LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Arnold Schwarzenegger has been blasted online after he took years to apologize for groping allegations. In 2003, six women came out accusing the veteran actor of touching them inappropriately over the years. One of the women reportedly told the Los Angeles Times, “Did he rape me? No. Did he humiliate me? You bet he did.”
Another accuser named E Laine Stockton shared that her unpleasant encounter with ‘The Terminator’ actor took place in 1975 when she was at Gold’s Gym near Venice Beach. “The gym is full of bodybuilders and Arnold comes and he gropes my breast — actually touches my breast with his left hand,” Stockton added.
‘I recognize that I offended people’
These claims came when Schwarzenegger was running for the governor’s chair in California. At the time, his campaign spokesman, Sean Walsh, denied the claims and said, “We believe Democrats and others are using this to try to hurt Arnold Schwarzenegger’s campaign. We believe that this is coming so close before the election, something that discourages good, hard-working, decent people from running for office.”
Later, the retired professional bodybuilder also issued a statement but did not fully take responsibility for his alleged actions. He reportedly said, “It is true that I was on rowdy movie sets and I have done things that were not right which I thought then was playful. But now I recognize that I offended people. Those people that I have offended, I want to say to them I am deeply sorry about that and I apologize because that's not what I'm trying to do.”
‘It was wrong’
He also added at the time, “A lot of the stuff in the story is not true ... but I have to say that where there's smoke there's fire.” However, at the age of 75, it seems Schwarzenegger has a realization. In his new Netflix documentary ‘Arnold’, he reportedly said, “My reaction in the beginning, I was kind of… defensive. Today, I can look at it and kind of say, it doesn’t really matter what time it is. If it’s the Muscle Beach days of 40 years ago, or today, that this was wrong. It was bullshit. Forget all the excuses, it was wrong.”
The three-part series also features Los Angeles Times reporter Carla Hall, who stated, “Personally, I was surprised that it didn’t have more of an effect on the election. I thought that more people would be offended themselves. When Schwarzenegger announced he was running for governor, the staff of the LA Times immediately went into high gear to start looking into stories that we had heard for years, but no one had actually investigated them fully. We had barely six weeks to work on this, and we started talking to women.”
‘That’s one way of selling his show’
Meanwhile, Schwarzenegger’s apology hasn't gone down well on the internet. A user tweeted, “Let me guess…Terminator 7 through 23 is in the works and he needs a boost.” “He is such a misogynistic j**k,” a second user wrote. A third remarked, “Didn’t Donald Trump do the exact same thing? Lie and then admit it was BS afterwards?”
“That’s one way of selling his show,” an individual alleged. “People weren't offended because; 1) It's Arnold. & 2) Back in the day if everyone was prosecuted for 'groping', the jails & courts would be packed full of famous & important people, lol. It was ubiquitous ?,” another comment read.
This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online
