A former model has alleged she was sexually assaulted by Donald Trump, then a real estate magnate, two decades ago at his VIP box in the US Open stands in New York.

“He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off,” Amy Dorris, the former model, told The Guardian in an interview.

“And then that’s when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything,” the British newspaper quoted her as saying.

“I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it,” she added.

“I don’t know what you call that when you’re sticking your tongue just down someone’s throat. But I pushed it out with my teeth. I was pushing it. And I think I might have hurt his tongue.”

Trump was 51 at the time and was married to his second wife Marla Maples. Dorris was 24.

President Trump’s lawyers have denied the incident took place at all and raised several questions about her account, the news publication said. There would have been witnesses at such a public place as the US Open, they have said and asked why did she, who was there with her then boyfriend, continue to visit and meet Trump after the alleged incident and even sat with him at the memorial service for Gianni Versace.

Dorris did not report the incident, which took place on September 5, 1997, to law enforcement, but she told a friend and her mother about it. She also spoke about it to other people and a therapist in the intervening years. The Guardian said it has corroborated her account with people she had confided in at the time.

The former model, who is a mother of twin daughters and lives in Florida, has said that she did consider speaking out about the assault in 2016, when Trump was the Republican candidate for president. But she changed her mind because she feared she might end up harming her family.

“Now I feel like my girls are about to turn 13 years old and I want them to know that you don’t let anybody do anything to you that you don’t want,” she has said. “And I’d rather be a role model. I want them to see that I didn’t stay quiet, that I stood up to somebody who did something that was unacceptable.”

Dorris joins a long list of women who have accused Trump over the years of forcing himself on them, groping or sexually assaulting them. While Trump and his lawyers have strenuously dismissed those allegations, he has bragged about assaulting women and forcing himself on them, as he did on the infamous Access Hollywood tapes that nearly ended his campaign in October of 2016.

E Jean Carroll, a columnist who has alleged that Trump raped her at a Manhattan department store decades ago, filed a defamation suit against the president in 2019 for accusing her of “totally lying” while rejecting her claims. The president is being defended by justice department lawyers in a very unusual move, starting early this month.