” the former president’s campaign. Halperin’s supposed story never materialized, and maybe that’s to be expected: he would have been an odd choice for such a leak. After all, his own career was derailed during the #MeToo movement, when he was accused by five women of sexual misconduct and harassment – including groping of exactly the sort that Williams says Donald Trump subjected her to. He still felt comfortable shilling a possible sexual violence story anyway, despite his own history. Probably, he assumed no one would bring it up.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr brushes off sexual assault allegation: ‘I am who I am’

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      Robert F Kennedy Jr has responded to an allegation that he sexually assaulted an employee by stating: “I am not a church boy,” as scrutiny grows over his long-shot run for the presidency.The independent candidate, who is seen as a threat by both the Biden and Trump campaigns, made the statement after his former babysitter told Vanity Fair that Kennedy assaulted her at his home in 1998.Eliza Cooney, who worked for Kennedy and his then wife as a live-in nanny at the family’s home in Mount Kisco, New York, said Kennedy touched her leg at a business meeting and later appeared shirtless in her bedroom before asking her to rub lotion on his back.A few months later, Kennedy blocked Cooney in the kitchen “and began groping her”, Vanity Fair reported. Cooney told the magazine that Kennedy touched her inappropriately.“My back was to the door of the pantry, and he came up behind me,” Cooney said.“I was frozen. Shocked.”The assault was interrupted, Cooney said, when a male worker entered the kitchen.Asked about the sexual assault allegation on the Breaking Points podcast, Kennedy said: “The [Vanity Fair] article is a lot of garbage.”He added: “Listen, I have said this from the beginning. I am not a church boy. I am not running like that.“I said in my … I had a very, very rambunctious youth. I said in my announcement speech that I have so many skeletons in my closet that if, if they could all vote, I could run for king of the world.“So, you know, Vanity Fair is recycling 30-year-old stories. And, I’m not, you know, going to comment on the details of any of them. But it’s, you know, I am who I am.”Asked if he was denying that he assaulted Cooney, Kennedy said: “I’m not going to comment on it.”The Kennedy campaign did not respond to a Guardian request for comment.Cooney said she kept the alleged assault secret until the #MeToo movement prompted many women to come forward with stories of abuse in 2017. She told her mother, and after Kennedy announced his campaign for the presidency in 2023 Cooney told two friends and a lawyer, Elizabeth Geddes. Geddes did not respond to a request for comment.Kennedy, 70, initially ran against Joe Biden for the Democratic nomination before launching a campaign as an independent in October last year.As the son of Robert F Kennedy, the US senator for New York who was assassinated in 1968, and the nephew of John F Kennedy, who was assassinated while serving as president in 1963, Kennedy’s campaign drew widespread attention but has been littered with controversies.In July 2023 a video surfaced of Kennedy making false claims that Covid-19 was “ethnically targeted” to attack Black people and white people while sparing Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people, while Kennedy has also claimed that wifi causes “leaky brain”.He has also linked antidepressants to school shootings, and in 2023 Kennedy claimed that chemicals in water are making kids transgender.Kennedy, a former environmental lawyer, is polling at 9.1% of the national vote, according to FiveThirtyEight’s average, and is highly unlikely to win the presidency.But both the Biden and Trump campaigns fear he could pull votes away from them in key states. Kennedy will be on the ballot in Michigan, a crucial swing state which the president won by 150,000 votes in 2020, and is working to gain ballot access in Wisconsin, which Biden won by 20,000 votes. More

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      New York City mayor Eric Adams accused of sexual assault in 1993

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      The mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has been accused of sexual assault in a court filing submitted on late Wednesday.The summons against Adams alleges that the plaintiff “was sexually assaulted by Defendant Eric Adams in New York, New York in 1993 while they both worked for the City of New York”.It was filed under the Adult Survivors Act, a New York state law which provided a one-year “look-back” window for adult sexual misconduct accusers to file civil lawsuits that previously would have been barred due to the statute of limitations.The window expires on 24 November.The summons adds that the concerns “sexual assault, battery and employment discrimination on the basis of Plaintiff’s gender and sex, retaliation, hostile work environment and intentional infliction of emotional distress”.Asked about the allegation, a city hall spokesperson said: “The mayor does not know who this person is. If they ever met, he doesn’t recall it. But he would never do anything to physically harm another person and vigorously denies any such claim.”The three-page summons does not detail the alleged sexual assault. The Guardian is withholding the name of Adams’ accuser as the allegation involves sexual assault.The summons also names the New York City police department’s transit bureau, and the New York City police department Guardians Association social organization, as defendants.The accuser’s attorney, Megan Goddard, said: “Goddard Law is thankful for the Adult Survivors Act, which has given so many women the opportunity to seek justice. We are immensely proud of our clients and all the women who are seeking justice under the ASA. We are also thankful that the legislature may be considering reopening the window because so many victims of sexual assault are only finding out about the ASA now.”The Messenger first reported the summons.The summons comes as Adams, who was elected in 2021, faces scrutiny from the FBI, which is reportedly investigating his campaign. Its inquiry reportedly focuses on whether Adams’ campaign unlawfully accepted money from the Turkish government in exchange for favors, such as pressuring the New York City fire department to speed up the opening of a Turkish consulate.On 2 November, federal agents raided the home of Adams’ top fundraiser, Brianna Suggs, seizing electronic devices and documents. The FBI also reportedly searched a Turkish Airlines executive’s home, as well as Brooklyn construction company owned by Turkish immigrants; the executive and company had both fundraised for Adams.This is a developing story and will be updated … More

