Another woman has come forward to charge former President George H.W. Bush with sexual misconduct, bringing the number of accusers to at least half a dozen.
This sixth woman, who wants to remain anonymous, according to CNN, is the first to claim that the former president acted inappropriately when he was still in office.
The 55-year-old Michigan woman says the incident occurred in 1992 during Bush’s failed re-election campaign.
“We got closer together for a family photo, and it was like ‘Holy crap!'” the woman told CNN on Thursday. “It was like a gentle squeeze.”
The victim’s ex-husband and a friend back up the fact that the woman told them of the story back in the 1990s.
In a statement released at the end of October after the first few accusations were made, a spokesman for Bush said he occasionally “patted women’s rears” and told jokes.
“At age 93, President Bush has been confined to a wheelchair for roughly five years, so his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures,” the Bush family statement read. “To try to put people at ease, the president routinely tells the same joke — and on occasion, he has patted women’s rears in what he intended to be a good-natured manner. Some have seen it as innocent; others clearly view it as inappropriate.”
Some accusers later said that as he groped them, Bush joked that his favorite magician was “David Cop-a-feel.”
Even as the excuse seemed to be that the former president was confined to a wheelchair and in ill health during the incidents, the last two accusers say that he perpetrated the act when he was well and still quite vital.
On Monday, November 13, a fifth woman came forward to charge that the former president groped her rear in 2003 at an event in Woodlands, Texas. The woman, Roslyn Corrigan, said she was only 16-years-old at the time.
Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter @warnerthuston.
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