Al Gore Accused of Sexual Assault
By Tiffany McGee
<ABBR class=published title=2010-06-24T10:45:00Z>06/24/2010 at 10:45 AM EDT</ABBR>
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Al Gore
Karl Larsen/FilmMagic
An Oregon masseuse filed a complaint last year accusing Al Gore of sexual abuse following a nearly three-hour massage session at an upscale Portland hotel in 2006, reports the Portland Oregonian.
The alleged incident took place at the Hotel Lucia Oct. 24, after the masseuse, 54, was called by the hotel to administer a late night massage to a "VIP" client, who was later identified as Gore, 62, the former U.S. Vice President, senator from Tennessee and Nobel Prize-winning advocate for the environment. <!-- jump -->
<!-- START RELATED 0 -->RELATED: Producer Slams Tabloid Report of an Affair with Al Gore<!-- END RELATED 0 -->
The Multnomah County District Attorney?s Office in Portland confirmed Wednesday that the woman reported unwanted sexual contact by Gore to police in 2006, and the prosecutor?s office was briefed by the Portland Police Bureau in late 2006 and January 2007.
"We were told the woman was not willing to be interviewed by the Portland Police Bureau and did not want a criminal investigation to proceed," Multnomah County D.A. Michael Schrunk said. The woman was reportedly considering suing Gore before last month approaching the National Enquirer, asking for $1 million for her story.
The unidentified woman, who has been a masseuse for 12 years, filed the accusations Jan. 8, 2009, alleging Gore, who checked into the hotel as Mr. Stone and was 30 minutes late for his 10:30 p.m. in-room appointment, sexually assaulted her in his hotel room by forcing repeated, unwanted sexual touches.
"He pleaded, groped me, grabbed me, engulfed me in embrace, tongue kissed me, massaged me, grabbed my breasts," the woman says in her detailed complaint to Portland police officers and posted by the Fox 12 Oregon TV station.
At one point, she says Gore pinned her down, resulting in an injury to her left leg and knee, and which required medical care for several months.
Gore, she says, was so persistent that she called him a "sex-crazed poodle" for being "out of control."
The woman, who says she notified two friends following Gore's alleged groping, also saved the black pants she wore after discovering stains following the session. Since the alleged incident, the masseuse says she has been traumatized, has trouble sleeping at night, and that her work has been "more stressful and frightening since the incident." She is also seeing a specialized counselor.
The woman, who did not respond to several attempted follow-up interviews with police, revealed in the complaint that she grappled with her decision to come forward ? even consulting with attorneys ? but ultimately decided to do so to protect other women who may have experienced the same trauma.
She told detectives she only wanted "justice" and that her complaint was not an attempt to receive money.
Gore family spokeswoman Kalee Kreider told the Oregonian that the former Vice President has no comment regarding the allegations. After 40 years of marriage, Gore and his wife, Tipper, announced their separation June 1. The Gores also had no comment for PEOPLE.
Clinton Accuser's Story Aired
<!--plsfield:stop--><!---START OF OPTIONAL PHOTO AND LINKS TABLE ------><TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width=200 align=right hspace="3"><TBODY><TR><TD align=left>
[FONT=arial, helvetica][SIZE=-2]Juanita Broaddrick wipes a tear from her eye during a January interview shown on "Dateline NBC" Thursday. [/SIZE][/FONT][SIZE=-2](AP)
[/SIZE]<HR SIZE=1>[FONT=arial, helvetica]Related Links
[/FONT][SIZE=-1]<LI type=square>NBC to Air Broaddrick Interview (Washington Post, Feb. 24)
<LI type=square>'Jane Doe' Tells of Alleged '78 Assault (Washington Post, Feb. 20)
<LI type=square>Letter About Broaddrick From Jones Evidence
<LI type=square>Affidavit From 'Jane Doe #5'
[/SIZE]<HR SIZE=1></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-----End of photo and links table----><!--plsfield:byline-->[SIZE=-1]By Howard Kurtz[/SIZE]
<!--plsfield:credit-->[SIZE=-1]Washington Post Staff Writer[/SIZE]
<!--plsfield:disp_date-->[SIZE=-1]Thursday, February 25, 1999; Page A15
[/SIZE]<!--plsfield:description-->Juanita Broaddrick told her story to a national television audience last night, saying she did not tell authorities 21 years ago of her contention that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her because "I just don't think anyone would have believed me."
In a gripping account punctuated by sobs, the Arkansas woman told "Dateline NBC" that in her Little Rock hotel room, Clinton suddenly "turned me around and started kissing me, and that was a real shock. I first pushed him away. I just told him 'no.' . . . He tries to kiss me again. He starts biting on my lip. . . . And then he forced me down on the bed. I just was very frightened. I tried to get away from him. I told him 'no.' . . . He wouldn't listen to me."
