Sexual Abuse & Domestic Violence

The allegations against Donald Trump of inappropriate sexual behavior gathered momentum Wednesday night, with multiple women making new allegations about the Republican presidential nominee. Trump is thus far denying any of the incidents and has also threatened to sue the New York Times, which reported two of the new accusations.

Though some allegations had first been reported months ago, a 2005 video taken prior to a Trump appearance on Access Hollywood brought renewed, intense scrutiny to Trump’s treatment of women. In the video, Trump describes kissing women and grabbing their crotches without consent (“[W]hen you’re a star they let you do it. You can do anything,” he can be heard telling host Billy Bush).

That kicked off the latest flood of accusations, which, taken together, suggest a decades-long pattern of behavior. We have compiled a list of the things women have alleged against him. We will update the list if new information emerges.

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Assault Allegations (Unwanted Touching, Kissing, Etc.)

NAME: Jessica Leeds

TIME FRAME: Early 1980s

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Alleges that she sat next to Trump on a flight

ALLEGATION: Leeds told the New York Times that after she was moved into a first-class seat next to his, Trump lifted the armrest, touched her breasts, and “started putting his hand up [her] skirt.”

“He was like an octopus,” she said. “It was like he had six arms. He was all over the place.”

Leeds affirmed to NPR the account in the Times and says she shared her story in a letter to the editor.

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: Trump denied the allegation in an interview with the Times, threatening to sue the organization and calling the reporter who asked him about it a “disgusting human being.” In a statement released Wednesday night, the Trump campaign emphatically denied all of the allegations in the Times story (which also includes the allegations by another woman, Rachel Crooks, below). From Jason Miller, a Trump spokesman:

“This entire article is fiction, and for the New York Times to launch a completely false, coordinated character assassination against Mr. Trump on a topic like this is dangerous. To reach back decades in an attempt to smear Mr. Trump trivializes sexual assault, and it sets a new low for where the media is willing to go in its efforts to determine this election.

“It is absurd to think that one of the most recognizable business leaders on the planet with a strong record of empowering women in his companies would do the things alleged in this story, and for this to only become public decades later in the final month of a campaign for president should say it all.

“Further, the Times story buries the pro-Clinton financial and social media activity on behalf of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, reinforcing that this truly is nothing more than a political attack. This is a sad day for the Times.”

In a Friday speech, Trump also said of Leeds: “Believe me. She would not be my first choice. That I can tell you.” He added, “You don’t know. That would not be my first choice.”

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NAME: Ivana Trump

TIME FRAME: 1989

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Wife from 1977 to 1992

ALLEGATION: In a July 2015 article, The Daily Beast summarized an incident (also written about in the 1993 book Lost Tycoon: The Many Lives of Donald Trump, by Harry Hurt III) in which Ivana Trump alleged a violent attack by her former husband:

“After a painful scalp reduction surgery to remove a bald spot, Donald Trump confronted his then-wife, who had previously used the same plastic surgeon.

” ‘Your fucking doctor has ruined me!’ Trump cried.

“What followed was a ‘violent assault,’ according to Lost Tycoon. Donald held back Ivana’s arms and began to pull out fistfuls of hair from her scalp, as if to mirror the pain he felt from his own operation. He tore off her clothes and unzipped his pants.

” ‘Then he jams his penis inside her for the first time in more than sixteen months. Ivana is terrified… It is a violent assault,’ Hurt writes. ‘According to versions she repeats to some of her closest confidantes, ‘he raped me.’

“Following the incident, Ivana ran upstairs, hid behind a locked door, and remained there ‘crying for the rest of night.’ When she returned to the master bedroom in the morning, he was there.

“As she looks in horror at the ripped-out hair scattered all over the bed, he glares at her and asks with menacing casualness: ‘Does it hurt?’ Hurt writes.”

Ivana Trump, however, has dialed back the allegation. In a statement given just prior to the book’s printing (also quoted by the Daily Beast), she said: “[O]n one occasion during 1989, Mr. Trump and I had marital relations in which he behaved very differently toward me than he had during our marriage. As a woman, I felt violated, as the love and tenderness, which he normally exhibited towards me, was absent. I referred to this as a ‘rape,’ but I do not want my words to be interpreted in a literal or criminal sense.”

Last year, she released another statement to CNN, saying that she originally told the story “at a time of very high tension” amid her divorce from Donald Trump, adding that the story was “totally without merit.”

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: In 1993, Trump said that Ivana’s allegations were “obviously false,” as the Daily Beast reports, quoting Newsday. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, said that “you cannot rape your spouse” — a statement that is entirely untrue (Cohen has since apologized). He also threatened The Daily Beast reporters who wrote the story at length, saying at one point: “So I’m warning you, tread very f****** lightly, because what I’m going to do to you is going to be f****** disgusting. You understand me?”

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NAME: Kristin Anderson

TIME FRAME: Early 1990s

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Anderson and Trump were at a nightclub in Manhattan on the same night

ALLEGATION: Anderson says Trump sat next to her on a couch, put his hand up her skirt, and “touched her vagina through her underwear,” in the words of the Washington Post‘s Karen Tumulty, to whom Anderson told her story. She said she pushed his hand away immediately, and that the incident was brief: “less than 30 seconds,” as Tumulty wrote. The people at the club with her knew of the incident, and Anderson also said she told friends a few days later.

