Jessica Leeds, the now 74-year-old woman who says she was sexually accosted on an airplane in 1979 by Donald Trump, told CNN on Thursday she doesn't believe Trump is reachable, but that she hopes her story will tell other men that it is not acceptable to treat women as sex objects.
Asked by CNN's Anderson Cooper what she would say to Trump if she had the chance, Leeds said she thinks Trump is probably the same person he has been his whole life and is unlikely to be able to hear her anyway.
"I'm not the important one," she said. "But the culture of this kind of behavior, he's participated in it. And I'd like to see it stopped. I'd like to see it change. I'd like to see – I'd like to see men grow up, stop being 16-year-olds. I'd like to see women get equal pay."
"It would be nice if some men could have some sort of inkling that their behavior leaves a mark, leaves a scar, leaves a lot of pain, she said. "And it may just be fun and games to them. But it is not for a lot of women."
Leeds said she first met Trump in 1979 when a flight attendant invited her up to first class where she was seated beside Trump. She said she did not know Trump at the time, but became aware of who he was after moving to New York.
Two years later, she said, she saw him at a fundraising event where she was passing out tickets.
When she handed one to Trump, she said he surprised her by saying he remembered her.
"You're the woman from the airplane," Leeds quoted Trump as saying. Except, Leeds, added, Trump did not use the word "woman."
She would not say what term Trump did use, but said it was "obscene and I just – I don't want go there."
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