But Broaddrick could not remember the date, even the month, of the alleged 1978 incident. And NBC's Lisa Myers reported that Broaddrick, a volunteer in Clinton's first gubernatorial campaign, attended a Clinton fund-raiser three weeks later. "I think I was still in denial," Broaddrick said. "I still felt very guilty at that time, that it was my fault. By letting him come to the room, I had given him the wrong idea."
Asked about Broaddrick's allegation at a news conference earlier in the day, President Clinton said: "Well, my counsel has made a statement about the . . . issue, and I have nothing to add to it." Attorney David E. Kendall's statement called the charge "absolutely false."
The nursing home operator, previously known as Jane Doe No. 5, told Myers that she felt "violated" but finally stopped resisting Clinton's sexual advances because "it was a real panicky situation." She said that "he was just a vicious, awful person."
Pressed by Myers as to whether she was raped, Broaddrick said she had been. "It was not consensual," she insisted. As for her feelings now toward the president, Broaddrick said: "My hatred for him is overwhelming."
NBC's decision to broadcast the Jan. 20 interview after a month of heated internal debate dramatically boosts the visibility of Clinton's latest accuser, since "Dateline" normally draws an audience of more than 10 million households. Broaddrick has already given her account of the alleged 1978 incident, when Clinton was Arkansas attorney general, to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, The Washington Post and, in an article published yesterday, the New York Times.
Had NBC aired the interview during the Senate impeachment trial and the furor over Monica S. Lewinsky, it might have had a significant impact on the political climate. Whether the story has any lasting significance now, outside the context of any legal or impeachment proceeding, is unclear. NBC executives say the Myers report needed further checking and corroboration before it could be broadcast.
Broaddrick was dubbed Jane Doe No. 5 in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton early last year, when Jones's attorneys cited her in court papers and she filed an affidavit calling the allegation of sexual assault "untrue." In the interview, Broaddrick, 56, said: "I didn't want to be forced to testify about the most horrific event of my life."
Broaddrick later recanted that affidavit when questioned by FBI agents working for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who found her account inconclusive. Two of the House impeachment "managers" spoke to Broaddrick but did not pursue her allegation.
Broaddrick told NBC she considered coming forward last year, after Kathleen E. Willey accused the president of groping her in the Oval Office. But, she said, "I just wasn't brave enough to do it."
Dabbing at her eye with a tissue, Broaddrick said she agreed to go on camera because "I just couldn't hold it in any longer." She said she did not want her grandchildren to ask: "Why didn't you tell what this man did to you?"
NBC interviewed four friends who say Broaddrick told them about the alleged assault soon afterward, including Norma Kelsey, who said she saw Broaddrick's swollen lip and torn pantyhose that day.
But the man Broaddrick was married to at the time, Gary Hickey, told NBC he did not remember the injury or her attempt to blame it on an accident. Myers said divorce records show Broaddrick's claim of an altercation in which she says Hickey hit her in the mouth. But she said this was a one-time incident.
As she has in her newspaper interviews, Broaddrick recounted how Clinton tried to apologize to her in 1991 and said he was a changed man. "I told him to go to hell, and I walked off," she said.
Broaddrick said she is pursuing no book deal or lawsuit, but that "all of these stories are floating around . . . and I was tired of everybody putting their own spin on it."
Myers asked: "What is the purpose? Do you want to destroy the president?"
"No, I don't want to do anything," Broaddrick said. "I do not have an agenda. I want to put all of these rumors to rest."
NBC said the White House would not answer questions about Clinton's whereabouts on April 25, 1978, the day records show Broaddrick attended a nursing home conference at Little Rock's now-defunct Camelot Hotel. But the network said Arkansas newspaper accounts suggest Clinton was in Little Rock that day ? he had no public schedule during the period of the alleged assault ? and attended a fund-raiser in a nearby town that evening.
Lanny J. Davis, former White House special counsel, assailed the Broaddrick story before the broadcast, saying: "Is journalism about reporting facts or not? Where have we gone when an unsubstantiated allegation becomes a fact if others report it? It is not corroborated because her girlfriend saw her with a swollen lip. That doesn't make the charge of rape a fact."
Saying that "proving a negative" is impossible for the White House, Davis added: "How do we know she didn't lie to all her friends? We know that, voluntarily, without anyone influencing her, she swore out an affidavit that she now says she lied about."
David P. Schippers, chief investigator for the House Judiciary Committee Republicans during the impeachment proceedings, said Tuesday that his staffers interviewed Broaddrick more than once and "have assured me that she is the most credible witness that either one of them have ever talked to." Appearing on MSNBC's "Hockenberry," Schippers said he concluded that no one connected with the White House had suggested that Broaddrick file a false affidavit. "I think it would have been folly for us to have attempted to just poison the water with this story, when it really had no specific bearing on the impeachable offenses," he said.