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: “Mr. Trump strongly denies this phony allegation by someone looking to get some free publicity. It is totally ridiculous,” Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told the Post.

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NAME: Jill Harth

TIME FRAME: Starting in 1992

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Business partner

ALLEGATION: The New York Times first published a legal complaint detailing Harth’s account in May, but Harth elaborated in an interview with the Times’ Nicholas Kristof in October. She said that at dinner one night, Trump put his hands up her skirt, touching her crotch. “He was relentless … I didn’t know how to handle it. I would go away from him and say I have to go to the restroom. It was the escape route,” she told Kristof. “He name-dropped continuously,” she added in a later lawsuit, “when he wasn’t groping me.”

More from the article:

” ‘I was admiring the decoration, and next thing I know he’s pushing me against a wall and has his hands all over me,’ Harth told me. ‘He was trying to kiss me. I was freaking out.’ “

However, Harth also said Kristof that Trump was “never violent,” as Kristof wrote.

Harth also told her story to WNYC in August after a Twitter spat with Trump:

“He knew I was engaged to somebody else, and he seemed to be very into trying to break that up. He was sexually harassing me, that’s it, plain and simple. … It was a shock and I pushed him off of me. And I was, I said to him, What are you doing, why are you doing this? He put out that he’s the type of guy that gets what he wants. Donald gets what he wants. And he was annoyed and insulted that I wasn’t going for it with him. I believe, in his mind, he was — this was a come on for him, some kind of romantic overture. Whereas for me, it was unwanted and aggressive, very sexually aggressive.”

For more context, Harth attended one of Trump’s rallies last year as part of a makeup artist job. Here’s what she told WNYC:

“I’m a makeup artist. The guy is a mess, OK? He really needed my services, and I’m a makeup artist that needs a job. Why would, if I was on friendly terms, why wouldn’t I try to get that job?”

She added that she brought up the complaint and vowed not to talk, but:

“Yes, I said to him, very briefly, if anybody ever brings up anything about that, I’m not saying anything, only good things, OK, Donald? And he said OK, and he gave me like a hug, which to me meant, you know, if any normal person — you would assume they shut their mouth, too. But with Donald, he can’t resist an opportunity to answer. You know what, if he could have said nothing, that would have been great, we wouldn’t be sitting here talking here.”

NPR has reached out to Harth for further comment.

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: “Trump strongly denies these improprieties,” Kristof wrote.

Trump took to Twitter in May, calling the Times‘ story “false, malicious & libelous.”

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NAME: Temple Taggart

TIME FRAME: 1997

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Former Miss Utah, 21 in 1997, the first year Trump owned Miss USA.

ALLEGATION: According to the New York Times, Taggart said:

“He kissed me directly on the lips. I thought: ‘Oh, my gosh. Gross.’ He was married to Marla Maples at the time. I think there were a few other girls that he kissed on the mouth. I was like, ‘Wow, that’s inappropriate.’ “

She told the Times that he did it again after the pageant:

“At the gala celebration after the show, she said, Mr. Trump immediately zeroed in on her, telling her how much he liked her style and inviting her to visit him in New York to talk about her future. Soon enough, she said, he delivered another unwelcome kiss on her lips, this time in Trump Tower.”

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: Per the Times: “Mr. Trump disputes this, saying he is reluctant to kiss strangers on the lips.” He also told NBC this week, “I emphatically deny this ridiculous claim.”

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NAME: Mindy McGillivray

TIME FRAME: 2003

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: McGillivray attended a party at Mar-a-Lago in January 2003.

ALLEGATION: McGillivray said Trump touched her buttocks, telling the Palm Beach Post:

“All of a sudden I felt a grab, a little nudge. I think it’s [my friend Ken Davidoff’s] camera bag, that was my first instinct. I turn around and there’s Donald. He sort of looked away quickly.”

She said later:

“This was a pretty good nudge. More of a grab. It was pretty close to the center of my butt. I was startled. I jumped.”

Davidoff corroborated the story to the Post, saying that immediately after the incident, she told him, “Donald just grabbed my ass!”

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks tells NPR, “There is no truth to this whatsoever.”

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NAME: Rachel Crooks

TIME FRAME: 2005

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Was a receptionist at a firm in Trump Tower

ALLEGATION: She says that immediately after she introduced herself to Trump, he kissed her cheeks, then moved to her mouth. “It was so inappropriate,” she told the New York Times. “I was so upset that he thought I was so insignificant that he could do that.”

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: Trump’s statement under the Jessica Leeds entry (above) applies to this allegation as well.

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NAME: Natasha Stoynoff

TIME FRAME: December 2005

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Was a People magazine writer covering Trump in 2005

ALLEGATION: Stoynoff writes in a piece posted Wednesday night about a 2005 trip she took to Mar-a-Lago to interview Trump and his wife, Melania. During a break, Trump offered to show her around, saying there was one room in particular he wanted her to see. Stoynoff’s account describes what happened next as an “attack”:

“We walked into that room alone, and Trump shut the door behind us. I turned around, and within seconds, he was pushing me against the wall, and forcing his tongue down my throat. … I was stunned. And I was grateful when Trump’s longtime butler burst into the room a minute later, as I tried to unpin myself.”

