Reporter who accused Trudeau of groping says she won't pursue incident
Woman says allegations from British Columbia music festival in 2000 are true, noting that prime minister apologised
The woman who accused Justin Trudeau in 2000 of groping her at a music festival in British Columbia has spoken out, saying that the incident took place as described and that she is not interested in pursuing the matter further.
On Friday – a day after the Canadian prime minister acknowledged he had apologised to her – the woman, identified as Rose Knight, issued a statement saying that she was “reluctantly” addressing the issue in the face of mounting media pressure.
Knight offered no additional details on what had happened. “The incident referred to in the editorial did occur, as reported,” she said. “Mr Trudeau did apologise the next day.”
At the time of the allegation, Trudeau was a 28-year-old teacher. The festival had raised thousands of dollars to support avalanche safety, a cause Trudeau had become involved with after his brother Michel died in an avalanche in 1998.
Days after the event, an unsigned editorial appeared in the Creston Valley Advance, a local newspaper, accusing Trudeau of “groping” and “inappropriately handling” an unnamed female reporter who was covering the event.
While the editorial offered no specifics on what had happened, it claimed the woman felt “blatantly disrespected” and Trudeau had apologised for his behaviour. “I’m sorry,” the editorial alleged Trudeau to have said. “If I had known you were reporting for a national paper, I never would have been so forward.”
The editorial read: “But shouldn’t the son of a former prime minister be aware of the rights and wrongs that go along with public socializing? Didn’t he learn, through his vast experiences in public life, that groping a strange young woman isn’t in the handbook of proper etiquette, regardless of who she is, what her business is or where they are?”
The accusation has dominated Canada’s political conversation after it was highlighted by a political commentator last month.
After initially telling reporters that he did not remember any “negative interactions” on the day of the event, Trudeau conceded on Thursday that he had apologised to the woman at the time. “I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way,” he told reporters. “But I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently.”
In her statement, Knight said she had not had any subsequent contact with Trudeau, either before or after he became prime minister. “I did not pursue the incident at the time and will not be pursuing the incident further.”
The former reporter said that she had initially avoided speaking out in order to protect her and her family’s privacy and noted that she did not intend to issue any further statements or grant interviews. “The debate, if it continues, will continue without my involvement,” she said.
