Sixteen-year-old Roslyn Corrigan, an aspiring politician, got permission from her parents to be absent from school so that she could meet former President George H.W. Bush at an event in Texas. CIA employees were allowed to bring their families to the Texas office to hear a speech from the former president, who is also a former CIA chief.
Like the other five women who’ve recently come forward, Roslyn Corrigan says George H. W. Bush inappropriately touched her during a photo opportunity, while her mother stood on the other side of the former president. She was horrified. From Time Magazine:
“My initial reaction was absolute horror. I was really, really confused,” Corrigan told TIME, speaking publicly for the first time about the encounter. “The first thing I did was look at my mom and, while he was still standing there, I didn’t say anything. What does a teenager say to the ex-president of the United States? Like, ‘Hey dude, you shouldn’t have touched me like that?’”
Her mother, Sari Young, says Roslyn told her what happened as soon as the photo was taken. She was livid and wanted to confront him, but feared for her husband’s job. And this is why men like George H.W. Bush get away with such vile behavior for so long: the gaping-wide power imbalance that prevents people from speaking out, for fear of reprisal.
“But, you know, it’s the president. What are you supposed to do?” she said in a Oct. 28 interview. “And you’ve got your husband’s job that could be in jeopardy. I mean, you just didn’t then. You should—you should have always spoken up, always—but we didn’t.”
Corrigan says one of the reasons she decided to come forward was because Bush’s behavior with the other women was often justified because of his age or because he was in a wheelchair. Like the fourth woman to come forward, who told of a very able-bodied, sound of mind GHWB groping her in 2006, she was hurt and angered by the excuses people were making for his behavior.
“When I heard that was the reason, like, ‘Oh, he’s just an old man and he doesn’t know any better and he’s just being harmless and playful and it’s just where his arm falls… I just burst into uncontrollable sobbing,” Corrigan said. “I just couldn’t sit with that. I can’t. I cannot sit with that. I can’t sleep anymore, because that’s not true, and it’s not an excuse.”
The incident did more than just embarrass and humiliate the teenage Corrigan: it dissuaded her from a career in politics.
“It completely floored me. I was actually there to be taken seriously, and I wasn’t,” she said. “I thought, he’s a career politician, almost 80 years old or something like that, if anybody’s going to take me a little bit seriously or at least try to pretend he’s interested in what I have to say, it would be this guy. And he didn’t. All he did was grab my butt.”
This is the real damage done. It’s not innocent, and it isn’t a joke. This behavior is damaging and demoralizing for women of all ages, especially young girls and teens.