Later, she writes, Trump said to her, “You know we’re going to have an affair, don’t you?”

NPR has reached out to Stoynoff and People magazine. Stoynoff did not respond, but People said that she is not giving interviews right now.

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: In a tweet Thursday morning, Trump questioned why Stoynoff did not level her accusations in her 2005 People piece and concluded that “it did not happen.”

In a speech on Thursday, Trump also said of Stoynoff: “You take a look. Look at her. Look at her words. You tell me what you think. I don’t think so.”

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NAME: Summer Zervos

TIME FRAME: 2006

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Zervos was a contestant on The Apprentice.

ALLEGATION: Speaking in a Friday press conference with her attorney, Gloria Allred, Zervos said that Trump kissed her “aggressively” and touched her breast. She said he also led her into the bedroom. After she walked out, he embraced her. She tried to push him away, and he “began thrusting his genitals.”

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: NPR has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

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NAME: Cassandra Searles

TIME FRAME: 2013

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Was Miss Washington 2013 in the Miss USA pageant

ALLEGATION: According to a June Yahoo News story, Searles wrote a Facebook post decrying Trump’s actions as a pageant leader:

“Do y’all remember that one time we had to do our onstage introductions, but this one guy treated us like cattle and made us do it again because we didn’t look him in the eyes? Do you also remember when he then proceeded to have us lined up so he could get a closer look at his property? Oh I forgot to mention that guy will be in the running to become the next President of the United States. I love the idea of having a misogynist as the President. #‎HeWillProbablySueMe ‬‪#‎iHaveWorseStoriesSoComeAtMeBro‬ ‪#‎Drumpf‬.”

In the comments section, other contestants agreed with Searles, saying they remembered the experience, Yahoo reported.

Searles also wrote in the comments section, “He probably doesn’t want me telling the story about that time he continually grabbed my ass and invited me to his hotel room,” according to Yahoo.

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: As yet, neither Trump nor his campaign has responded to Searles’ allegations specifically.

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NAME: Unnamed woman, friend of CNN anchor Erin Burnett

TIME FRAME: 2010

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Unclear

ALLEGATION: The woman told CNN that she met Trump in a Trump Tower boardroom in 2010. Here is what she told the cable news network:

“Trump took Tic Tacs, suggested I take them also. He then leaned in, catching me off guard, and kissed me almost on lips. I was really freaked out. … After (the meeting), Trump asked me to come into his office alone. Was really unsure what to do. … Figured I could handle myself. Anyway, once in his office he kept telling me how special I am and gave me his cell, asked me to call him. I ran the hell out of there.”

Burnett has referenced this incident multiple times on the air — last week, as well as in a Wednesday night interview. NPR has reached out to CNN, which responded that Burnett “doesn’t have anything else to add,” and nor does her friend.

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: NPR has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

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Entering Dressing Rooms Of Pageant Contestants

NAME: Mariah Billado

TIME FRAME: 1997

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Was Miss Vermont Teen USA in 1997

ALLEGATION: Billado alleged that Trump entered the dressing room while contestants were changing. Billado told BuzzFeed:

“I remember putting on my dress really quick, because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here.’ Trump, she recalled, said something like, ‘Don’t worry, ladies, I’ve seen it all before.’ “

Billado also recalled telling Ivanka Trump about the incident, telling Buzzfeed that Ivanka responded, “Yeah, he does that.”

Four other contestants reached by BuzzFeed said they remembered it, but 11 said they don’t remember seeing him in the dressing room.

However, per BuzzFeed:

“Of the 11 women who said they don’t remember Trump coming into the changing room, some said it was possible that it happened while they weren’t in the room or that they didn’t notice. But most were dubious or dismissed the possibility out of hand.”

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: The Trump campaign didn’t respond directly to BuzzFeed’s requests for comment. However, in a 2005 Howard Stern interview posted by CNN, Trump said he used to go into the dressing rooms during pageants.

” ‘Well, what you could also say is that, as the owner of the pageant, it’s your obligation to do that,’ Trump said, before discussing how he got away with going backstage when the contestants were naked.

” ‘Well, I’ll tell you the funniest is that before a show, I’ll go backstage and everyone’s getting dressed, and everything else, and you know, no men are anywhere, and I’m allowed to go in because I’m the owner of the pageant and therefore I’m inspecting it,’ Trump said. ‘You know, I’m inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good.’

” ‘You know, the dresses. ‘Is everyone okay?’ You know, they’re standing there with no clothes. ‘Is everybody okay?’ And you see these incredible looking women, and so, I sort of get away with things like that. But no, I’ve been very good,’ he added.”

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NAME: Bridget Sullivan

TIME FRAME: 2000

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Was Miss New Hampshire 2000

ALLEGATION: Sullivan told BuzzFeed Trump walked into the dressing room before the pageant:

“While preparing for the national broadcast in 2000, Trump came backstage to wish the contestants good luck, even though many of the women weren’t dressed. ‘The time that he walked through the dressing rooms was really shocking. We were all naked,’ Sullivan said.”

However, four other contestants told BuzzFeed they didn’t remember this. In addition, several other contestants and one former Miss Universe employee told BuzzFeed of generally positive or neutral experiences with Trump in the same story.