By Tiffany McGee
<ABBR class=published title=2010-06-24T10:45:00Z>06/24/2010 at 10:45 AM EDT</ABBR>
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Al Gore
Karl Larsen/FilmMagic
An Oregon masseuse filed a complaint last year accusing Al Gore of sexual abuse following a nearly three-hour massage session at an upscale Portland hotel in 2006, reports the Portland Oregonian.
The alleged incident took place at the Hotel Lucia Oct. 24, after the masseuse, 54, was called by the hotel to administer a late night massage to a "VIP" client, who was later identified as Gore, 62, the former U.S. Vice President, senator from Tennessee and Nobel Prize-winning advocate for the environment. <!-- jump -->
<!-- START RELATED 0 -->RELATED: Producer Slams Tabloid Report of an Affair with Al Gore<!-- END RELATED 0 -->
The Multnomah County District Attorney?s Office in Portland confirmed Wednesday that the woman reported unwanted sexual contact by Gore to police in 2006, and the prosecutor?s office was briefed by the Portland Police Bureau in late 2006 and January 2007.
"We were told the woman was not willing to be interviewed by the Portland Police Bureau and did not want a criminal investigation to proceed," Multnomah County D.A. Michael Schrunk said. The woman was reportedly considering suing Gore before last month approaching the National Enquirer, asking for $1 million for her story.
The unidentified woman, who has been a masseuse for 12 years, filed the accusations Jan. 8, 2009, alleging Gore, who checked into the hotel as Mr. Stone and was 30 minutes late for his 10:30 p.m. in-room appointment, sexually assaulted her in his hotel room by forcing repeated, unwanted sexual touches.
"He pleaded, groped me, grabbed me, engulfed me in embrace, tongue kissed me, massaged me, grabbed my breasts," the woman says in her detailed complaint to Portland police officers and posted by the Fox 12 Oregon TV station.
At one point, she says Gore pinned her down, resulting in an injury to her left leg and knee, and which required medical care for several months.
Gore, she says, was so persistent that she called him a "sex-crazed poodle" for being "out of control."
The woman, who says she notified two friends following Gore's alleged groping, also saved the black pants she wore after discovering stains following the session. Since the alleged incident, the masseuse says she has been traumatized, has trouble sleeping at night, and that her work has been "more stressful and frightening since the incident." She is also seeing a specialized counselor.
The woman, who did not respond to several attempted follow-up interviews with police, revealed in the complaint that she grappled with her decision to come forward ? even consulting with attorneys ? but ultimately decided to do so to protect other women who may have experienced the same trauma.
She told detectives she only wanted "justice" and that her complaint was not an attempt to receive money.
Gore family spokeswoman Kalee Kreider told the Oregonian that the former Vice President has no comment regarding the allegations. After 40 years of marriage, Gore and his wife, Tipper, announced their separation June 1. The Gores also had no comment for PEOPLE.
Clinton Accuser's Story Aired
<!--plsfield:stop--><!---START OF OPTIONAL PHOTO AND LINKS TABLE ------><TABLE border=0 cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=2 width=200 align=right hspace="3"><TBODY><TR><TD align=left>
[/SIZE]<HR SIZE=1>[FONT=arial, helvetica]Related Links
[/FONT][SIZE=-1]<LI type=square>NBC to Air Broaddrick Interview (Washington Post, Feb. 24)
<LI type=square>'Jane Doe' Tells of Alleged '78 Assault (Washington Post, Feb. 20)
<LI type=square>Letter About Broaddrick From Jones Evidence
<LI type=square>Affidavit From 'Jane Doe #5'
[/SIZE]<HR SIZE=1></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE><!-----End of photo and links table----><!--plsfield:byline-->[SIZE=-1]By Howard Kurtz[/SIZE]
<!--plsfield:credit-->[SIZE=-1]Washington Post Staff Writer[/SIZE]
<!--plsfield:disp_date-->[SIZE=-1]Thursday, February 25, 1999; Page A15
[/SIZE]<!--plsfield:description-->Juanita Broaddrick told her story to a national television audience last night, saying she did not tell authorities 21 years ago of her contention that Bill Clinton sexually assaulted her because "I just don't think anyone would have believed me."
In a gripping account punctuated by sobs, the Arkansas woman told "Dateline NBC" that in her Little Rock hotel room, Clinton suddenly "turned me around and started kissing me, and that was a real shock. I first pushed him away. I just told him 'no.' . . . He tries to kiss me again. He starts biting on my lip. . . . And then he forced me down on the bed. I just was very frightened. I tried to get away from him. I told him 'no.' . . . He wouldn't listen to me."
