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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
Politics
Guardian staff and agencies

George HW Bush allegedly touched 16-year-old girl inappropriately

George HW Bush was vice-president under Ronald Reagan and then president from 1989 to 1993.
George HW Bush was vice-president under Ronald Reagan and then president from 1989 to 1993. Photograph: Larry W. Smith/EPA

A woman has come forward to claim George HW Bush touched her inappropriately when she was 16.

Roslyn Corrigan told Time that she posed for a photo with the former president in 2003 at a gathering of CIA officers north of Houston. She was 16 at the time and attended the event with her mother and father, who was an intelligence analyst.

Corrigan says as the photo was being taken, Bush dropped his hand to her buttocks and squeezed.

Time spoke with seven people who said they had been told by Corrigan about the encounter in the years afterward.

A spokesman for the former president, Jim McGrath, said Bush has apologized “to anyone he may have offended during a photo op”.

Corrigan is at least the fifth woman to claim Bush groped her.

In previous cases, McGrath has mentioned the fact that using a wheelchair, as Bush has for about the past five years, “his arm falls on the lower waist of people with whom he takes pictures”.

But Bush was not in a wheelchair in 2003, when the new incident allegedly took place.

George HW Bush was vice-president under Ronald Reagan and then president from 1989 to 1993, during which he presided over the end of the cold war, fought a war against Iraq and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) with Canada and Mexico. He was defeated by Bill Clinton in 1992.

His son George W Bush was president from 2001 to 2009.

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