WHAT TRUMP SAID: A Trump spokesman said that this story and others cited by BuzzFeed were “totally false.”

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NAME: Tasha Dixon

TIME FRAME: 2001

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Dixon was Miss Arizona 2001

ALLEGATION: “He just came strolling right in. There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless, other girls were naked,” Dixon told a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles.

“To have the owner come waltzing in when we’re naked or half naked in a very physically vulnerable position, and then to have the pressure of the people that work for him telling us to go fawn all over him, go walk up to him, talk to him…” she added.

NPR has reached out to Dixon for further comment.

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: “These accusations have no merit and have already been disproven by many other individuals who were present,” Trump spokeswoman Jessica Ditto said in a statement to the CBS affiliate. She added that she thinks the allegation is politically motivated.

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NAME: Unnamed woman

TIME FRAME: 2001

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: Miss USA contestant in 2001

ALLEGATION: The former contestant declined to be named but told The Guardian that Trump entered the dressing room she shared with another contestant when they were not dressed:

” ‘Mr Trump just barged right in, didn’t say anything, stood there and stared at us,’ she recalled. Trump’s attitude, she said, seemed to be: ‘I can do this because I can.’

” ‘He didn’t walk in and say, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, I was looking for someone,’ she continued. ‘He walked in, he stood and he stared. He was doing it because he knew that he could.’ “

Another contestant confirmed to The Guardian that the accuser told her about the incident after it happened.

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: The Guardian has yet to receive comment from the Trump campaign. NPR has also reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

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Other Incidents

NAME: Unnamed girl

TIME FRAME: 1992

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: The girl was visiting Trump Tower

WHAT HAPPENED: Wednesday night, CBS released video from a 1992 piece shot inside Trump Tower for Entertainment Tonight. The circumstances of the conversation are not clear, but in the video, Trump has a brief exchange with what sounds like a young girl, then comments to a companion:

Trump: You going up the escalator?

Girl: Yeah.

Trump: I’m going to be dating her in 10 years. Can you believe it?

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: NPR has reached out to the Trump campaign about this video.

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NAME: Two unnamed 14-year-old girls

TIME FRAME: 1992

CONNECTION TO TRUMP: The girls were singing in a youth choir outside of the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan.

WHAT HAPPENED: The incident is from a brief Chicago Tribune wire story at the time (dug up this week by the Los Angeles Times). Here is the wire story in its entirety:

“Donald Trump turned up Monday for a carol sing by a youth choir outside Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. He asked two of the girls how old they were. After they responded they were 14, Trump said, “Wow! Just think — in a couple of years I’ll be dating you.”

WHAT TRUMP HAS SAID: NPR has reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.

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UPDATE: This piece was last updated on Oct. 14 at 4:01 PM to include the new allegations from Summer Zervos, as well as Trump’s responses to other accusers.

On Friday, writer Kelly Oxford shared the story of the first time she was sexually assaulted. She was 12, she said, when a man on a city bus grabbed her genitals and smiled.

She used the same word that Republican candidate Donald Trump used in a recording where he talked about doing things to women.

“Women: tweet me your first assaults,” Oxford said: “they aren’t just stats.”

 

Women: tweet me your first assaults. they aren’t just stats. I’ll go first:

Old man on city bus grabs my “pussy” and smiles at me, I’m 12.

— kelly oxford (@kellyoxford) October 7, 2016

The responses poured in — not by the dozens or the hundreds, but by the thousands.

Strangers on the bus, in the street, on the subway, at a concert. Fathers. Uncles. Baby sitters. Classmates. Teachers. Doctors. Priests. Friends.

The women had been 23, or 17, or 11, or 9, or 6. In 140 characters, they expressed shock or the grim absence of surprise. They shared guilt and anger and shame. They told of family members who didn’t believe them. Or they shared nothing but the narrowest facts: where they were, what was done to them.

Groped. Penetrated. Rubbed against. Exposed. Masturbated on. Stalked. Slapped. Raped. Forcibly kissed.

Many women said they’d never told anybody about their assault. In some cases, they still haven’t: People created new, anonymous Twitter accounts solely to share a story they still weren’t willing to attach to their name.

Some tweets came without a story. Women said they couldn’t bring themselves to talk about their assault.

Other women couldn’t share their story for a different reason — they couldn’t remember a first time. It had happened all their lives.

On Saturday, Oxford said that over the course of a single evening, a million women had responded to her call-out.

 

women have tweeted me sexual assault stories for 14 hours straight. Minimum 50 per minute. harrowing. do not ignore. #notokay

— kelly oxford (@kellyoxford) October 8, 2016

The flood of stories still hasn’t ended. More than 13,000 tweets were directed at Oxford on Sunday and Monday alone, mostly from women and men recounting assaults; still other stories were shared under the hashtag #NotOkay, or posted on Facebook.

Most of the conversation has been filled with celebration and support, but the popularity of the hashtag attracted trolls, too. Some women have been targeted by Twitter users questioning their honesty, victim-blaming them or openly attacking them.

And even if the only responses are positive, it can be agonizing to tell a story of abuse publicly — often for the first time.

Rebecca Arington, a follower of Oxford’s who lives in New York, remembers what she thought when she saw the first tweet: “Well, yeah, of course I have a story.”