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      Revealed: New Orleans archdiocese concealed serial child molester for years

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      The last four Roman Catholic archbishops of New Orleans went to shocking lengths to conceal a confessed serial child molester who is still living but has never been prosecuted, a Guardian investigation has found.Upon review of hundreds of pages of previously secret church files, the Guardian has uncovered arguably the most complete account yet about the extremes to which the second-oldest Catholic archdiocese in the US went to coddle the admitted child molester Lawrence Hecker.Back in 1999, Hecker confessed to his superiors at the archdiocese of New Orleans that he had either sexually molested or otherwise shared a bed with multiple teenagers whom he met through his work as a Roman Catholic priest.The admitted conduct occurred during a 15-year period, beginning in the mid-1960s, which Hecker says “was a time of great change in the world and in the church, and I succumbed to its zeitgeist”. In a two-page statement given to local church authorities serving a region with about a half-million Catholics, Hecker says, “It was a time when I neglected spiritual direction, confession and most daily prayer.”Hecker confessed to the misconduct or abuse of seven teenagers between about 1966 and 1979, including “overtly sexual acts” or “affectionate … sex acts” with at least two individuals. In other cases, Hecker reported either fondling, mutual masturbation, nudity or bed sharing, including once on another overnight trip to a Texas theme park.Hecker’s confession said the late New Orleans archbishop Philip Hannan spoke with him about an accusation of sexual abuse in 1988. In 1996, Hannan’s successor as archbishop, the late Francis Schulte, received another allegation which the organization deemed unsubstantiated.Hecker’s 1999 admission arrived after one of his victims came forward with another complaint to the archdiocese. The organization responded in part by sending Hecker to an out-of-state psychiatric treatment facility which diagnosed him as a pedophile who rationalized, justified and took “little responsibility for his behavior”.The facility also recommended that the archdiocese prohibit Hecker from working with children, adolescents or other “particularly vulnerable” people.But Hecker did not stop working. In fact, after a sabbatical of a few months, the church ultimately allowed him to continue until his retirement in 2002 – which happened after a Catholic clerical molestation and cover-up scandal that ensnared the archdiocese of Boston prompted worldwide church reforms.When attorneys for the archdiocese – pressured by the Boston scandal – reported Hecker alongside a handful of other clerics to New Orleans police, they only informed investigators about a single one of the cases cited in his confession. And they didn’t mention the confession at all.Law enforcement authorities have never charged Hecker with a crime, even though his number of accusers has only swelled with the passage of time. Despite transparency policies that the Catholic church generally adopted after the 2002 scandal in Boston, New Orleans’s archdiocese waited until it released a 2018 list of dozens of priests and deacons whom it considered to be strongly suspected of sexually abusing minors before it publicly acknowledged that Hecker was a predator.Notably, the archdiocese only stopped paying Hecker retirement benefits in 2020. Citing a moral obligation it had to all clerics, the archdiocese waited until after it filed for federal bankruptcy protection that year (in part because of litigation in the wake of the clergy abuse list) to stop paying these benefits to Hecker and other abusive clerics. The judge overseeing the bankruptcy ordered it.The archdiocese did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but an attorney for the organization last week said in court that the city’s archbishop since 2009 – Gregory Aymond – “is taking every step possible to protect children”.The Orleans parish district attorney, Jason Williams, confirmed that on 14 June the archdiocese turned over “voluminous documents” pertaining to Hecker. He would not say whether his office compelled the church to hand over the files through a subpoena.That production came after Williams’s office spoke with a man who alleged being choked unconscious and raped as a child by Hecker after meeting the priest through a Catholic institution, according to an attorney representing the accuser.Child rape cases in Louisiana have no filing deadlines, and they could carry life imprisonment. Yet it is not clear when or if Hecker may ultimately be charged.Hecker’s attorney, Eugene Redmann, has declined to speak with the Guardian about claims against his client. But he alluded to how Hecker was 91, said the claims were generally from “decades ago” and added that people of advanced age “lose a lot of memory”.“We will address any charges if they are brought,” Redmann said.Reached by phone last week and asked for comment on his 1999 statement to the archdiocese, Hecker paused for several moments before saying: “I am running behind on time and have to get to an appointment.”He then hung up.Read the Guardian’s full investigation here.
      In the US, call or text the Childhelp abuse hotline at 800-422-4453. In the UK, the NSPCC offers support to children on 0800 1111, and adults concerned about a child on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adult survivors on 0808 801 0331. In Australia, children, young adults, parents and teachers can contact the Kids Helpline on 1800 55 1800, or Bravehearts on 1800 272 831, and adult survivors can contact Blue Knot Foundation on 1300 657 380. Other sources of help can be found at Child Helplines International More