The former US vice-president Al Gore faces a reopened police investigation into allegations that he groped a massage therapist in hotel in 2006 and acted like a “crazed sex poodle”.
The woman claims Gore made unwanted sexual advances during a massage appointment at Hotel Lucia, in Portland, Oregon where Gore was reportedly registered as Mr Stone.
She told detectives last year that Gore’s “Mr Smiley Global Warming” persona differed from his actions and made her afraid.
Gore, who was narrowly defeated by George Bush in the US presidential election in 2000, strenuously denies the charges.
Portland police had previously closed the case twice because of lack of evidence. But on Thursday a brief statement said the case was being reopened. It did not explain why.
Kalee Kreider, a spokesperson for Gore, said the former vice-president “unequivocally and emphatically” denied making unwanted sexual advances toward the woman and that he welcomed the investigation.
“Further investigation into this matter will only benefit Mr Gore,” Kreider said.
She also said “the Gores cannot comment on every defamatory, misleading and inaccurate story generated by tabloids”.
Gore, who announced he was separating from his wife Tipper last month, was in Portland to deliver a speech on climate change.
News of the allegations against him were first reported in the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer last week.
Portland police said at the time that the woman’s lawyer came to them with the allegations in 2006 but that the woman cancelled appointments with detectives.
The case reopened in January 2009, when police interviewed the woman but determined there was insufficient evidence to support the allegations. According to transcripts of the 2009 interview, the massage therapist described the allegations at length. She said Gore groped, kissed and pinned her down on a bed and said she felt there would be consequences if she didn’t cooperate.
“I feared that if I ran for the door to get out, I could or would be violently accosted by some security detail,” she said. “I felt certain that any, even the smallest complaint from him to the hotel, could also destroy my work reputation.”
While trying to pack up, she said Gore “wrapped me in an inescapable embrace”, looked her in the eyes and touched her back, buttocks and breasts. She said she asked Gore to stop several times.
“I finally told him and said, you’re being a crazed sex poodle, hoping he’d realise how weird he was being, yet he persisted,” she told Detective Molly Daul.
“I did not want to get hurt and I did not want to get raped,” she said.
She said Gore became enraged when she refused his advances.
During the interview, the woman mentioned working as a massage therapist for the lead singer of the Counting Crows, members of former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan’s family and basketball stars. – guardian.co.uk