She had three stories, in fact, which she’d only told her husband and a few close friends. And she says she rarely shared personal information on Twitter. But she saw other responses pouring in, and made up her mind.

She told her followers she’d been molested at 6, forcibly disrobed at 14, raped at 19. She was nervous before she published the tweets and says it was “a little bit traumatizing” to share the stories.

 

Age 6 – molested by an older man repeatedly. Forced to sit on his lap while he masturbated against me. #notokay

— Rebecca Arington (@puccinigirlnyc) October 8, 2016

Then she had second thoughts.

 

Age 6 – molested by an older man repeatedly. Forced to sit on his lap while he masturbated against me. #notokay

— Rebecca Arington (@puccinigirlnyc) October 8, 2016

“I don’t want to be seen as perpetually wounded,” Arington explained to NPR. Putting such deeply personal experiences out in public made her feel exposed.

“But then it occurred to me that well, that’s the point,” she says. “These things don’t get talked about because women don’t want to be exposed.”

The tweets stayed up.

The vast majority of responses, including Arington’s, do not mention Trump by name. They stand as a rebuke not only to the candidate, but to something much larger: a culture of complicit silence.

At the second presidential debate on Sunday, after repeated questions, Trump denied actually kissing or groping women without their consent, as he described in the video. To defend his “banter,” Trump has invoked a kind of closed door: “Locker room talk,” he says, a private conversation between men.

In response, women sharing their stories on Twitter have flung open another door — to a world of sexual violence that is discussed in secrecy or not discussed at all.

If you scroll through the stream of tweets, one thing becomes clear. This is not just a political reaction. It’s a collective unburdening.

Oxford told her followers that any guilt about these stories belongs to assailants, not to survivors.

“We don’t have to carry their shame anymore,” Oxford tweeted.

Reaction to the video of Donald Trump using explicit language and apparently describing himself forcing himself on women continues to roll in. And it is not good for the GOP nominee. Prominent Republicans are calling on him to drop out and elected officials are running from him and fast. See the full list of Republicans calling on Trump to step down at the bottom on this post.

The candidate isn’t backing down, telling the Washington Post’s Robert Costa in an interview today, “I’d never withdraw. I’ve never withdrawn in my life.”

The Post reports, Trump called from his home in Trump Tower and said, “No, I’m not quitting this race. I have tremendous support.”

Certainly has been an interesting 24 hours!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 8, 2016

Trump also tweeted, seemingly downplaying the firestorm that has consumed his campaign.

Just to give a sense of how bad things have gotten in the past 24 hours, he’s lost Hugh Hewitt.

For the benefit of the country, the party and his family, and for his own good, @realDonaldTrump should withdraw. More and worse oppo coming

— Hugh Hewitt (@hughhewitt) October 8, 2016

The conservative talk show host had been a strong supporter of Trump arguing Republicans must back him to get a conservative justice on the Supreme Court.

Carly Fiorina, who lost to Trump in the GOP primary, called for him to step aside and for the Republican Party to run vice president nominee Mike Pence in his place.

Add senators Mike Lee (R-UT) and Jeff Flake (R-AZ), neither of whom endorsed Trump, to the growing list of prominent and elected republicans to get out.

But, this would be significantly easier said than done according to a leading Republican election lawyer.

“People in the GOP are understandably nervous. People are looking for an escape,” Ben Ginsberg told NPR. “The rules don’t provide a ready-made escape. Nor do ballot rules, nor the electoral college. While people are looking for an out, this die was cast in Cleveland.”

Ginsberg, who is a partner at the Jones Day law firm, spoke with the NPR Politics Podcast.

“The RNC rules allow for replacement of a candidate on death or declining the nomination, but no provision for replacing,” said Ginsberg. “At this stage, Donald Trump would have to resign. There’s no way to stage a coup.”

If Trump were to resign, Ginsberg says, the GOP would have to go through a complicated process to nominate a new candidate.

“Under the rules, if there is a vacancy, it doesn’t go to the VP candidate. It’s a matter of rules. It can be anyone. Part of what the RNC would have to do is figure out the nomination rules to see who would be eligible. It’s an all-bets-are-off scenario. There might be a political consensus for Mike Pence, but it is not mandated by the rules,” he said.

But it is four weeks from election day. And the idea of a drawn out fight over the top ticket is almost politically unfathomable.

Elected republicans aren’t waiting. They are now running away from their party’s nominee. Senator Kelly Ayotte who is in a tough race for re-election and never endorsed Trump, now says she won’t vote for him either.

I will not vote for Donald Trump. Read my statement here: pic.twitter.com/F8zajgDZpg

— Kelly Ayotte (@KellyAyotte) October 8, 2016

Congresswoman Martha Roby in deep red Alabama says she can’t support him either.

The reason is simple, as seasoned political analyst Stuart Rothenberg put it on Twitter, “This certainly raises the possibility of a down-ballot bloodbath for Republicans.”

Trump was initially supposed to attend a rally today in Wisconsin with Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. Then after the video release, it was announced that Pence would attend in Trump’s place. Now the Trump campaign confirms Pence won’t be attending the rally either.

My statement below: pic.twitter.com/92VYEAxIcl

— Mike Pence (@mike_pence) October 8, 2016

Sen. John Thune (R-SD), a member of the GOP’s leadership, tweeted that Trump should drop out immediately.