But Broaddrick could not remember the date, even the month, of the alleged 1978 incident. And NBC's Lisa Myers reported that Broaddrick, a volunteer in Clinton's first gubernatorial campaign, attended a Clinton fund-raiser three weeks later. "I think I was still in denial," Broaddrick said. "I still felt very guilty at that time, that it was my fault. By letting him come to the room, I had given him the wrong idea."
Asked about Broaddrick's allegation at a news conference earlier in the day, President Clinton said: "Well, my counsel has made a statement about the . . . issue, and I have nothing to add to it." Attorney David E. Kendall's statement called the charge "absolutely false."
The nursing home operator, previously known as Jane Doe No. 5, told Myers that she felt "violated" but finally stopped resisting Clinton's sexual advances because "it was a real panicky situation." She said that "he was just a vicious, awful person."
Pressed by Myers as to whether she was raped, Broaddrick said she had been. "It was not consensual," she insisted. As for her feelings now toward the president, Broaddrick said: "My hatred for him is overwhelming."
NBC's decision to broadcast the Jan. 20 interview after a month of heated internal debate dramatically boosts the visibility of Clinton's latest accuser, since "Dateline" normally draws an audience of more than 10 million households. Broaddrick has already given her account of the alleged 1978 incident, when Clinton was Arkansas attorney general, to the Wall Street Journal editorial page, The Washington Post and, in an article published yesterday, the New York Times.
Had NBC aired the interview during the Senate impeachment trial and the furor over Monica S. Lewinsky, it might have had a significant impact on the political climate. Whether the story has any lasting significance now, outside the context of any legal or impeachment proceeding, is unclear. NBC executives say the Myers report needed further checking and corroboration before it could be broadcast.
Broaddrick was dubbed Jane Doe No. 5 in the Paula Jones sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton early last year, when Jones's attorneys cited her in court papers and she filed an affidavit calling the allegation of sexual assault "untrue." In the interview, Broaddrick, 56, said: "I didn't want to be forced to testify about the most horrific event of my life."
Broaddrick later recanted that affidavit when questioned by FBI agents working for independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr, who found her account inconclusive. Two of the House impeachment "managers" spoke to Broaddrick but did not pursue her allegation.
Broaddrick told NBC she considered coming forward last year, after Kathleen E. Willey accused the president of groping her in the Oval Office. But, she said, "I just wasn't brave enough to do it."
Dabbing at her eye with a tissue, Broaddrick said she agreed to go on camera because "I just couldn't hold it in any longer." She said she did not want her grandchildren to ask: "Why didn't you tell what this man did to you?"
NBC interviewed four friends who say Broaddrick told them about the alleged assault soon afterward, including Norma Kelsey, who said she saw Broaddrick's swollen lip and torn pantyhose that day.
But the man Broaddrick was married to at the time, Gary Hickey, told NBC he did not remember the injury or her attempt to blame it on an accident. Myers said divorce records show Broaddrick's claim of an altercation in which she says Hickey hit her in the mouth. But she said this was a one-time incident.
As she has in her newspaper interviews, Broaddrick recounted how Clinton tried to apologize to her in 1991 and said he was a changed man. "I told him to go to hell, and I walked off," she said.
Broaddrick said she is pursuing no book deal or lawsuit, but that "all of these stories are floating around . . . and I was tired of everybody putting their own spin on it."
Myers asked: "What is the purpose? Do you want to destroy the president?"
"No, I don't want to do anything," Broaddrick said. "I do not have an agenda. I want to put all of these rumors to rest."
NBC said the White House would not answer questions about Clinton's whereabouts on April 25, 1978, the day records show Broaddrick attended a nursing home conference at Little Rock's now-defunct Camelot Hotel. But the network said Arkansas newspaper accounts suggest Clinton was in Little Rock that day ? he had no public schedule during the period of the alleged assault ? and attended a fund-raiser in a nearby town that evening.
Lanny J. Davis, former White House special counsel, assailed the Broaddrick story before the broadcast, saying: "Is journalism about reporting facts or not? Where have we gone when an unsubstantiated allegation becomes a fact if others report it? It is not corroborated because her girlfriend saw her with a swollen lip. That doesn't make the charge of rape a fact."
Saying that "proving a negative" is impossible for the White House, Davis added: "How do we know she didn't lie to all her friends? We know that, voluntarily, without anyone influencing her, she swore out an affidavit that she now says she lied about."
David P. Schippers, chief investigator for the House Judiciary Committee Republicans during the impeachment proceedings, said Tuesday that his staffers interviewed Broaddrick more than once and "have assured me that she is the most credible witness that either one of them have ever talked to." Appearing on MSNBC's "Hockenberry," Schippers said he concluded that no one connected with the White House had suggested that Broaddrick file a false affidavit. "I think it would have been folly for us to have attempted to just poison the water with this story, when it really had no specific bearing on the impeachable offenses," he said.
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