11 times Bill Clinton was accused of sexual assault or rape: remember this as he stumps for Hillary

Nancy French:

“In the spring of 1971, I met a girl.”  That’s how Bill Clinton began his speech at the Democratic National Convention, causing Rachel Maddow to say, “I think the beginning of the speech was a controversial way to start.”

She found it “shocking” and “rude” that he kept referring to Clinton as a “girl” and building her “political story” around him.  This was not a very “feminist” way to start a speech, she said.

Others thought Bill’s speech was “humanizing” to his notoriously stiff wife, vintage Clinton.

However, what both critics and fans of Bill’s speech are forgetting is that his past is more like the stuff of the latest HBO Sunday night drama instead of elderly statesman: a callous playboy politician sexually assaulting interns while charismatically campaigning for votes. Scores of accusations and victims stretching over several decades. Allegations from victims of bullying and intimidation by his cold and calculating wife.

Unfortunately, this is far from fiction.

When he said, “In the spring of 1971, I met a girl” — there are many women across America who thought, “Really?  Which one?”

Nostalgia, aided by Saturday Night Live sketches, tempts us to think of the former President as a flirtatious politician, but the stories themselves remind us of just how dark the allegations truly were.

Here’s an antidote to the Bill Clinton Nostalgia: the top eleven times Bill Clinton was accused of assaulting women.

1. Three college students

In 1969, Bill Clinton was a 23-year-old Rhodes scholar at Oxford University when he was accused of sexual assault by a fellow student, an English woman named Eileen Wellstone, 19, after the two met at a local pub. Bill acknowledged that he had sex with this woman, but insists it was a consensual encounter.

An unidentified State Department employ filed a report of the incident at the time with his superiors. Now retired he said, “There was no doubt in my mind that this young woman had suffered severe emotional trauma…But we were under tremendous pressure to avoid the embarrassment of having a Rhodes scholar charged with rape.”

Charges were never brought against Clinton. He left Oxford one year later without earning his degree.

In 1972, a 22-year-old Yale student contacted campus police and accused Bill of sexual assault. He was dating Hillary Rodham at the time. Retired campus police have since confirmed the report. Again, no charges were filed.

By 1974, Clinton was a law professor at the University of Arkansas and still up to no good. One of his students alleged that this soon-to-be governor groped her and forced his hand inside her shirt while alone in his office. When confronted by the girl’s faculty advisor, Clinton blamed her for coming on to him. The girl left UofA shortly after the incident and has declined to go on record ever since.

2. Juanita Broaddrick

Bill’s next victim became a household name in 1999 when “Jane Doe #5” identified herself in a Dateline interview. Broaddrick’s tearful recounting of her rape by the then-Arkansas attorney general deepened an already national scandal.

At 35 years old, Broaddrick had volunteered for Bill’s 1978 gubernatorial campaign. A meeting was set to meet in the lobby of Broaddrick’s hotel until Bill suggested a venue change to avoid the press: her hotel room.

After a few minutes of shop talk, Bill kissed her without consent. She resisted, reminding that she was married. But he persisted, bit her lip and pushed her down on the bed. Her repeated requests to stop were rejected. His final words to her as he put on his sunglasses and grabbed for the door, “You better get some ice on that,” referring to her swollen lip.

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