For elected Republicans, it is rapidly becoming clear that merely rejecting Trump’s remarks isn’t enough. Every one of them can expect to be asked whether they are withdrawing their endorsements and whether they will even vote for their party’s nominee.

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Republicans Calling For Trump To Step Aside

• Sen. John Thune (South Dakota): Third highest ranking Republican in the Senate, previously said he would support the nominee
• Sen. Mark Kirk (Illinois): Ran campaign ads distancing himself from Trump
• Sen. Ben Sasse (Nebraska): Prominent “Never Trumper”
• Sen. Deb Fischer (Nebraska): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Sen. Mike Crapo (Idaho): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (West Virginia): Said the “appropriate next step may be for him to reexamine his candidacy;” Withdrew previous endorsement
• Sen. Dan Sullivan (Alaska): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Alaska): Tweeted that Trump has “forfeited the right to be our party’s nominee,” Did not endorse Trump previously
• Sen. Cory Gardner (Colorado): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Sen. Jeff Flake (Arizona): Did not endorse Trump previously
• Rep. Martha Roby (Alabama): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Rep. Bradley Byrne (Alabama): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Sen. Mike Lee (Utah): Did not endorse Trump previously
• Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Rep. Mia Love (Utah): Did not endorse Trump previously
• Rep. Chris Stewart (Utah): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Rep. Barbara Comstock (Virginia)
• Rep. Mike Coffman (Colorado)
• Rep. Charlie Dent (Pennsylvania): Previously said he is not voting for Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton in the general election
• Rep. Ann Wagner (Missouri): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Rep. Rodney Davis (Illinois): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Rep. Fred Upton (Michigan)
• Rep. Justin Amash (Michigan)
• Rep. Jeff Fortenberry (Nebraska)
• Rep. Frank LoBiondo (New Jersey): Said he will write in Mike Pence
• Gov. Dennis Daugaard (South Dakota): Withdrew previous endorsement
• Joe Heck, Senate Candidate (Nevada): Is running for Democratic Minority Leader Harry Reid’s seat
• Darryl Glenn, Senate Candidate (Colorado): Withdrew previous support
• Carly Fiorina, former presidential candidate
• George Pataki, former New York governor
• Jon Huntsman, former Utah governor
• Hugh Hewitt, conservative radio talk show host, previous Trump backer
• Condoleeza Rice, former secretary of state: Wrote that as a Republican, she hopes “to support someone who has the dignity and stature to run for the highest office in the greatest democracy on earth.”

Gov. Bill Walker announced today that Alaska will be receiving $1.1 million in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Justice to process over 1,000 sexual assault kits currently in possession of Alaska State Troopers.

“While we cannot solve these problems overnight, this grant will help us to make great strides in reducing the number of unprocessed sexual assault kits in Alaska,” Walker said. “These kits represent real people who are the victims of horrific crimes. We owe it to them, and all Alaskans, to end this pattern and ensure sexual assault kits are processed in a timely manner.”

The three-year grant will allow for the kits to be analyzed at a state crime lab as well as paying for cold case investigators and prosecuting attorneys to carry out cases that emerge from the findings.

The grant follows an inventory review that determined that there were more than 3,000 unprocessed kits across the state in possession of law enforcement.

“Alaska has some of the highest rates of sexual assault and domestic violence in the nation. We must end this terrible epidemic, and that starts by addressing the thousands of sexual assault kits in the possession of law enforcement,” Walker said. “We owe it to victims and their families to deliver justice to perpetrators and bring closure to these tragic experiences.”

A Petersburg man was arraigned Monday in Petersburg Courthouse for allegedly kidnapping a female victim, assaulting her with a knife and raping her.

According to the local police, Joshua Hall Blewett, 28, restrained a female, sexually assaulted her and assaulted her with a utility knife.

The victim was taken to the Petersburg Medical Center for evaluation and treatment.

She spoke with officers and advocates there on September 10.

Police arrested Blewett for a domestic violence assault charge.

Officers continued to investigate and later served a search warrant at Blewett’s residence.

Police say evidence was seized from the scene that corroborated initial information.

On September 15, a grand jury indicted Blewett on three separate charges: assault in the third degree, sexual assault in the first degree, and kidnapping. All are felony level crimes.

Blewett is currently in custody awaiting trial. No date has been scheduled yet.

His bail has been set at $35,000 cash only.

Assistant District Attorney Chris Orman is representing the State of Alaska.

Blewett is being represented by Public Defender Deborah Macaulay.

It all began with a shawl.

The year was 1993. Jacqueline de Chollet, a Swiss woman then in her 50s, was on vacation in India when she stopped at a dusty village and saw a woman in a house weaving a shawl.

“She had three or four children including a baby she was nursing in her arms,” de Chollet recalls. “And she looked way older than her age.”

Hoping to provide a little help, de Chollet offered to buy the shawl. “And as soon as I gave her the money a man walked in and took the money away from her.”

De Chollet was outraged. “I felt, this woman — nobody cares about her. She’s off the map. She has no rights.”

And in an odd way, de Chollet also identified with the woman. Odd, because, de Chollet had led a privileged existence as the daughter of a Swiss baron. Still, she says, growing up in the 1950s, she felt her own path in life had also been tightly circumscribed.

