Meet the four women who say they have been wronged by the Clintons
By Anita Kumar
McClatchy Washington Bureau
October 09, 2016 09:13 PM
From left, Kathleen Willey, Juanita Broaddrick and Kathy Shelton wait for the second presidential debate between Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton at Washington University in St. Louis, Sunday, Oct. 9, 2016. Patrick SemanskyAP
ST. LOUIS
Here are the stories behind the four women who accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing and attended Sunday’s debate as guests of Donald Trump:
Juanita Broaddrick: The former Arkansas nursing home administrator who worked on Bill Clinton’s gubernatorial campaign alleged that he raped her in her Little Rock hotel room in 1978. She said she initially continued to support him because she was in denial.
Broaddrick has said that Hillary Clinton needed to be held accountable for the comments she’d made about the women who had accused her husband of sexual misconduct. She has said that Hillary Clinton had pushed her to remain silent about what happened.
She said she supports Donald Trump this year said she’d decided to speak out about Hillary Clinton after the candidate tweeted last year that sexual abuse victims had a right to be believed.
January 6, 2016
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“Mr. Trump may have said some bad words, but Bill Clinton raped me and Hillary Clinton threatened me,” Broaddrick said at an event before the debate. “I don’t think there’s any comparison.”
Bill Clinton denied the allegations.
Paula Jones: The former Arkansas state employee accused Bill Clinton, who was then governor of Arkansas, of propositioning her and exposing himself.
She filed a sexual harassment suit. But a federal judge dismissed the case, who said that even if the allegations were true it would not be severe enough to constitute sexual harassment under the law.
The ruling was under appeal when Clinton settled the suit for $850,000 in 1998. He did not admit guilt.
“I’m here to support Mr. Trump because he’s going to make America great again,” Jones said. “And I think everybody else should vote for him. And I think they should all look at the fact that he’s a good person. He’s not what other people have been saying he’s been, like Hillary. So, think about that.”
October 9, 2016
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Kathleen Willey:
Kathleen Willey was a volunteer in the White House social office who claimed in 1998 that Bill Clinton had groped her in the Oval Office in 1993 when she met with him to seek a full-time paid job.
Earlier, during a deposition in the Jones case, Willey had said she did not remember if Bill Clinton kissed her and said he did not fondle her.
Clinton denied the allegation and an independent counsel found there was not enough evidence to prove to a jury that Clinton’s denial was false.
“I am here to support Donald Trump,” Willey said Sunday. “The reason for that is the first day that he announced for president he said I love this country and I want America to be great again. And I cried when he said that because I think that this is the greatest country in the world. I think that we can do anything. I think we can accomplish anything. I think we can bring peace to this world, and I think Donald Trump can lead us to that point.”
Kathy Shelton: The child rape victim’s 41-year-old attacker was represented by Hillary Clinton, a court-appointed attorney, in 1975.
Shelton, now 54, has said she is furious that Clinton portrays herself as a feminist when she represented her attacker. The man, Thomas Alfred Taylor, pleaded to “unlawful fondling of a minor” and served less than a year in prison.
Shelton has said that Clinton accused her of “seeking out older men” and demanded that she undergo a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation.
Clinton has said that she didn’t want to take the case, but couldn’t refuse. In her autobiography, “Living History,” Clinton wrote that I told (prosecutor) Mahlon (Gibson) I really don’t feel comfortable taking on such a client, but Mahlon gently reminded me that I couldn’t very well refuse the judge’s request.”
She repeated the claim in recorded interviews in the 1980s with an Arkansas reporter Roy Reed for an article that was never published.
“At 12 years old, Hillary put me through something you’d never put a 12-year-old through,” Shelton said Sunday. “And she says she’s for women and children. And she was asked last year on what happened and she says she’s (inaudible) whether they did it or not and now she’s laughing on tape saying she know they did it.”
October 10, 2016
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Bill Clinton was never found guilty of any assault. He has apologized for being unfaithful to his wife, including with a White House intern Monica Lewinsky, but he has denied various allegations that he groped and raped other women.
Donald Trump invited the four women to the debate. Before the faceoff, he introduced them as “four very courageous women” whom he said had “asked to be here and it was our honor to help them.”
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