Another woman has come forward with groping allegations against former President George H.W. Bush. Roslyn Corrigan told TIME magazine that at a photo op in 2003, the former commander in chief “dropped his hands from my waist down to my buttocks and gave it a nice, ripe squeeze, which would account for the fact that in the photograph my mouth is hanging wide open.” The photo can be seen here. “I was like, ‘Oh my goodness, what just happened?’” Corrigan recalled. She was 16 at the time and Bush was 79, some nine years before he became confined to a wheelchair.
Corrigan is the sixth woman in recent weeks to make groping allegations against the former president. Other women have told similar stories, though the common thread in all of those is that Bush was in a wheelchair when the alleged groping occurred. In a statement given to TIME, a spokesperson for Bush said, “George Bush simply does not have it in his heart to knowingly cause anyone harm or distress, and he again apologizes to anyone he may have offended during a photo op.” Previous statements from the Bush camp have admitted that “On occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner.”
Corrigan said the groping occurred at a CIA event where Bush had delivered remarks — her father was a CIA employee at the time. She said she told her mother, Sari Young, about the groping moments after it occurred, but they were unsure of what to do given that it was the president who had made such an audacious move.
Earlier this month, Laura Bush, the former first lady and the daughter-in-law of the former president, addressed the mounting allegations in an interview with CNN. “I’m just sad that we’ve come to this,” she said. “That was something that was very, very innocent that he’s been accused of. But I know he would feel terrible.”
One person who felt terrible about it all was Corrigan, though she grasped at reasons for why others didn’t seem to share in her dismay. “I don’t know, maybe it never really hit people that I was a child at the time and that goes beyond a guy being inappropriate in the workplace to a peer or somebody in his age range,” she said. “I was a child.” For more, watch the video below.
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