“My generation of girls did not go to university in Switzerland. We were sent to secretarial school and then expected to get married.”

Which is precisely what de Chollet had done. After a one-year stint as a secretary in New York, she married a British businessman at age 22 and moved to London to set up house.

“I had three children and lived in a very male-oriented society where women really were not included in the conversation,” she says.

Her early attempts to break free of those constraints were telling. She joined the board of a housing charity in London. At meetings, she says, “one member in particular would often remark that, ‘some of us here have no understanding of financial matters,’ looking straight at me as the only woman on the board. I used to leave in tears some times.”

Eventually, de Chollet had managed to come into her own, becoming the chair of that same charity board and getting involved with women’s rights groups.

Still, standing in the woman’s house in India that day in 1993, she was suddenly struck by the thought that, “there were people talking everywhere at conferences about women’s rights, but who, actually, was going to do anything for that particular woman — and the many women like her?”

Then she thought, “I am.”

In the more than 20 years since, de Chollet, who is now 78, would go on to found a project that has saved almost 200 north Indian village girls from a life of servitude. And she did do so by teaming up with the unlikeliest of partners — a then-18-year-old Indian guy with a knack for computers and no particular plans to tackle the child marriage issue.

The organization they’ve created is called the Veerni Institute. The nonprofit operates a boarding hostel for 75 girls in the city of Jodhpur and pays for them to attend a private middle and high school a short walk away. Its annual budget of just over $150,000 is raised from family foundations and individuals in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the U.S.

I first visited the Veerni Institute for an NPR report that ran last year and returned to report another story earlier this year.

Talk to the girls there and you quickly get a sense of the Veerni Institute’s impact. Child marriage has been illegal for decades in India. That’s why we can’t disclose any of the girl’s names. But on one of my trips, a bubbly, 16-year-old tells me, people in her village simply ignore the law.

“Our parents just hold the weddings in secret,” she says. “At night — very rushed.” She was married at age 9.

A bunch of other girls nod. They were all married around that age too. A shy girl in a pink T-shirt says she didn’t even understand what was happening at the time. Later, when she realized she’d been married, she says, “I was so sad, because I had really wanted to study.”

And if you’re a child bride, by the time you hit puberty, you’re sent to live with your husband to basically become a servant to your in-laws.

Yet here all these girls are, sitting in their dorm room at the Veerni Institute, talking excitedly about their dream jobs. “I want to be a teacher,” says the shy girl. “I think explaining things to students and seeing their progress would be so satisfying.”

“I want to be a police officer,” says the outgoing one. “They can stand up for themselves and say whatever they want.”

And it’s all possible because the staff of the Veerni Institute have convinced the girls’ parents to agree to a deal: In exchange for the free lodging and tuition Veerni provides, the parents sign a pledge promising to hold off sending the girls to their husbands until they’ve at least finished high school.

It seems like an obvious solution. But the road to get there was anything but simple.

De Chollet began by trying to help women in remote villages get basic health care services including family planning. She and her third husband pitched in about $300,000 of their own funds to pay for a team of medical workers.

There were hiccups from the start. To conform with Indian laws about charitable donations by foreigners, de Chollet had to work through an Indian nonprofit to procure supplies. In the eyes of these Indian colleagues she was a British aristocrat — her second marriage had been to the Viscount of Weir, which had made her the Viscountess of Weir. And when she arrived in Jodhpur for the health team’s inaugural trip, she was horrified to find that the medical team’s van bore a huge sign reading “Viscountess of Weir project.” Not only was she no longer the Viscountess — she’d divorced that husband a few years earlier — but more important she says, laughing, “it sent totally the wrong message! It sounded like something out of the British Raj.”

But the effort had already been widely promoted as “the Lady Weir project.” Can’t you find a name that’s at least similar, her Indian colleagues asked. A friend in Delhi suggested a solution: “Veer” means hero in Hindi; “ni” means woman. How about Veerni? “So it’s the hero-woman!” de Chollet exulted. By 1994 the name was made official.

Despite some early difficulties — including an incident when village men who were opposed to the medical team’s promotion of birth control chased them out and threw stones at the van — de Chollet persevered. It helped that she expanded the services to include health care that even the men would appreciate — glaucoma operations for elders in the villages, for instance, and basic check-ups for children. In each village she hired a man and a woman to work as the group’s contact, providing a source of income. Soon the villages began to warm up to the Veerni Project — so much so that by the early 2000s de Chollet felt it was time to broaden her ambitions into girls’ education.

“Education is the only thing you can do that will change society,” she says. “Everything else is just a band-aid.”

The problem: Village schools in India only go to fifth grade. There are plenty of schools in the city — even relatively low-cost public ones. But parents don’t have a lot of money to spend on lodging. They might raise it for a son but almost certainly not for a daughter.

At first de Chollet tried paying for a tutor to visit the villages for a few hours each week. But the girls’ exam results were abysmal. By 2004 de Chollet had reached two conclusions: She was going to have get the girls into a proper school in the closest city, Jodhpur. And she was going to need a really great local partner.

After all, running a boarding hostel for girls was a full-time enterprise. And though de Chollet was spending as much as six weeks of the year in India, she was based in London.

