Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday responded to claims that he groped a reporter when he was 28 years old.
“I do not feel that I acted inappropriately in any way, but I respect the fact that someone else might have experienced that differently,” Trudeau said. “Often a man experiences an interaction as being benign or not inappropriate and a woman, particularly in a professional context, can experience it differently. We have to respect that.”
Trudeau first responded to the allegations on Sunday, saying he didn’t recall “any negative interactions that day at all.”
Trudeau has said he didn’t know at the time that the woman, whose identity is not known, was a journalist.
The groping allegations first surfaced in an unsigned editorial published in August 2000. Canadian political commentator Warren Kinsella tweeted a photo of the editorial last month along with the hashtag #MeToo, which reignited the conversation surrounding the allegations.
The piece said Trudeau apologized one day after the incident, but that the woman felt “blatantly disrespected.”
This article has been updated with Trudeau’s earlier comments about the allegations.