Multiple former Miss Teen USA contestants said Donald Trump walked into the dressing room while they were changing.
Four contestants told Buzzfeed News that the former owner appeared backstage at the 1997 competition. Eleven others either said they did not recall Trump’s presence or denied it outright.
“I remember putting on my dress really quick because I was like, ‘Oh my god, there’s a man in here,’” said Mariah Billado, the former Miss Vermont Teen USA, the only one of the four named in Buzzfeed’s report. The other three women asked to remain anonymous.
“There was way too much security,” said Crystal Hughes, the former Miss Maine Teen USA who accused the four other women of lying to support Hillary Clinton in the presidential election. “If that was something he did, then everybody would have noticed.”
Trump held ownership of the Miss Universe, Miss USA and Miss Teen USA pageants from 1996 until selling his stake after announcing his candidacy last year.
Buzzfeed’s report comes the same day former Miss Arizona Tasha Dixon told CBS 2 Los Angeles that Trump would go backstage at the Miss USA pageant while the contestants were in various states of undress.
“He just came strolling right in,” Dixon said. “There was no second to put a robe on or any sort of clothing or anything. Some girls were topless. Other girls were naked.”
A recent CNN KFile report uncovered audio of Trump bragging about this kind of behavior to Howard Stern.
“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,” he said. “You know, I’m inspecting because I want to make sure that everything is good.”
The GOP presidential candidate has come under heavy criticism in the last week for his treatment of women, including a recently unearthed 2005 “Access Hollywood” recording in which Trump boasts about kissing women without their consent and grabbing them “by the p—y.”