“You cannot run a project from abroad,” she says. “We needed to create a local leadership that could take the project to where it needed to go.”

As it happened, she’d had her eye on a promising candidate: a young man named Mahendra Sharma. They’d met a few years earlier when he was just a high school student. He was the nephew of Veerni’s accountant in Jodhpur — a city kid who was good with computers and looking for part-time work because his father had recently died and his mother needed support. De Chollet hired him to come in a few hours a week and help set up her charity’s email.

Sharma’s first impression of the Veerni project? “They did not know anything about the internet,” he says, smiling a little.

De Chollet’s first impression of Sharma?

“Well, he was a very shy young man — quite self-effacing.”

De Chollet was working with a more experienced man to recruit girls for the new boarding hostel, but he quit. That guy told Sharma that fathers in the villages were openly opposed to the idea. His meetings with them had gotten tense.

“He said to me, the villagers are too aggressive,” Sharma recalls. “They have become crazy and it’s a very bad idea to bring girls [to the hostel].”

Sharma, by this point a college student, was interested in taking on the challenge. He figured the charity had built up so much good will in the villages by now. If he could just sit with these fathers and talk it through. So night after night he did, fielding questions like: Why don’t you take our boys to be educated. Why are you taking the girls?

“They would say, “What’s the point? [The girls] are not going to remain with us. They’ll go to their in-laws and if they’re over-educated then it will be very difficult for us to get a groom for them.”

Well, Sharma would answer, with an education, a girl can get a job and bring money into the in-laws house. In-laws would want that.

By the end of that first recruiting effort in 2005, the fathers of 39 girls had come around. It was short of the goal. De Chollet had raised enough money to support 60 girls, thanks to years of work with an early partner from Switzerland named Ann Vincent.

Still says Sharma, under the circumstances, “39 felt like a very good number!”

And he decided the Veerni Institute was his calling. No one was more surprised than Sharma. His family had raised him to believe that as a member of the Brahmin caste it was his duty to choose of life of service. But he’d always figured he’d become a doctor.

Now he concluded that he could make a much bigger impact by dedicating himself to the Veerni Institute: “I hadn’t seen anyone who was doing this kind of work.”

He switched his plan of studies. Today, at 30 and officially the director of the Veerni Institute, Sharma has master’s degrees in social science and social work and is working on a Ph.D in rural development studies.

That education has been helpful. But, he says, the biggest learning curve was cultural. Many of the villagers served by Veerni belong to India’s historically marginalized castes. And they were sometimes wary of Sharma, expecting that as Brahmin he would likely treat them with contempt.

So he learned to make an extra effort to make clear he understands he’s no better than them — never wearing sunglasses so he can look everyone in the eye, accepting any drinks offered “even if I don’t want water at that particular time” to avoid creating the impression that he considers the villagers “untouchable.”

The legacy of India’s former caste system created other, more worrisome predicaments for Veerni. The institute was also working with plenty of low-income villagers who belong to the region’s historically dominant caste — the Rajputs. Early on, when Rajput fathers found out their daughters would share quarters with “lower” caste girls, many of them threatened to pull their daughters out.

Go ahead, said Sharma. More than 10 fathers made good on the threat.

But over the years the academic achievements of girls at Veerni have changed the villagers’ views.

Sharma had felt that even if the girls did not perform well on exams, Veerni would do a service by housing them for a few years. In their own homes they were treated so poorly — given less food then their brothers, made to do the heaviest chores, like carrying heavy buckets of water from the well.

“Just having their separate bed, milk in the morning, fruit in the afternoon, would be so entirely different for them,” he says.

But this past year, Sharma was thrilled when for the first time, every single girl in the program passed her final exam, including newcomers who had arrived well below grade-level. Forty of the girls got marks higher than what Sharma himself had managed in high school.

“It gives me a complex sometimes,” he says laughing.

Today parents of all castes beg to send their girls here. Veerni has enough funding for 75 girls and has to turn away nearly 300 a year.

Those cases haunt Sharma. “It’s so difficult saying no to a girl,” he says. “It’s a kind of heartbreak for us.”

And he feels saddest about those who are already married. As with so much else the nonprofit has done, Veerni’s focus on child brides developed organically. Sharma wasn’t trying to recruit child brides per se — just the girls who seemed most in need of help. Invariably, he’d find these were the girls who had already been married off.

As Veerni became popular, Sharma felt emboldened to propose the pledge that parents must now sign, committing to keeping their daughters in school until graduation — even if they’re married.

And last year a group of fathers stunned Jacqueline de Chollet at a meeting when they asked her, how about helping us put our girls through college?

“I was just … I was just speechless,” de Chollet says. “I thought it was so fantastic.”

Now, she says, the nonprofit’s biggest headache is the best kind of problem: How to meet the demand they’ve created. “This should be scaled up. It’s a model that can be replicated. We should have Veerni II, and Veerni III.”

Most gratifying she says, are the reports from the mothers of the girls. When their daughters come home on break they want to be treated the same as their brothers — insisting on getting just as much food, for example. When de Chollet compares their lives to the life of that woman with the shawl all those years ago, she’s overcome with admiration.

“I’m so proud of them,” she says. “No way are they going to have their money taken away from them. No way. No way!”